Not a chance that callups been prioritized *over* travel. Many teams have been fortunate enough to be in a situation where there could get both, but none have had travel lower on the list since the moves west. Last time I checked, Edmonton, Calgary, Nashville, Florida, Tampa, Vegas, and Vancouver all keep their affiliates in Bakersfield, Stockton, Milwaukee, Springfield, Syracuse, Chicago, and Utica respectively. None of those are anywhere close to the parent team.
No other teams are on an island for travel other than Carolina-Charlotte and Winnipeg-Manitoba, with the Jets still actively looking to move them out after they failed to put them in the proposed Thunder Bay arena, and Carolina holding Charlotte since 2010. But that right there is almost a third of the league who actively chose travel well over ease of callups. It gets closer to a third if you include St. Louis-San Antonio with their agreement for several more years, and Pittsburgh-WBS which are nearly 300 miles apart.
They went to Chicago because the Wolves are 5 minutes away from O'Hare, which offers cheap, 3 hour, non-stop flights to Vegas all day, every day. No other market near them is open, or are like Fresno and Reno where there's off-ice issues that make icing a team a non-starter. And none of those markets are going to change in the future.