Daly told the publication<\/a> that he\u2019s expecting the league to get an update from a group working with Houston billionaire Dan Friedkin within the next few weeks. Friedkin’s group has already agreed to pay the $2 billion expansion fee to bring a team to Houston or Austin, dependent on the ability to build an arena in one of those cities and get final approval from the NHL\u2019s Board of Governors for the league to add a 33rd team.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re moving forward in Texas,\u201d Daly said. \u201cI expect ultimately we\u2019ll be in a position to bring something to the board to get their view on it. So, that\u2019s proceeding at a pace. We\u2019ll probably get together with the group again in September and kind of see where they are in the process and what they want us to do to help, to the extent they need anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we finalize that and the board approves it, then (at the) end of this calendar year we\u2019ll have an announcement that we\u2019re expanding to either Houston or Austin,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
Houston is the most likely location but Austin continues to be explored as an option.<\/p>\n
The Texas team could debut within three years and Daly said the NHL is engaged in talks with ownership groups looking to land the league’s 34th team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re projecting the ability to start play in 2029-30,\u201d Daly said. \u201cSo, we will have one down and potentially one to go. We have ongoing discussions both with people in the Phoenix marketplace, but also Atlanta, and then we\u2019ll see what comes of those discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full NHL coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUNICH (AP) \u2014 The NHL is hoping to award an expansion franchise to Texas as soon as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,144431,124157,56,144430,23681,202,196,90783,42094,942,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-414283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-austin","tag-bill-daly","tag-dan-friedkin","tag-houston","tag-nhl-texas-houston-austin","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32002-ap-online-hockey-news","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414283","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=414283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}