from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,

So when Jacobs says Quebec City is “challenged” as a future NHL site, he’s actually saying, “Quebec City will never get an expansion team. The best the nice people of Quebec can expect is for their lovely city to be a landing spot for a team, preferably one already in the Eastern Conference, that needs to get out of Dodge immediately. We will use them the same way we used Winnipeg seven years ago. Like Quebec, we didn’t particularly want to go there, but it was a quick fix.”

Likewise, when Jacobs says, “Clearly the one area that is missing is Houston because that’s a great city,” what he’s actually saying is, “Hey, Tilman Fertitta, get your ducks in a row because, as of this moment, consider yourself to be auditioning to join the club.”

Jeremy Jacobs is arguably the most powerful man in hockey. He is chairman of the league’s board of governors, but more importantly, he is the de facto chairman of the all-powerful executive committee, the one that holds the most sway when it comes to deciding which cities are awarded franchises.

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