Leonsis takes the gavel as Jacobs ends 19-year run atop NHL board

The NHL's owners picked a new boss for their own club on Tuesday. Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was unanimously elected chairman of the Board of Governors at the league's meeting in New York, per TSN. He replaces Boston's Jeremy Jacobs, who held the gavel for 19 years.

Calgary Flames co-owner Murray Edwards will serve as vice-chair.

What the chairman actually does

The Board of Governors is the room where the real decisions get made. Expansion, the salary cap, media deals, who gets a franchise and who doesn't. The commissioner runs the league day to day, but the governors sign off, and the chairman runs that room.

Jacobs has run it since 2007, per the Bruins' own executive bio. He bought Boston in 1975, so he's been in the room longer than most of his peers have been alive. Gary Bettman called him "one of the great leaders in the history of our game" in a statement carried by TSN.

Jacobs, 86, pointed to the media rights deals, the new markets and the marquee events of the last two decades in his own farewell. He also made a point of mentioning player safety. Take that however you like.

Who Leonsis is

Leonsis, 69, is a Brooklyn kid who made his money in publishing and PR, sold to Reuters and AOL, and bought the Capitals from Abe Pollin in 1999, per TSN. He chairs Monumental Sports, which also owns the Wizards and the Mystics.

"We have proven in Washington how investing in a team, its fans and in a community can create a true hockey city," Leonsis said in his statement.

That's the pitch. He's spent 27 years selling hockey in a football town. Now he gets to sell his ideas to 31 other owners.

Edwards, 66, has co-owned the Flames since 1994 and runs Calgary Sports and Entertainment. A Canadian vice-chair next to an American tech-money chairman is a very on-brand NHL pairing.

Ferda take

This isn't a ceremonial swap. The same meeting had the Houston-Austin expansion file on the table, and Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman said on 32 Thoughts that some owners aren't sold on a 33rd team. No vote was expected Tuesday, and the league's six-month evaluation with the Friedkin family is still running.

So the first big job for the new chairman is herding a room that isn't fully behind the commissioner's next expansion play. Leonsis built his fortune on the internet and his hockey reputation on growing a market. If Bettman wanted a chairman who'd push for Texas and the next media deal, he got one.

For the Panthers, an owner from a non-traditional market in the chair is not a bad thing. Florida spent years as the punchline of the "hockey doesn't work down south" argument. The guy now running the owners' table has spent 27 years arguing the other side in D.C.

What's next

Watch the expansion temperature over the next few months, because that's where a chairman shows what he's about. The Texas evaluation window is still open and the room still has doubters. Leonsis inherits a league in growth mode and a board that's about to argue over how much bigger it should get.