Gary Bettman will no longer be commissioner of the NHL
•Poor handling of arena issues with Calgary and Ottawa
•Poor handling of Arizona Coyotes situation
•Depreciating relationship created between league and IOC
•Handling of concerns regarding referees and calls


Arizona Coyotes will cease operations.
•League finds that folding to 30 teams and then expanding by two to 32 is a more lucrative option than simple contraction.
•All players enter a dispersal draft, order determined based on record of teams over past five years.


Ottawa Senators (to Quebec City) and Calgary Flames (to Portland, OR) relocate
•Arena issues
•Ownership concerns
•Bettman involvement


NHL Expansion to Seattle and Houston

Florida Panthers relocate to Hartford, CT
•New ownership group buys team, will play at XL Center, undergo offseason renovation project similar to MSG but not as excessive.

Shootout will be replaced with 3v3 continuous OT
•League may consider bringing back ties as opposed to continuous OT

KHL will contract to 20 teams, something interesting happens with Euro Hockey
•Jokerit to Liiga (FI)
•Slovan to Slovak Extraliga
•Minsk & Riga suspend operations for one season
•Severstal, Yugra and Lada to lower Russian league
•A new league "Iron Curtain Hockey League" (alias) will form, consisting of teams from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania.
•KHL considers further expansion into St. Petersburg area, China, South Korea, and Japan; absorb Asian League to development ranks in the future.

Goaltender interference debate will cost teams important contests

Alex Ovechkin will defect to KHL. Others may follow.

Massive overhaul in minor league hockey

IOC/NHL will reach new agreement with players and Olympic games
•NHL players can choose to join Olympics, but regular season play will resume.

Bettman isn't going anywhere. He's brought in tons of money for the owners and has been the scapegoat for the decisions they have voted on.

I think the only thing that I would look into is having a transfer agreement between the NHL and the KHL. Currently players who are drafted from the KHL who sign a contract (i.e Kirill Kaprizov) need to wait until their contract is up in the KHL or place an 18 month termination notice to their team.

This would also suspend the perpetual rights ownership for teams who drafted players from the KHL.

If the KHL's gonna cut teams, it's not gonna be Jokerit; they're doing fairly well for themselves. Lada, Yugra, and Amur came up at the last KHL BOG meeting as teams that might get booted from the KHL, and I would eye Dynamo Moscow and Admiral, as well, as teams with major financial instabilities. They're also only going to kick out Russian teams if they contract; European teams only leave if there's a mutual agreement.

Also, the KHL isn't expanding that quickly; London's the only expansion market on the horizon right now.