After a successful opening season for the Vegas Golden Knights, other cities such as Quebec, Huston, and Seattle want in on the action. As of December, commissioner Gary Bettman ceased all talk about adding teams in Quebec and Huston since there are already NHL teams near those cities such as the Montreal Canadiens and Dallas Stars. On the other hand, Seattle was approved for a $600 million renovation of KeyArena to add an NHL team and hopefully an NBA team as well.

Compared to the $500 million the Golden Knights pain, Seattle will have to pay a $650 million expansion fee. If the fee can get paid off, the team probably won’t come into existence until 2020 or 2021 at the earliest. Some possible names for the new team are Seattle Firebirds, Seattle Sea Lions, Seattle Whales and Seattle Kraken.

Although there are a lot of speculators who don’t think that hockey will be successful in Seattle, statistics have proven otherwise. The team got 10,000 deposits on season tickets within the first 12 minutes. Even more impressively the sales had to be capped of at 32,000 because of how quickly they were sold. Tickets aren’t the only thing that prove that hockey will be successful in Seattle. The city already has two teams, Seattle Thunderbirds and Everett Silvertips, both which draw large crowds for games.

Since Seattle is mostly an industrial city, the new NHL team could bring in new revenue and money to the local businesses in the area. The new team is already generating a lot of new fans from around the area, and they will bring in more teams if they are successful.