The NHL has had a presence in Texas for 33 years.<\/p>\n
The league is apparently now looking at whether it\u2019s time to bring a second team to the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n
Per multiple reports Tuesday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman informed the league\u2019s board of governors at its meeting that the NHL will begin a process to vet Houston and Austin for an expansion franchise.<\/p>\n
According to Sportsnet<\/a>, it\u2019s believed the same ownership group is going to lead the process and determine which of the two cities is the better fit.<\/p>\n Houston, which hasn\u2019t had a pro hockey team since the American Hockey League\u2019s Aeros moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in 2013, has long been the subject of NHL speculation, either via franchise relocation or expansion,\u00a0as the largest market in the United States or Canada without a team.<\/p>\n Speaking with a group of sports editors in late April, Bettman said<\/a> the league continually has conversations with prospective ownership groups. An ESPN report in March 2025<\/a> said Houston\u00a0billionaire Dan Friedkin, whose holdings including Gulf States Toyota and The Friedkin Group, had \u201cemerged as a strong ownership option\u201d for an NHL expansion team. Friedkin has experience in pro sports ownership in European soccer\u2019s Serie A (AS Roma) and English Premier League (Everton).<\/p>\n Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has also expressed interest in bringing an\u00a0NHL team to Toyota Center\u00a0at various\u00a0points since buying the NBA franchise in October 2017. In April 2024,\u00a0Fertitta had said he was partnering with Ira Mitzner<\/a>, the CEO of the Houston-based\u00a0RIDA Development Corporation, to bring an NHL team to Houston. That September, Fertitta affirmed his interest<\/a>, saying \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that we somehow can get the team by being one of the best cities in America and also paying the right price for an NHL team.\u201d<\/p>\n Bettman said this year that the franchise fee for an expansion team will start at $2 billion. In April 2024, the hockey assets for the Arizona Coyotes were sold for $1.2 billion to Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith, with the franchise moving to Salt Lake City and becoming the Utah Mammoth. The two most recent traditional expansion franchises went for $650 million (Seattle in 2021) and $500 million (Las Vegas in 2017).\u00a0<\/p>\n Austin has had a minor league\u00a0hockey presence for all but one year since the late 1990s. The Texas Stars, the\u00a0AHL affiliate of the Dallas Stars, have played in the northern suburb of Cedar Park since 2009. Before that, the Austin Ice Bats of the Western Professional Hockey League<\/a> and Central Hockey League played in the city from 1996 to 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHL has had a presence in Texas for 33 years. The league is apparently now looking at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-347454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}