What many of you are forgetting is that a good "hockey town" is not always a good "NHL town". There are plenty of markets where they love hockey to death, that would never be able to support the financial realities of an NHL team, even with the current CBA.
Kansas City (new arena, 2008) and Houston (New arena, 2003) are FAR more likely to get NHL Teams than any Canadian market, Quebec included -- because they have a better potential for financial rewards. Anschutz knows squat about hockey (as the Kings' performance has shown), but he knows real estate, and he'll get himself an anchor tenant for the KC arena, whether it be NHL or NBA or both. Winnipeg is out of the running because their arena condemns them to the bottom half or third of the attendance rankings, even if they sold out every night. Quebec may love their hockey, but they don't love the NHL as much as Les Alexander would in order to pair the Rockets with an NHL team in his NHL-ready arena.
It's dollars and cents. Any argument that trashes KC and Houston (or Dallas) on grounds that they're not "as good hockey cities" is completley irrelevant.
How much money can owners make -- that is the ONLY question to answer, period. And the potential is more in KC and Houston, at the moment, than it is in Quebec and Winnipeg. Now, might teams there fail? Sure -- and THEN it would be time to visit the Quebec and Winnipeg options. But not until then.