NHL expansion: When can we expect hockey in Seattle?

NHL expansion gave us the Vegas Golden Knights. When will Seattle be getting their hockey team to give the league an even 32 teams?

The Vegas Golden Knights entered the NHL with some questions around the franchise, mostly about long-term success and establishing a fan base. Those questions were quickly quashed, and the team became wildly successful right off the bat. They proved an NHL expansion team can be successful right off the bat.

While those results were unexpected, to say the least, the NHL had a good idea it was coming based off meetings they had with the ownership group before the team signed their first player (Reid Duke, for those curious). A couple of summers later, the same process appears to be in place for the group from Seattle to make their bid for an NHL team in the Emerald City.

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The first step was to get a suitable arena to set up shop. After much debate, governmental intervention, and NBA-related limitations, the prospective owners of the Seattle team landed an agreement to renovate the KeyArena, a landmark arena in downtown Seattle, and former home to the NBA’s Supersonics. After securing private funding to gut the place (they are required to keep the roof), they expect to get started as early as next month.

Next, they issued a season ticket drive, trying to gauge interest in professional hockey returning to Seattle (fun trivia for you, the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans were the first American based team to win the Stanley Cup, so you can now win that bar bet). The drive went about as well as it could have, selling out in just minutes.

Now, the main ownership groups have announced they have both the arena agreement put together, as well as a group of local investors to add to the ownership group. Having those local investors is very important, creating a financial backbone for the team, as well as a controlling group of people with interests of making sure the team is successful on all fronts.

The ownership grou, as well as Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan, will now bring these facts along in a presentation to the NHL Board of Governors on October 2nd. Alex Prewitt of Sports Illustrated tweeted that there may not be a vote immediately after the presentation, however.

When Vegas was in the running for a team, the league reviewed their expansion application during August of 2015, and eventually voted in agreement to add the Golden Knights in June of 2016, nearly a full year later. Granted, this was when the league had 30 teams (an even number), and was till trying to figure out the struggles of a couple of franchises with either ownership issues or arena issues (namely, Coyotes, Islanders, and Hurricanes). The league was determining if they even could or should expand, not just judging the merits of the Vegas group.

Now at 31 teams, and establishing more stability for their current teams, the NHL has made it clear that they plan on getting a 32nd team somewhere. The NHL had also made it clear that Seattle was a place they wanted to set roots in, being a big city crazy about their sports (look at the Seahawks and Sounders, for example).

They’d set up an immediate geographic rivalry with the Vancouver Canucks, and be in one of the top TV markets in the country. The signs are clearly there that the NHL wants this.

This leads us to believe that the process for voting (and what we assume will be approval) for the granting of a team could actually be quicker than the time it took to bring in the Golden Knights. Considering how the Golden Knights took just one year, from a June 2016 grant to a June 2017 expansion draft, it could reasonably take Seattle a similar amount of time to be ready by an estimated October 2020 puck drop.

News on this may come slow, this being the NHL, but there’s nothing to worry about. This is happening, and may come quicker than you think.