NHL Governors agrees to accept expansion bid from Seattle.

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12-07-2017, 06:13 PM
R.J

NHL Governors agrees to accept expansion bid from Seattle.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bettman says the process with Seattle will be similar to Vegas starting with ticket drive. No guarantees yet but the process has begun in terms of due diligence of Seattle</p>— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) <a href="https://twitter.com/PierreVLeBrun/status/938906227744083968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bettman says expansion fee for Seattle will be $650 million</p>— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) <a href="https://twitter.com/PierreVLeBrun/status/938906684931616768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Not surprised, I've been saying for awhile that the NHL wants Seattle's expansion money, and Houston along with Quebec would be relocation.
12-07-2017, 06:26 PM
R.J

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bettman says expansion application for Seattle is basically the same as <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Vegas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Vegas</a> except for price BUT also may consider option for relocation in 2020-21 if it comes to that instead. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TSN?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TSN</a></p>— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) <a href="https://twitter.com/frank_seravalli/status/938906091903168512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2017</a></blockquote>
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12-07-2017, 10:00 PM
Mightygoose

Surprised they opened the process this quickly. Also though they would invite Houston as well unless the Rockets owner doesn’t want to pay anywhere near what the league wants.

No surprise on Quebec not being a part of it since they still have an active application.

I think someone will move to Houston, most likely Arizona and into the central opening up a spot in the Pacific.
01-24-2018, 02:58 PM
jerrym

The following article raises questions about whether Seattle will become a NHL franchise. However, it has more of a hockey history than Las Vegas. Currently it has the WHL Seattle Thunderbirds. Seattle also has a hockey history that goes back over a century, having won the Stanley Cup in 1917 and been tied 2-2-1 in the finals in 1919 when the Stanley Cup was cancelled due to the high death rate from the Spanish flu including NHL Hall of Fame's Joe Hall. They also made it to the Stanley Cup finals in 1920 but lost. The large corporate presence in the city also means there is lots of money potentially available to purchase expensive seats.
So I think Seattle has a very good chance of becoming the NHL's next franchise.

Quote:

Junior hockey in Seattle has a storied history. Hockey's history in the Emerald City dates back more than a century to when the Seattle Metropolitans hoisted the 1917 Stanley Cup. ...
All indications are that the NHL and Seattle are on the verge of a marriage sometime in 2018. The arrival of an NHL franchise — likely in 2020 or 2021 depending on construction of a remodeled Seattle Center arena — will fill a void in the gloomy months of the sports calendar and drop the NHL into the biggest market in the country without a winter sports team. But can a booming Seattle eventually become a hockeytown?
"It's the last place in the United States in my opinion to catch on to hockey," said former Philadelphia Flyers general manager and current Thunderbirds GM Russ Farwell. "Everyone assumes that because we're close to Canada we're into hockey and that's not the case," Farwell continued. "There is no reason this can't be a good hockey town and I think there is a lot of pluses."
The first test of Seattle's willingness to embrace the NHL will arrive in the coming months when the prospective NHL ownership group begins a season-ticket drive, the same way the league tested Las Vegas. But finding a foothold in Seattle will be an examination of how starved fans are for another team. Basketball is embedded in the DNA of the region thanks to 41 years of the SuperSonics until 2008 and a lengthy history of producing NBA talent. When the rain of the fall and winter drive young athletes inside, they grab a basketball and head for the nearest gym to play pickup games. Basketball courts and coffee shops seem to be on every corner, but ice rinks are scarce. "The chance to participate and stay involved and play the game needs ice rinks and that's all it would take," Farwell said. "There's no reason this couldn't be grown to be a good hockey city and center and stuff but it's not automatic and it's not just going to happen."
Any NHL team in Seattle would find a completely different landscape than a decade ago when the Sonics and NBA moved to Oklahoma City and the city lost its winter sports outlet. Seattle's skyline is filled with as many construction cranes as snowcapped peaks in the surrounding mountains. Amazon has taken over an entire section of the city, joined nearby by satellite offices of Google and Facebook. The amount of wealth now in the Seattle market is part of the reason Oak View CEO Tim Leiweke has regularly called Seattle "a brilliant marketplace" and one of the most enticing expansion opportunities in pro sports history. Seattle has become a city of transplants due to the booming local economy. A hockey franchise would provide those newcomers a team to rally around, much like what happened when the Sounders of the MLS arrived in 2009. But it's a different sports marketplace than a decade ago, when ticket sales and television revenues were driving franchise success. The globalization of sports due to technology has become a challenge for all leagues, said Jennifer Hoffman of the College of Education at the University of Washington.
"I think the question about our population is what sports are they interested in? And that's going to be a challenge for all of our franchises, our big franchises and our smaller ones," Hoffman said. "It's not a Seattle phenomenon but we're a good case for this point in history where digital transition is really occurring and it's really hard to know who your fans are and where they are."
John Barr believes there are plenty of potential hockey fans in the Seattle market. A Bay Area transplant, Barr has become the voice of hockey fans with his NHLtoSeattle.com website and social accounts. Barr got hooked on the sport while attending San Jose games when the Sharks arrived the Bay Area. He's regularly makes trips to Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, Nashville and Las Vegas for games. ...
And the franchise needs to be awarded in the first place. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wouldn't even entertain discussion about Seattle recently. "The application has not yet been filed so any speculation about Seattle is, at this point, a little premature," Bettman said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...own/109737716/
02-13-2018, 10:08 PM
R.J

