from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The NHL’s anticipated move to Salt Lake City after 28 years of unrequited love in the desert does not mark the end of Gary’s Folly, for we have been told by several members of the industry’s intelligentsia that Arizona will move to the head of the expansion line as if the hypothetical new team can get its arena situation sorted out. That’s a novel concept.

Indeed, there is every chance that when the NHL is ready to dilute its product by adding another two teams and perhaps a sum of another $2 billion to divide among the existing 32 ownerships’ respective bank accounts, Arizona and Atlanta will be waiting to give the league a back-to-the-future vibe. Quebec and Cleveland will have to wait.

Arizona did not fail as an NHL market nearly as much as multiple ownerships failed the market. That is why Gary Bettman won’t put a white flag on his door when it comes to the league’s interest in this Southwest outpost. The land-grab move to Glendale out of downtown Phoenix in 2003 was as predictably a colossal failure as choosing to receive the opening kickoff in overtime of the Super Bowl. A next time would include a pre-existing structure in a community that makes sense (and deferring).

I don’t know that adding Salt Lake City to the Original 32 necessarily adds much cache to the league. But removing this ongoing embarrassment of an eyesore in the desert — that, by the way, had increasingly become a ratcheted-up flashpoint between Marty Walsh’s NHLPA and Ninth Avenue — represents addition by subtraction for the league. The NHL gets to abandon its minor league facility while allowing Rob Manfred’s MLB to move into one of its own in one of the great self-owns in pro sports history.

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