page_title: Potential National Hockey League expansion
section_title: Expansion sites in Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Potential National Hockey League expansion / Expansion sites in Canada
caption_attribution_description: English: Copps Coliseum, York Boulevard, looking East. Copps Coliseum. Copps Coliseum, looking East on York Boulevard. Copps Coliseum, at York Boulevard. Copps Coliseum in Hamilton was built in 1985 with the hope it would help lure an NHL team to the city. Français&#160;: Copps Coliseum Hamilton 19 000 places 25/09/2003. 中文: Copps Colliseum.
context_page_description: The National Hockey League has undergone several rounds of expansion and other organizational changes during its 102-year history to reach its current thirty-one teams: twenty-four in the United States, and seven in Canada. The league is in the process of a two-team expansion, which added the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017 and the Seattle Kraken set to begin play in 2021, at which point the league will have thirty-two teams. The league's most recent relocation was in 2011, when the former Atlanta Thrashers relocated to become the second and current incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets.
  To gauge interest and help determine whether the NHL should entertain further expansion, the NHL Board of Governors accepted applications for new franchises during the 2015 offseason. Two potential ownership groups submitted applications for prospective teams in Las Vegas and Quebec City. The geographic distribution of teams between the NHL's two conferences was not a primary consideration for expansion, and the earliest time when a new franchise could start play was the 2017–18 season. On June 22, 2016, the NHL approved expansion to Las Vegas starting in the 2017–18 season with the Vegas Golden Knights.
context_section_description: The potential of adding additional franchises in Canada had been an ongoing source of controversy for the NHL in recent years as numerous groups proposed expanding the league into a new Canadian city, or purchasing a struggling American franchise and relocating it north; to a certain extent, these issues continue even after the Atlanta Thrashers relocated to Winnipeg, becoming the country's seventh active team. Quebec City and the Golden Horseshoe area of Southern Ontario are most frequently proposed as locations for new Canadian teams, as was Winnipeg prior to the announced relocation of the Thrashers.
caption: Hamilton, Ontario has been a rumored expansion and relocation target. In 1985, the Copps Coliseum was built to try to make that happen.
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