While I'll agree with most of that as I don't see much validity to this offer so far, I don't think there's ever a situation where the relocation of a team is considered a "bonus" for PR. It's never a good thing, and it never paints the league in a good light to see a market fail, especially with the sport vying for credibility in the US as it is.
It's good PR for the league in Canada. There has been a
mountain of positive press about the NHL since the Winnipeg announcement, and merch with the old Jets logos is selling like crazy... not just here in Winnipeg, but across the country.
There has been a very real sentiment over the past decade and a half that the NHL (and Bettman in particular) has an anti-Canadian bias. I'm sure you've seen that come up time and again on these boards. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant -- a lot of Canadian fans feel slighted by the NHL and ignored in favour of "new" southern fans, who, as things turned out, haven't really been as interested in hockey as the league hoped.
Canada may have a small population compared to the US, but in terms of hockey fans per capita, we're
huge. Bringing more teams up here, especially if they're teams that had been taken away from us years earlier, is nothing but positive for the NHL in this country.
A lot of people (especially on these boards) tend to discount Canadian fans, assuming we're so obsessed we'll watch hockey no matter what. While that's true, for the most part, it doesn't mean there hasn't been a very real sense that the NHL had been taking us for granted.
Now that Winnipeg is back in the mix, people are more positive about the NHL up here. It's a good thing for the league's image.