NEW YORK \u2014 Expansion was not discussed at the NHL’s Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday, Commissioner Gary Bettman said afterward.<\/p>\n
The league has been at 32 teams since Seattle entered for the 2021-22 season. There are groups that have aspirations of\u00a0franchises in Atlanta\u00a0and\u00a0Houston, among other places.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is, and continues to be, interest from lots of places,\u201d Bettman said. “But none of it has reached the level that we need to focus on at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if the door could be opened on the expansion front at the next board meeting in December in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Bettman said that’s not for the NHL to decide.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody knocks on the door, we\u2019ll peek around to see who\u2019s knocking and then decide what to do with it,\u201d Bettman said.<\/p>\n
Among other topics, Bettman expressed concern about the\u00a0construction timeline\u00a0of the main hockey arena in Milan for the upcoming Olympics and said it’s up to the International Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are constrained in what we can and can\u2019t do, request and demand and if it reached a certain point, we\u2019ll have to deal with it,\u201d Bettman said. \u201cBut I\u2019m not speculating, and we\u2019ve been constantly assured by the IOC and the (International Ice Hockey Federation) that it will be OK.”<\/p>\n
NHL salary cap remains the same<\/p>\n
The salary cap is seeing\u00a0record increases\u00a0this year and over the following two as\u00a0revenues are skyrocketing. Bettman flatly denied buzz that had been going around about the cap being more than $104 million next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no change,\u201d Bettman. \u201cI know there\u2019s a rumour going around that we\u2019re in discussions about the cap. That\u2019s absolutely, categorically untrue. There have been no discussions. It is what we\u2019ve already agreed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nuts and bolts board meeting<\/p>\n
Bettman opened his chat with reporters by saying there was no news to report.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, it\u2019s a nuts and bolts meeting,\u201d Bettman said. \u201cNothing too dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Governors \u2014 a mix of owners, team presidents, general managers and other executives \u2014 got updates on the state of the league, hockey operations and officiating and efforts to grow the game internationally.<\/p>\n
Bettman said he had nothing to share on the sale process involving the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
As planning continues for the 2028 World Cup of Hockey, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said he expects 18 cities in North America and 10 in Europe to bid to host part of the event.<\/p>\n
Asked about his future running the NHL, the 73-year-old Bettman said: \u201cI\u2019m here, and I\u2019m not planning on going anywhere for a while. And I don\u2019t know what a while is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Expansion was not discussed at the NHL’s Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday, Commissioner Gary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-216492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}