Las Vegas NHL vote could happen in September: Report

When will the worst kept secret in the NHL finally become official? According to an MGM exec via Las Vegas Review-Journal, the league will have a formal vote in September as to whether it wants to expand to Vegas.

To which we then emailed the NHL, and commissioner Gary Bettman sent us a statement through a league spokesman.

"We are going to report to the Board in June on the status of franchise interest. Beyond that, nothing has been decided and, at this point, any suggestion to the contrary is nothing more than speculation or perhaps wishful thinking," Bettman said.

This is what the report said from the Review-Journal which we queried the NHL about:

The National Hockey League Board of Governors will vote on a Las Vegas franchise bid in September, the MGM International executive heading up construction of the company’s new Strip arena said Friday.

During a media tour of the arena project, Mark Prows, MGM’s senior vice president of arenas, said the board will “socialize” with Bill Foley’s franchise team during its June meeting in Las Vegas, and will hold a formal vote on Foley’s expansion team proposal when it next meets, in September.

There have been reports that Las Vegas has gone over the NHL’s magical 10,000 season ticket deposit threshold. We already know players love to go to Vegas and hang out at pools in Vegas. If this didn’t happen it would be a major PR nightmare for the NHL – and somewhat of a problem for Vegas, though really people will still go regardless. But it will look bad if the city couldn’t bring a pro team, in a seemingly slam dunk situation.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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