The league hasn’t released a statement yet, but Quebec City and Las Vegas think there is good news for those that seek NHL expansion.

According to an article on ESPN, Las Vegas and Quebec City have reached the second of three phases that they will need to go through in order to become a NHL team.

This phase is all about giving the league more in depth financial information. ESPN goes a little bit into what the NHL is looking for, but I couldn't comprehend it and the average reader probably could not comprehend it either.

What did catch my eye is that the two potential ownership groups now have access to certain league-related information. That means that the league now trusts the two groups enough to give them information that it doesn’t trust the public with. Hopefully, this means that they are coming closer together to making a deal.

ESPN also said that the NHL is not expected to expand until 2017. They did not give any explanation why they think that is the case. I think it is possible that the NHL could expand as early as the 2016-2017 season. The two groups already have their fan support, city support, financial support and stadiums ready to go.

On a final note, the application for expansion was $10 million; $2 million was nonrefundable. A total of 16 groups filled out applications, and of course 14 of them did not get their application approved. That means that the NHL won $28 million just from the application process alone. To put that into perspective, Soulja Boy is only worth $25 million.