San Diego Put On NHL Back Burner

San Diego’s bid for a NHL expansion was put on hold temporarily Thursday when the league awarded Tampa Bay and Ottawa franchises to begin play in the 1992-93 season. With the San Jose Sharks joining the league next season, the NHL will then have 24 teams for 1992-93.

The league’s Board of Governors completed the voting Thursday at its meeting in Palm Beach, Fla.

The NHL would like to have 28 teams by the year 2000. Losers in the bidding were told that more teams will be added later, possibly as early as 1993-94.

“We said, ‘Don’t forget, we will still have four (teams) to go by the year 2000,’ ” NHL president John Ziegler said.

Harry Cooper’s certainly not forgeting. The owner of the Sports Arena and the International Hockey League Gulls, and his 12-member ownership group is still banking on being awarded an expansion franchise for the 1996-97 season. The other Southern California application not accepted was the one by Laker owner Jerry Buss, who has said he’ll put any franchise in Anaheim or San Diego.

“They didn’t address anything other than the 1992-93 season,” Cooper said from Florida. “This is very encouraging for us. Our plans are to draft a memorandum of understanding with the league and try to get it into the agenda for the future.”

Cooper said in order for the NHL to take San Diego’s bid seriously, the ownership group must move on its planned arena.

“We’ll continue in our efforts,” he said. “I feel comfortable that by the end of this year, we’ll have a commitment from the NHL for 1996.”