Seattle submits application for expansion team.
https://www.tsn.ca/seattle-submits-a...chise-1.998166

Not surprised, and I think it's a foregone conclusion at this point, but I still think the Key Arena location is a bad idea.
02-20-2018, 07:40 PM
R.J

Seattle's ticket drive to start March 1st.
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/s...-team-march-1/
03-01-2018, 02:35 PM
Mightygoose

Season ticket drive hits 10K in 12 minutes. At 25K and counting.

https://www.tsn.ca/seattle-gets-25-0...rive-1.1014973
03-01-2018, 06:56 PM
R.J

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mightygoose

Season ticket drive hits 10K in 12 minutes. At 25K and counting.

https://www.tsn.ca/seattle-gets-25-0...rive-1.1014973

Impressive.
03-02-2018, 01:58 PM
jerrym

I wonder how many of those signing up to be STH are transplanted Canadians.
03-02-2018, 02:06 PM
jerrym

The good news for Seattle, aside for how quickly the STH sale went, is that Bettman is promising the team would have a similar stocking draft as Las Vegas. The large amount of corporate money available in Seattle, thanks to companies like Microsoft and Boeing, ensure there will be no problem selling corporate boxes.

Quote:

Las Vegas needed six weeks to top 10,000 season-ticket deposits. On Thursday morning, the Oak View Group said Seattle’s drive topped 10,000 in just 12 minutes. By about 11:15 a.m. — only 75 minutes after the drive began — more than 25,000 deposits had been obtained. At the two-hour mark, they’d surpassed 26,000 and the company indicated it would likely cut off requests by Friday. ...

Would-be Seattle hockey owners David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer say the NHL assured them that any expansion team here could be built under the same draft rules as a highly successful first-year Las Vegas franchise. ...

“We’ve had some discussions with the commissioner on this,’’ Bonderman, the hockey group’s managing partner, said of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, adding he hopes to have the expansion team announced by June. “And the idea is they want to keep the same format as they did in Las Vegas, which was a little more favourable to the Golden Knights than people expected. It shows you what you can do to make an expansion team a real player in the game.’’
The Seattle team would cost a record $650 million. Vegas cost a then-record $500 million when awarded two years ago.
The NHL held its first of several expansion drafts in 1967, but the Vegas franchise — due to the record price tag — was given arguably the most generous player choices in league history. Teams this time were allowed to protect only seven forwards, three defencemen and a goalie or eight forwards and defencemen of any combination, plus a goalie. They also had to make available a defenceman and two forwards who’d played at least 40 games last season or 70 games over the past two seasons.
In the prior expansion draft in 2000, teams could protect nine forwards, five defencemen, and one goalie, or two goalies, three defencemen and seven forwards.

On the subject of reviving the NBA Supersonics, Bonderman and Bruckheimer insisted they would do what it takes to bring a basketball franchise here and become owners in that as well. Bonderman, already a minority owner in the Boston Celtics, said he is prepared to sell his stake in that team so he could become a Sonics owner here.

http://theprovince.com/sports/hockey...et-commitments
03-03-2018, 06:34 PM
ArgoRavi

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerrym

I wonder how many of those signing up to be STH are transplanted Canadians.

Reminds me of the old Jack Kent Cooke joke when he explained lower ticket sales for the Kings in Los Angeles despite so many transplanted Canadians living there. He said that Canadians moved there to get away from hockey.