Flyers

Report: Dallas, Pittsburgh Eliminated as NHL Hub Cities, Toronto Lone Eastern Conference City Remaining

By Russ Joy

Published: Jun 23rd, 2020 · 1:33 PM EDT

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Fresh off yesterday’s news that Columbus Flavortown, Ohio was eliminated as a potential NHL Hub city, two more of the ten originally-proposed sites have been informed their cities need not prepare any further:

Dallas and Pittsburgh have also been informed they are no longer in the Hub city process, joining Columbus and Minnesota on the outs. The six that remain are Vegas, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, LA and Chicago.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) June 23, 2020

While Dallas being eliminated doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, Pittsburgh’s removal as a potential Hub city is, to quote Ilya Bryzgalov, humongous big. Why? Of the six remaining cities -Chicago, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Toronto, Vancouver- only Toronto features a team in the Eastern Conference.

More after the jump:

While it’s possible that the NHL could look to two Canadian cities like Vancouver and Edmonton, given the relatively low number of COVID-19 cases, I find it hard to imagine the league wouldn’t look to have one US city involved. At the same time, it would be an unconscionable decision to disregard the obvious logic of keeping Eastern Conference teams in the Eastern time zone.

As Anthony and I discussed on last night’s Snow The Goalie, the working logic right now is that the league favors a Toronto/Las Vegas pairing to accommodate all parties, though given the possible COVID-19 powder keg that is Vegas, they could very well be preparing for Toronto/Vancouver.

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