Atlanta Ownership Group Makes Official Request for NHL Expansion Team

A group led by former NHL player Anson Carter is seeking to bring an expansion team to Atlanta.

A group led by former hockey player Anson Carter announced Tuesday that it has formally requested that NHL grant it an expansion franchise to play in the Atlanta area. 

Carter played 10 seasons in the NHL with eight different teams. He was born and raised in Toronto but has lived in the Atlanta area since 2009 and is a co-owner of the Atlanta Gladiators of the ECHL. The prospective ownership group also includes Neil Leibman, the chief operating officer of the Texas Rangers; Peter Simon, the CEO of sports investment firm Simon Sports; and Aaron Zeigler, the president and CEO of Zeigler Automotive Group, which owns more than 80 car dealerships in the midwest. 

The group, Alpharetta Sports & Entertainment Group, is seeking to build an arena near the North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Ga., about 25 miles north of downtown Atlanta. 

Atlanta was home to an NHL franchise—the Thrashers—from 1999 to 2011 :: Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports

An expansion team in Metro Atlanta would be the city’s third NHL team. The Flames played their first eight seasons in Atlanta before moving to Calgary in 1980. Hockey came back to the city in ’99 with the arrival of the Thrashers, but they left in 2011 and became the Winnipeg Jets. 

The NHL expanded to 32 teams with the addition of the Seattle Kraken in 2022. No major North American professional sports league has more than 32 teams. The league is unlikely to consider expansion before the Arizona Coyotes’ stadium situation is resolved. The Coyotes currently play on the campus of Arizona State University in a 4,600-seat arena while they seek to find a permanent home. The team is still in the process of finding land to build on. 

“The league appreciates Anson’s passion for bringing NHL hockey back to the Atlanta area, and he has certainly kept the subject on our radar screen for several years running,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said, according to the Associated Press. “While, as we have made clear, we have no expansion-oriented process in place currently, it’s always good to know there is bona fide interest.”

The Carter group is not only one angling to bring the NHL back to Atlanta. Vernon Krause, a Georgia-based car dealership magnate, told Atlanta TV station WSB last week that he met with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in New York to lobby for an expansion team. Krause is behind a development called The Gathering at South Forsyth, which includes plans for an 18,000-seat NHL arena six miles north of the Carter group’s proposed arena site.