Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio Power Play with Steve Kouleas and Martin Biron. When asked about expansion and the schedule, he stated that the NHL could stagger expansion, which means the schedule will not be balanced until the league reaches 36 teams.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Martin Biron: “I think this is all great, lots of money, obviously, and expansion and all of it, but it’s going to mess up the schedule. If you have 17 teams in the East and 17 teams in the West. How do you break that up right now? I think we could have an 84-game schedule. Very easy. Four games against your division, three against the other in your conference, and two against the other. 84 boom, you’re done, and that’s going to be bargained into the CBA. But do you think that if we go to 34, we may go to 36 teams pretty quickly, because to balance the schedule.”
Steve Kouleas: “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.”
Dave Pagnotta: “You are going to get Kooli going.”
Kouleas: “Go ahead, Dave.”
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Dave Pagnotta: “Marty, I’m glad you brought it up, because you saved me from having to do that. We can address the anger in your direction. We, I think, and I’ve spoken to owners about this and others within the league, I think we will eventually get there. I think we will get to 36 before everything kind of hits the halt. Hits the E-break. It will make things a lot easier. The one thing we’ve noticed from the NHL in terms of its recent expansion with Vegas, with Seattle, symmetry doesn’t really matter once you get to knowing that we’re going to get to whatever the end goal is going to be.
So we could stagger this out. We can see, excuse me, this gets staggered out over the next 5,6,7, 8 seasons. Get to the 33, then 34, eventually five and six, and then halt. But this is not something that’s exclusive to the National Hockey League. The NBA, MLB, they’re going to be expanding as well in the not-too-distant future. The NFL is taking advantage of the marketplace right now and how things are going. It’s going to create, obviously, more jobs across the league. It’s going to create more jobs on the ice and so on and so forth.
But I think we will be getting to that point. And yeah, next season, we’re likely to see an 84-game schedule by the sounds of things. And then eventually, once another team enters and a second one after that, things will eventually start to get back to an easy number in terms of matchups, opponents, games against other divisions, and so on and so forth. But the priority from what I would imagine, would be the influx of overall revenue that will lead to more HRR overall. It’ll lead to more on the television rights side, sponsorship, ticket sales, etc, etc.
So the NHL is in a position where they’re taking advantage of this. And one of the things, the big misconception out there has been by design, the messaging from both Gary Bettman and Bill Daly being that they’re not going to be opening a formal expansion process anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that they’re not entertaining this exact possibility.
The expansion process is to also vet other potential interested places to see if they want to enter the league. Know who those interested parties are in these particular markets. Just like they knew that Ryan Smith and his group was the perfect group for Utah. They know which ones they’d like to align themselves with in both Atlanta and Houston.
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And they’re sourcing out other markets as well. And control those markets. They don’t need to go through a formal process because they know which direction they’d like to go. And I think eventually we’re going to be getting there.”
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