Now let's get to why you're in Seattle for the NHLB-O-G. Why are you in Seattle? What did you expect from these meetings? What's so important that you had to fly all the way out to be there?

Well, I mean, this is the meeting where literally they could come out today and say we're expanding. I don't know how many years ago that was. Five, six, seven, eight years ago, I was at one of these meetings. There was no buzz heading in. Literally, Gary Betven calls, I don't know, there's maybe ten of us there, reporters, calls us into this room and he's like, We're expanding to Vegas. They're starting a ticket drive. This is the most powerful people in the sport and they can make big, unilateral decisions or multilateral, I guess, because they all have to... There has to be a certain quorum among the owners. But this is where big changes can happen. I think it's interesting that we're in Seattle. The crack and ownership group actually requested to have the meeting in their own city. They wanted to be able to show the other NHL owners around town, I guess, so to speak, to show off their city, the newest franchise in the league right now. And so typically these are held in sunny locales like Florida or California. But here we are, and I'm not complaining because let's face it, I'm living in a hotel either way.

Right, for sure. I should say, though, what this covering this meeting entails is literally standing around a hotel lobby, coralling the people as they walk by. I could be in the best climate or the worst climate as long as the hotel itself has... You know what I mean? That's all I'm seeing anyway. But yeah, so we're here for that. And I don't know that there's any big news plan, but I would say the fun of this event is the unknown. Is that possibility? It seems to me that the commissioner, Gary Beckman, is pretty open about talking about the subject of expansion broadly in his more recent availabilities, but it doesn't sound to me like it's coming right now, but it's clearly on their minds to some degree. As Betman has said, a lot of that's because they've got cities and potential owners coming to them and saying, Hey, what about us? Is there anything to be done here? And so I think that they have some of those relationships cooking out of the surface, which is maybe making it more appealing. I think the fact that franchise values have gone pretty starkly up and to the right in terms of the value going up, it becomes more appealing.

And so we've got all kinds of situations in the League. We've got what are they going to do with the draft? Is maybe mandatory net guards or protection? Is that going to be discussed here? Obviously, with the Adam Johnson tragedy in Britain, I think there might still be some fallout from the Corey Perry situation to be discussed. One thing I'll be curious to see is, does he need to speak to the commissioner before potentially returning with another team? Not to say that's where his head's at. Based on the statement he put out, it seems very much like he's not at the spot where he wants to play right now anyway. But I think that that'll be discussed. And then the expansion issue, I just think, is always an interesting one because it seems crazy that we're already... The NBA is still at 30 teams. I'm sitting in Seattle. I know the NBA, it seems like, is going to come back to this city at some point in time. But maybe the NHL will push forward and add even more teams before the other leagues are doing that.

Atlanta, Houston, Salt Lake City. There's a couple of different US options for them.

Yeah. Did you see Salt Lake? It looks like they're going to get a Winter Olympics again.

I had heard about that in passing.

Yeah. There was a headline. There was a meeting, I think, somewhere in Europe over the weekend, and it sounds like they're tabs for the 2034 Olympics, which sounds really far away, but it's only a couple of Winter Olympics cycles down the road. It's hard not to connect dots with the fact you have a very wealthy person there trying with an interest in the NHL, an open interest, I would assume going to have to build a venue to have the Winter Olympics in that city. You just wonder if that could all be tied together somewhere down the road. Again, not anything I would expect to be resolved or announced during these meetings, but you can start to see where the situation that might lead a team there is. And look, no one wants to hear with us anymore because it has been discussed ad nauseam for 15 years. But we are sitting here right now where the Arizona Coyotes are still playing out of a college rink, and they're trying to secure plans to build their own NHL size arena. And the expectation was that that would be finalized, those plans somewhere in the new year.

And that if they weren't, I think we're starting to get into contingencies. Could they be moved? Is there other cities out there? Obviously, Salt Lake has been mentioned as I mentioned, is a possibility for that. Should the coyotes have to be moved? I know that the amount of talk about a coyote's arena probably everyone's ears turned off. But that is actually something that has to be resolved in the near future. Hopefully, we'll get some clarity there. The other thing I should mention too is this is usually where we get a clear idea of the salary cap for next season. Basically, they've got the first quarter of the season's revenue data in the books now and they project where they're going. That's something that the hockey people at this meeting, obviously a lot of business people from organizations are here, but any hockey people usually want to hear that because it affects some of the decisions or contemplating with players.

That is a lot that could happen on the docket. I love the idea of you being in the unknown for the B-O-G, but we'll be there to talk about it on Thursday if anything crazy arises. Enjoy your time in Seattle as long as you have to be there. You're going to be there the whole week?

No, I'm flying back Wednesday, so it's a pretty quick trip. It's only my second time here. I've actually never been for a cracking game yet, and I'm not going to see one. Unfortunately, the cracking are on the road this week. That was the only weird thing. I was like, if you're bringing it here, why wouldn't you have it lined up with a game? You could have had all the owners at a game in a suite or something. But anyway, easier for me to sit there and second-guess that. I'm not going to get into Climate Pledge Arena this time, but I will be back at some point.