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Report: NHL to hold ‘special’ expansion meeting later this month

quebec

Some of the tens of thousands of fans hold up signs and fingers during the “Blue March,” as fans asked for an NHL hockey team, 15 years after the Quebec Nordiques left town, Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010, in Quebec City. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jacques Boissinot)

AP

According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, a “special” meeting will be held later this month in New York where the NHL’s executive committee will discuss the two formal expansion bids from Las Vegas and Quebec City.

“Details of the meeting are limited,” writes Dreger at TSN.ca. “It’s highly unlikely the executive committee will emerge with a formal decision, but the fact the NHL has called this meeting suggests it is inching toward a conclusion. The meeting is designed to be somewhat secretive, so the NHL won’t provide a post-meeting progress report or announce its direction until the process is finalized, which could still be months away.”

Certainly, the ongoing plunge of the Canadian dollar does not bode well for Quebec City’s chances. The loonie is worth just $0.71 USD today. And it may go lower still, with Canada’s resource-dependent economy facing serious headwinds over the next few years.

It would not surprise anyone if the league opted to tell Quebec City thanks, but maybe later. In the meantime, that would give Seattle the opportunity to get an arena built (or renovated).

As for Vegas, the big news there is that T-Mobile has purchased the naming rights to the city’s new arena.

“If the NHL comes, we would obviously love it,” T-Mobile’s chief marketing office, Andrew Sherrard, told the Review-Journal. “It would be nice icing on the cake, but it was not a driver.”