Mayor Durkan visits with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan met with National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman in New York on Tuesday.

On Twitter, Durkan said she was "thrilled" to share the city's excitement for a national hockey team.

"There’s no doubt that Seattle is the best sports town in the country with passionate hockey fans," Durkan in a statement after the meeting. "I’m looking forward to working with the ownership group and the NHL to help bring a team – and the Stanley Cup – back to Seattle."



In December, the NHL Board of Governors agreed to accept an expansion application from Seattle.

The application granted permission for a season-ticket drive, to measure the city's excitement and viability for a pro hockey team.

"That doesn't mean we have granted an expansion team," Bettman said. "We have agreed as a league to take and consider an expansion application and to let them run in the next few months a season-ticket drive."

Bettman says Seattle is the only city being considered for expansion at the moment. If approved, Seattle would become the league's 32nd team.

Seattle plans to have renovated KeyArena ready by 2020 with the intent of luring an NHL and an NBA team as anchor tenants.

Although Seattle has never had an NHL team, the Seattle Metropolitans, who played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 1915-24, won the Stanley Cup in 1917, defeating the Montreal Canadiens 3-1 in a best-of-5 series, the NHL said.