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Expansion & Markets

June 13, 2026

The New Orleans Expansion Case

By Jesse Ambrock

New Orleans is not a conventional hockey market, and that is precisely why it belongs in any serious conversation about the next wave of NHL growth. The Vision 40 framework already flags it as the Gulf South piece that rounds out a balanced 40-team map, adding identity and a western-conference home without relying on tâ€Ĥ

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Research

Goaltending efficacy across the 2021–2026 era, pre-draft rankings for the 2020–2024 classes, an all-time top 100 built from Point Shares and hardware, and a reference to public NHLe work with example factors plus the theory that they best approximate league strength for production weighting. Methodology published with each dataset.

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