from Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press,

They’ve yet to play a meaningful game, but already the New Jersey Devils and Las Vegas Golden Knights are the big winners of the 2018-19 NHL season.

The Devils and Knights both announced this week they have gone where no NHL team had before — signing lucrative sponsorship deals with companies that specialize in sports gambling....

So what happens now if we see American-based teams swimming in new gambling money, while Canada’s seven franchises continue to be shut out at the windows because of this country's ban on single-proposition sports betting?

On the one hand, the NHL salary cap serves as the great equalizer. No matter how much money your franchise generates, the existence of a cap means you can only spend so much of it on hockey players before you reach the limit.

In other words, while all this new gambling money will make a team such as the Knights more profitable off the ice, it won’t necessarily help make it any better on the ice.

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