It wasn’t very long ago that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was treating talk of expansion as though he was being asked if he’d like an epidemic of Ebola.

But recently the nature of the rhetoric has changed so much that the question is becoming not if, but when.

And then the ultimate question. Will they be able to limit the number of new teams to just two?

Sources close to the situation have indicated Las Vegas is a done deal, the only thing to be determined being which owner will be entitled to proclaim that he brought the first major league sports franchise to Sin City.

And given how dead set against a team in the gambling haven the commissioner was 10 years ago, this move into another player friendly state-tax-free zone represents a considerable about-face indeed.

But people have been betting on hockey games for years and to pretend games couldn’t be fixed just as easily anywhere as in Vegas is pretty ridiculous, so that posturing has fallen by the wayside.

A new team close to the newly renamed Arizona squad and California’s big three is all but assured, the only question being when and with which other city. Or should that be plural?

With all the activity going on in the Seattle area in the last little bit it would be quite a stretch to imagine that much time and effort being spent by so many wealthy men being frittered away for nothing.

At the moment there are no surefire plans to build a new rink, but that could change at any time with Vancouver billionaire Victor Coleman among many reportedly showing interest in putting an NHL team into the city.

And Bettman hasn’t been visiting there to see if it really does rain a lot.

It’s been 15 years since the NHL expanded — and given there are 16 teams in the east and just 14 in the west, taking in two more teams would certainly seem to make a lot of sense, the same amount of sense it made when realignment was first announced.

And expanding without the players getting their mitts on any of the money other than the increase in payrolls is surely tempting, at least to those owners who remember the hefty cheques they cashed for Columbus and Minnesota.

Whereas before the commissioner balked at expansion, this is a sample of his more recent verbal footwork:

“There’s a lot of interest. We’re hearing from multiple groups in Seattle and in Vegas and Kansas City and Quebec City,” Bettman said to the Tribune while scoping out Target field in Minny for yet another trip to the well of outdoor games.

“We have not decided to engage in a formal expansion process but we listen to expressions of interest. It’s not something we’ve seriously considered yet.”

Like hell it isn’t. They’d have to be nuts not to be thinking about it seriously.

And since then things have changed for a commissioner who hates to move teams in his league no matter how dire the circumstances might appear — one of the most likable aspects of his regime for most hockey fans. Once the league comes to your area, it is going to stay through thick, thin and the almost impossible, as seems to be the case in Phoenix.

But could that long-standing policy and loyalty change with the Florida situation? True there’s a lease until 2028, but with the Panthers bleeding money, even the city of Sunrise can’t seem to see the point of carrying on much longer, so perhaps one of these new cities could get an existing team after all.

And while Kansas City isn’t really likely to be a serious contender in this expansion soup unless they’re going to stretch it to four teams, saying no to Quebec City in favour of two more U.S. cities with no proven NHL backgrounds is almost certainly not going to happen.

Going back to Minnesota has been a success, and there’s no question there’s more money and corporate backing than ever before in Quebec. Even an expansion team there in a new arena would be virtually assured of sellouts into perpetuity.

There will be all manner of bleating about there being insufficient talent, of course, but even if it’s true, after such a long wait this trivial detail — which only troubles the fans — isn’t going to get in the way of a financial windfall like this.

And any time the league decides it could use talent, they can start doing away with most of the coaches they employ whose chief calling in life is to devise ways to stop offensive players and choke the very life out of the game that’s paying their salaries.

Expansion will be happening, and soon. The only question is how many new cities will be involved.

tgallagher@theprovince.com

twitter.com/tg_gman