The expansion fee being sought is $2 billion per team. Add two teams, that's about $120 mil to each of the 32 teams. It is not a complete windfall because they're paying the existing teams for an ongoing share of league revenues - the piece of revenue pie each team gets will be smaller with expansion. But you can see the financial incentive ownership is looking at.
I was curious to look at the map to see if they were trying to improve their broadcast footprint in the US. Maybe Auston or Houston does but it isn't obvious to me - I don't know enough about it. That was a key part of what the big fight to keep a team in Arizona was about.
Bettman isn't stupid. There will be a pretty good business case for whatever they undertake. The most severe noticeable dilution of talent that I recall is when they went from 6 teams to 12 and the WHA started up. Back in the 60s and before, hockey players had to have second jobs to make ends meet. Going from 32 to 34 teams now will be nothing comparable to that.
When I was at the Marlies AHL playoff game a week ago or so, I felt that a number of the hockey players I was looking at could probably crack the original six rosters of the 60s. They're bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, more skilled, better equipped and better coached. There wasn't a slug on the ice for either team. They all had pretty sound basic skills. The play in the last two periods of the game I saw was very good quality. Every year I go to see an AHL game, they seem to improve.
I think the bigger threat to the quality of hockey players is the climate getting warmer and reducing natural ice. I played a lot of hockey on natural ice when I was growing up. Now, you can't keep a natural ice rink through the winter where we live. We used to play for hours on free natural ice. How can one do that today when they have to rent artificial ice by the hour?
