Vision 40 Expansion to 2040

By Jesse Ambrock

June 9, 2026 · 1,725 words

Vegas worked. Seattle worked. Utah stabilized a mess in Arizona with real ownership and a real building. That closed the chapter on whether the NHL can still place teams in new markets and make them stick. The question now is narrower: does expansion stop at 34, or does the league treat 40 as the destination and build backward from there?

Forty teams sounds aggressive until you look at what’s left on the board. Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix are still sitting there as large U.S. metros with obvious hockey cases. Quebec City has a rink and a fanbase that never moved on. Saskatchewan holds the prairie slot in the west. Baltimore and Cleveland fit the Northeast corridor. New Orleans fills a Gulf gap. Eight franchises get you to 40, split evenly east and west, with Detroit staying where it is and Hartford staying off this particular list — the Whalers belong on the defunct-franchise map, not this wave.

The through-line is media. Arenas hold about 18,000 seats. Most good nights sell most of those seats. You can add buildings, but ticket revenue stays local and capped. Media doesn’t cap the same way. The NHL’s current U.S. rights deal pays on the order of $600 million a year across ESPN and Turner and runs out after 2027–28. The NBA’s new packages are an order of magnitude higher. That gap isn’t really about the quality of hockey on the ice. It’s about inventory, packaging, and whether the league can sell a national product instead of thirty-two fractured regional deals bleeding subscribers as the RSN model collapses.

Thirty-two teams produce 1,312 regular-season games. Forty produce 1,640 — roughly twenty-five percent more live inventory on a nightly basis for Amazon, ESPN, Apple, or a league-owned app to sell against. Streamers aren’t buying one marquee game a week. They’re buying the habit: hockey every night for six months. Gate still matters, especially in Canadian passion markets. But the long-term valuation play looks a lot like what MLB is trying to get to — more games, a league-controlled streaming spine, national buyers competing for packages — and 40 teams makes that pitch credible in a way 32 still doesn’t.

Structure

The league lands at forty franchises split into two twenty-team conferences, each conference divided into two ten-team divisions. Four divisions total — Pacific and Central in the West, Atlantic and Metropolitan in the East. That’s cleaner than eight five-team pods. Ten teams is enough to build divisional identity and a stable schedule without eight separate race tracks that feel arbitrary by February.

The 82-game schedule stays, weighted toward divisional and intra-conference play. You see your nine division rivals repeatedly, pick up the other ten teams in your conference on a rotating basis, and treat cross-conference games as events — more MLB interleague than nightly coast-to-coast grind. The Stanley Cup Final remains East versus West every June.

The current league already sits at sixteen per conference. Vision 40 adds four east and four west without shuffling existing franchises out of their conferences. Detroit stays east.

The Eight New Teams

West: Houston, Phoenix, New Orleans, Saskatchewan.

East: Quebec City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland.

Houston is the largest U.S. metro without an NHL team and the most obvious call on the board. The Toyota Center exists, ownership groups have circled for years, and a franchise there instantly gives Dallas a genuine in-state rival. Phoenix is unfinished business — the Coyotes’ move to Utah cleared the operations side, but the Valley is still a top-fifteen U.S. media market that needs new ownership and a permanent arena, not another temporary fix. New Orleans adds Gulf South identity and a western conference home; arena and ownership are the gating items, not population. Saskatchewan anchors the Central Division prairie block — gate-and-culture market, not a corporate-suite market; the full case is separate.

Quebec City is restoration, not experiment. Videotron Centre is built, Nordiques merchandise never stopped moving, and Montreal rivalry arrives on day one. Atlanta failed twice and remains a top-ten U.S. media market anyway; prior failures were ownership and arena placement, not lack of people, and a third team would be looking at the Thrashers identity rather than the Flames era that belongs to Calgary now. Baltimore sits on the I-95 corridor between Washington and Philadelphia with Ravens and Orioles proof that the city supports teams with an edge — territorial payment to the Capitals is solvable, not fatal. Cleveland brings rust-belt loyalty, AHL Monsters proof of life, and a natural Metropolitan division fit alongside Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Realignment

Adding Quebec, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Cleveland in the East plus Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix, and Saskatchewan in the West yields twenty per conference. Detroit stays in the Atlantic with Boston, the New York teams, and the Canadian footprint.

West Conference

Pacific Division (10)

Central Division (10)

Pacific covers the coast, Alberta, and the desert markets. Central holds the prairie, the Midwest, Texas, and the Gulf — Saskatchewan with Winnipeg and Minnesota, Houston paired with Dallas, New Orleans anchoring the south.

