The league is not ruling out going back into the Atlanta market either.
One email declaring that we have money to get a National Hockey League franchise in South Forsyth, Georgia caused a bit of excitement for people in the Atlanta market. But that email proved to be wrong and the person, Vernon Krause, who wants to get an NHL franchise in the northern Atlanta suburb had to do some damage control. “Unfortunately, information shared during a recent community update and subsequently distributed by email was premature and incomplete, leading to inaccurate statements on social media. To clarify, the NHL has made no decisions with respect to our project, and we are not in the expansion application phase.” The way the NHL is going about a new round of expansion is different from past expansion processes. The league has an exploratory phase where it evaluates an owner and a market but does not commit to an expansion. Presently the league is working with Tom Friedkin who wants to own a team in either Houston or Austin, Texas.
Krause Sports and Entertainment has proposed building a hockey-centric venue within a mall called The Gathering at South Forsyth. The social media account NHL to Atlanta posted on X that the Krause group had submitted a final financial packet for approval by the NHL. The NHL’s price for an expansion franchise is $2 billion and a new arena has to be built as part of the process. There are two arena proposals in the northern Atlanta suburbs, Krause’s plan and another seven miles away in Alpharetta, Georgia. There are just arena proposals from the two groups, nothing more. The NHL put out a statement that the proposals from the northern Atlanta market are “not even remotely close to an application phase.” Two Atlanta NHL franchises left town because of financial problems in 1980 and 2011.
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