If Minnesota is the State of Hockey, Nevada is … well, it is not the State of Hockey. It is the state of legalized gambling, however, and it is a state in which the NHL is considering adding a team.

Is that a good idea?

Five Thirty Eight doesn't seem to think so. Maybe Nate Silver is right, but his logic doesn't quite seem right, either:

According to my previous research, the six current NHL markets with the fewest number of hockey fans are Nashville, Miami, Raleigh, Columbus, Phoenix and Tampa. Those franchises lost a collective $51 million in 2013-14, according to Forbes. Now there's momentum to place an NHL expansion team in Las Vegas, another idea that makes little sense. Our 2013 analysis estimated that there are just 91,000 NHL fans in metro Las Vegas. That's tiny even by comparison to the six smallest NHL markets that I mentioned before, which have between 146,000 (Nashville) and 279,000 (Tampa) hockey fans. And it's well below Seattle's 241,000 or Quebec City's 530,000 fans.

Silver also argues against an NHL team in Vegas because the city hasn't supported minor league teams well in the past, while concluding that an NBA team makes far more sense.

On that last part, I agree. But the minor league reasoning seems far-fetched. And to a larger degree, so does the argument about a small base of NHL fans. Any team based in Vegas in any major league is going to be more about capturing the tourism crowd than the locals.

Yes, the NBA is a better fit than the NHL — and probably the ideal draw in Vegas. But even without a full house night after night in an NHL arena in Vegas, the league exposure in Sin City would be worth it. I'd put a team there before I'd put one in, say, Kansas City.

(Photo of Blues coach Ken Hitchcock in Vegas for 2012 league awards was a wonderful bit of serendipity).