The NHL has held committed expansion talks with billionaire Dan Friedkin, with the “key point yet to be determined (or revealed to the public)” being whether the team will be in Houston or Austin, according to Kevin Dupont of the BOSTON GLOBE. Signaling from the league “points emphatically” to one of the two Texas cities as a site for expansion. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, in his recent appearance on the “Sick Podcast-The Eye Test,” said that the league’s aim is to “finalize talks with the Friedkin Group and have the league’s Board of Governors sign off by the end of this year.” Daly noted that the aim would be for the first game to be played in the new city by the 2029-30 season. Since the turn of the millennium, Houston has topped Bruins owner and NHL Board of Governors Chair Jeremy Jacobs’ “list of prospective expansion sites.” If Jacobs “still has a hankering for Houston,” his influence on the Lords of the Boards “could peg the needle that way.” Houston’s population of some 2.3 million is “more than double that of Austin (just below one million).” But the state capital “is on fire, attracting new industries, residential construction, and new families.” Austin is absent of MLB, NBA, or NFL franchises. Much like when the Golden Knights opened the doors in Vegas in October 2017, moving to Austin “would be a pure play for the NHL, not having to compete with any other big league franchise” (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/1).
WHICH WILL IT BE: In Texas, Jason Cohen wrote Austin’s “last-minute emergence” as a potential NHL market seems “less driven by any particular passion, on the part of Friedkin or the NHL, to bring hockey to the city than it is by a strategy to pit Austin and Houston against each other — the better to negotiate for tax breaks and infrastructure, if not actual public funding.” Houston is a “massive metropolitan area and an established, big-market sports hub,” and Houston’s hockey history “makes it the obvious choice.” Yet Cohen’s “hot take” is that the team “is going to be in Austin.” The fact that Austin “does seem like a longer shot doesn’t mean it’s a bluff.” One has to think that Friedkin and the NHL “wouldn’t have added the much smaller city to the deal if they didn’t have a pretty good idea of where and how to put a team there … and that they truly want to.” Houston’s hockey fans “deserve an NHL team more.” But “if deserve had been the only criterion, the Stars would’ve remained in Minnesota.” Austin’s “monied, white, tech-bro ethos has a similar feel to Las Vegas and Nashville.” Austin has no pro teams outside of MLS, so an NHL team “would have more relative value and clout than in Houston’s crowded market.” Houston, indeed, “might be the right choice for it.” But Austin “is the vibe choice” (TEXAS MONTHLY, 7/29).