By now you’ve seen the report from Tony Gallagher in The Province about NHL expansion to Vegas being “a done deal” and that by 2017 Seattle, Quebec, and a second Toronto team will have joined the league.

Let’s pull this rig over to the soft shoulder. As Wyshynski pointed out on Puck Daddy (and everything he writes from now on I’m calling “Mooney avoidance”), one of the reasons this is getting such play is it’s the end of August. We couldn’t be farther from the free agent signing extravaganza, and training camp is still a blip on the ever stretching horizon. We need something to talk about… or at least something that isn’t Baez or Soler-related (sorry Sox fans, I just can’t contain it).