Vegas has got nothing of a hockey town BUT:
-Its arena was built entirely out of private funds
-13,200 season tickets have been pre-sold, I'm assuming to hotels and casinos who will give/sell them to tourists, who will make up most of the crowd.
Vegas may not have local fans, but I'm confident they'll do better than, I don't know, the Hurricanes? Phoenix?
http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance

(And I'm Qc City-born and raised, but am glad the Nordiques aren't coming back, due to the aforementioned arena financing reasons. The "admission fee" for a new franchise is $500M?! Craziness.)

And that's all well and good Oli, and I am not arguing there is a business model there to make, but I am just so skeptical of even venturing in this direction, when the league is already (and has been for years) in 'difficulty' (obviously not losing money, but sustained on the backs of the profitable franchises). I don't think expansion should really even be an option, anywhere. If anything I think retraction is the way to go. fewer teams and a shorter regular season [also, less players wouldn't hurt any]. So taking on any new venture, no matter the promise is a risk. And let's be clear, it is a risk because nothing at this point is definite. Hockey is a small market, but of course with tourists they could potentially make it work. But the other issue I have is that in all of these projections based on tourist dollars, population, etc., they are not accounting for the fact that people flock to Vegas to visit casinos, shows, <ahem> 'entertainment', fights/MMA, dancers, singers, magicians, etc., etc. That is already a city completely saturated IMHO, and is a lot of competition for people to go see a hockey game, particularly if it is not their home team, or worse still, they have little interest in the sport. Momentarily appeal/drunken impulse will only get you so far. And with a 'new' team, you also have to face a lot of growing pains both on the team and getting support from a fanbase. Heck, even Winnipeg went through this, getting crucified at times, when that was an already established team in a strong hockey town used to it. I am just saying, it might work, or it might not. Why take the risk on such shakey ground at this point?