NHL Reportedly Met With Group Interested In Putting A Team In New Orleans

It seems like there's always some degree of buzz about the NHL introducing expansion teams, and the potential cities are usually the same places that we've heard for years. Places like Atlanta (again), Quebec City, Houston, Kansas City, and until this season, Salt Lake City.

But it seems like a new spot may have just popped up on the league's radar, and that would be New Orleans, Louisiana.

ESPN's Kevin Weekes is known for dropping so juicy NHL gossip, and he did that on Wednesday by reporting that the league had met with a group interested in bringing an NHL franchise to the Big Easy.

Weeks said that he learned this information while speaking to NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly who confirmed that a meeting with an interested group had taken place.

Now, there have been plenty of these meetings over the years, so this is far from an indication that the NHL is prepared to set up shop in New Orleans, but it is interesting to think about whether or not this could work.

The NHL has done a good job of expanding into (and I hate this term, but it's the one we've got) "non-traditional" hockey markets over the last three decades or so.

The league's most recent expansions into Las Vegas and Seattle have both proven to be wildly successful, especially in Vegas where they were the first of the four major leagues to go to Sin City.

So, the NHL knows what they're doing when it comes to entering a new market, especially a "non-traditional" one.

Like Seattle and Las Vegas, New Orleans has had some hockey in the past. The New Orleans Brass played in the ECHL in the late 1990s and early 2000s at what is now called the Smoothie King Center, home to the New Orleans Pelicans.

We'll see if the league ever decides to go in this direction. They currently sit at 32 teams, and you've got to figure out if they want to go about another round of expansion, the sweet spot would be 36 teams, which would allow for four even divisions.