1. It absolutely does matter if this league had any foresight.
2. I don’t give a fart, you are missing my point. I don’t care if it makes business sense for Vegas, it’s a terrible play for the NHL and AHL respectively. The goal shouldn’t be “move teams closer to there NHL team so they can make more money now” it should be “position teams in major markets to expand hockey’s presence in as many major markets as possible”. San Antonio is the 7th biggest city in the country. There is legitimate potential to get an NHL team there. Why the **** are we moving a team out of there for a market that would be a much more natural home for an ECHL team?
The NHL and AHL should be fighting tooth and nail to get teams to markets like San Antonio, Houston, Portland, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Kansas City. Build Hockey up to increase your potential there long term. Instead we have 6 teams in an already packed California market, 4 in New York State, and many more were the AHL team is within 50 miles of there NHL counterpart, and it is an active hindrance to growing the game in non established hockey marks. It’s stupid. The NBA and NFL have the advantage that every state has multiple college teams, so it’s easy to focus on basketball and football at a young age. Baseball’s minor league setup is great at growing the game in decent sized cities without big league teams. The NHL’s setup has actively harmed any chance they had of growth in the Southern United States, by moving Houston, Oklahoma City, And now San Antonio’s teams to make things cheaper for their respective teams or because San Antonio’s owners were pieces of ****. Now the Stars (The AHL one, not Dallas) won’t have any rivals within 500 miles of them, which was helping the game a ton in Texas.