East Conference

Atlantic Division (10)

Metropolitan Division (10)

Atlantic is Canada, Boston, Detroit, and the New York metro. Metropolitan runs the rust belt and southeast — Cleveland through Philadelphia across the mid-Atlantic, Atlanta back in with Carolina, Washington, Tampa, and Florida.

Playoffs

Sixteen teams make the postseason. The top four in each division qualify, period — no wild-card gymnastics, no debating whether the fourth-place team in a weak division deserved it over the fifth-place team in a strong one. Division races stay live from October through March because finishing fourth still means something.

Once the sixteen are set, the bracket opens up within each conference. The eight qualifiers get re-ranked one through eight by regular-season points, and division affiliation stops mattering. One plays eight, two plays seven, three plays six, four plays five. A Pacific team can draw a Central opponent in round one if that’s how the standings shake out. Same between Atlantic and Metropolitan on the East side. Divisional qualification keeps every market engaged; conference re-seeding makes sure the bracket reflects the season teams actually played instead of trapping the second- and third-best teams in a conference into an early round because they shared a division.

Conference champions meet in the Stanley Cup Final. Sixteen in, eight per side, re-seeded one through eight, East versus West at the end.

Territorial Fees and Owner Politics

Single owners don’t hold absolute veto power over expansion. Relocation and new franchises require Board of Governors approval, historically a supermajority, and protesting owners usually get paid rather than obeyed. The Islanders paid the Rangers a territorial fee in 1972. Disney paid the Kings when Anaheim entered. Baltimore indemnifies Washington. Quebec indemnifies Montreal. Saskatchewan indemnifies Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg for prairie broadcast overlap. The check is part of the expansion math.

National media revenue also splits among every owner. A franchise in Houston or Atlanta that helps drive the next U.S. rights deal benefits the owner collecting indemnification and everyone else at the table. Saskatchewan raises Canadian rights value the same way for the northern half of the league.

Money

Commissioner Bettman has publicly framed future expansion fees at roughly $2 billion per team, plus arena equity commitments often estimated in the $500–600 million range. Eight teams is $16 billion in expansion fees before financing — distributed among existing owners and usable to fund media infrastructure, league direct-to-consumer platform buildout, and territorial buyouts. Franchise values already average above $2 billion with Toronto above $4 billion. The fee is high because the asset is high, and because the league intends expansion to fund the transition rather than dilute it.

Not every market pays the same way. Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix carry corporate premium seating and national advertiser appeal. Quebec and Saskatchewan carry gate, merchandise, and Canadian media. The model uses both types without pretending every team has the same revenue profile.

Timeline to 2040

Between 2028 and 2030, the league renegotiates U.S. rights post-2027–28 with deliberate package splitting — national A and B windows, streaming-first partners, and league retention of direct-to-consumer rights that MLB wishes it had kept centralized earlier.

From 2030 to 2033, expansion wave one brings four teams to 36. Houston and Quebec City go first; the other two slots depend on ownership and building readiness among Atlanta, Phoenix, Baltimore, and Cleveland.

From 2034 to 2037, wave two reaches 40. Saskatchewan, New Orleans, and the remaining openings; realignment locks at twenty per conference with the four ten-team divisions in place.

By 2038 to 2040, the league renegotiates U.S. and Canadian media at full forty-team scale. Rogers’ current Canadian deal runs through the mid-2030s; aligning a North American rights reset with forty teams and a league streaming spine is the financial endgame. The Apple-MLS precedent — global rights consolidated on one streaming platform — is the template, adapted for hockey’s nightly volume.

What Could Go Wrong

Eight new teams need roughly 180 NHL roster spots. The league’s public line is that global development has absorbed prior expansions; the honest counter is that fourth-line quality and goaltending depth are where dilution shows first. AHL affiliate expansion and the European pipeline need to grow alongside franchise growth, not after it.

Atlanta and Phoenix aren’t market-size problems — they’re ownership-and-building problems, and Vision 40 fails if the league repeats short-horizon ownership in places that require patience. Wave-two markets need committed owners and finished buildings, not just demographic slides.

On the schedule side, eighty-two games with ten-team divisions breaks down to roughly twenty-six division games, twenty-four against the other division in your conference, and thirty-two inter-conference — adjustable, but the framework holds. The playoff format is set: top four per division, re-seed one through eight within the conference, sixteen teams total.

Forty teams. Four divisions of ten. Quebec restored, Saskatchewan in the prairie block, Detroit east, Houston and Atlanta where the demographics point, Hartford waiting on the defunct map, and a media reset timed to when the full footprint is in place.