NHL Announces Las Vegas Expansion: Latest Comments and Reaction

The NHL is heading to Las Vegas with an expansion franchise.  

On Wednesday, the league announced the team will "begin play in 2017-18" and noted the franchise will play in the Pacific Division, with no changes to the league's alignment. With the announcement of the Vegas franchise, potential expansion to Quebec City has been deferred, per Tom Gulitti of NHL.com.

"This will perhaps be the most covered expansion in our history," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters.

Despite SiriusXM NHL Network reporting the team would be named the Black Knights, owner Bill Foley told reporters the franchise has not yet been named.

An expansion draft will be held on June 20, 2017, with teams required to submit protected lists three days earlier, per Bob McKenzie of TSN. Las Vegas' selections will be announced on June 21.

Chris Johnston of Sportsnet reported that the league "expects to open a window where the Las Vegas team can make trades/transactions before expansion draft." Johnston noted that has "never happened before."

Greg Beacham of the Associated Press reported on June 14 that organizers would need to pay a $500 million expansion fee to bring hockey to the entertainment capital of the world.

Foley has been spearheading the effort to bring an NHL franchise to Las Vegas. His group, Hockey Vision Las Vegas LLC, had already received more than 13,200 season-ticket deposits for the proposed team as of August 2015, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com).

T-Mobile Arena, which opened on April 6, features hockey-specific designs and was used as a selling point, per ESPN.com's Dan Marrazza:

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As much as T-Mobile Arena has all the earmarks of a Vegas-specific venue, its seating bowl is very much set up for hockey. In fact, if you were to take out the venue's signature Hyde Lounge triangular platforms atop one of the end zones, the seating bowl is reminiscent of Winnipeg's MTS Centre -- scaled up to fit 2,500 more fans.

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Even though the NHL has not had a team in Las Vegas, the sport is not foreign to the city. The Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers played an outdoor preseason game at Caesars Palace in 1991. 

It seems the city couldn't wait to have a permanent hockey team, as Canadian poker star Daniel Negreanu told NHL.com in February 2015: "The town's starving, absolutely starving, for a professional sports franchise. I've found the support to be overwhelming. People that live here, they're dying for this."

Las Vegas certainly has the pieces in place to warrant this expansion franchise. Foley has the money and desire to get things up and running. There's also a brand-new arena in the heart of the city, meaning the team could occupy it right away and attract crowds because of its prime location. 

It will take a little more time to get everything in order—the new team still has to build a roster and hire people to run things—but the biggest hurdle in the process has been cleared. 

The NHL wins because it becomes the first major professional sports organization to place a team in Las Vegas. The city wins because not only does it get a professional franchise, but it could open the door for more leagues to jump on the bandwagon.