from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

While nothing official will come out of a Tuesday meeting between the NHL Seattle group and the league’s executive committee, any positive nod makes the deal as good as done. Sure, there would still be a vote required by the 31-member NHL board of governors, likely in Florida come early December, to award Seattle an expansion franchise to play at a remodeled KeyArena starting in October 2020.

But the board of governors has never nixed an expansion recommendation by the all-powerful, 10-member executive committee. And if you’re weighing the odds of a positive recommendation out of that committee on Tuesday, well, that particular deck comes about as stacked as the Washington Capitals lineup that will open defense of its Stanley Cup championship the following night against the Boston Bruins.

First off, the executive committee chairman is none other than Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, also known as the 50-year patriarch of family business Delaware North, which happens to have a deal as lead concessionaire of the soon-to-be-revamped KeyArena. Next, you have Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, who worked tightly with NHL Seattle president and CEO Tod Leiweke for years when he was Lightning CEO and helped Vinik with his Channelside real estate development project.

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