a Globe and Mail editorial,
The NHL has been diluting the culture of hockey for so long that nothing the league does comes as much of a shock or a surprise. Las Vegas is going to get a hockey team. That sounds about right. Quebec is denied. But of course.
Surely by now they should have convinced us that professional hockey was meant for the easy comforts of the American desert, not some God-forsaken place where rivers freeze and the cold chills your soul. But at least we have a soul, Canadian hockey fans will say as they mourn the passing of Gordie Howe, who honed his game and character on the frozen ponds of Saskatchewan back when hockey was inseparable from the culture in which it thrived.
The NHL doesn’t care. Las Vegas is as soulless a place as you can hope to find, in hockey terms as in much else. But it has a ready-made arena and an owner prepared to cough up the $500-million expansion fee, plus a prospective fan-base of tourists desperately in need of a distraction from Celine Dion and Cirque du Soleil.
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