The NHL is quickly moving towards adding a 33rd team.<\/p>\n
According to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, the league could be ready to announce its 33rd franchise before the end of the year and have it playing games by the 2029-30 campaign.<\/p>\n
Houston and Austin are the frontrunners competing to become the NHL\u2019s newest market, and Daly provided an update on the process while speaking with The Athletic\u2019s Chris Johnston<\/a> during the NHL\u2019s European Media Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re moving forward in Texas,\u201d Daly told Johnston<\/a>.<\/p>\n Houston billionaire Dan Friedkin is the primary driver of the move, and talks between him and the NHL are expected to resume in September. Friedkin\u2019s Pursuit Sports has already agreed to pay a reported $2 billion expansion fee for a franchise, but the group still needs to decide which Texan city the team will play in and receive final approval from the NHL\u2019s Board of Governors.<\/p>\n Once those pieces are in place, Daly believes the rest of the process will move quickly, with expansion becoming official during the 2026-27 regular season.<\/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 Daly said. \u201cThey\u2019re projecting the ability to start play in 2029-30.\u201d<\/p>\n Houston, the fourth-largest metropolitan market in the United States, has long been viewed as the frontrunner for the NHL\u2019s return to Texas and was the initial target when the league began working with Friedkin\u2019s group. The city also offers a massive corporate base, but Austin\u2019s potential as a booming, more unique location is still not being entirely dismissed.<\/p>\n Austin holds just one other professional sports team, Austin FC of the MLS, while Houston is headlined by the NFL\u2019s Texans, MLB\u2019s Astros, NBA\u2019s Rockets, MLS\u2019s Dynamo FC, and the NWSL\u2019s Dash. Houston will also already be getting a hockey team for the 2026-27 season, with the NAHL announcing the move and renaming<\/a>\u00a0of the North Iowa Bulls to the Houston Bulls in March.<\/p>\n Daly added that discussions for a 34th team are also ongoing, with Phoenix and Atlanta leading the way<\/a>, but those talks are much further away than those in Texas. While some have raised concerns that the league may be diluting its talent pool with too many teams, Daly immediately brushed off the idea.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dilution of talent as an argument against expansion, I don\u2019t think, holds any water today,\u201d Daly said.<\/p>\n NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has previously stated that past failures will not deter future expansion<\/a>\u00a0to Atlanta, and the city has been making moves to prepare itself for a franchise in the past year, including a\u00a0redevelopment proposal in Alpharetta<\/a>\u00a0and an\u00a0approved plan in Forsyth County<\/a>\u00a0for potential NHL-ready arenas \u2014 one of the biggest prerequisites for the league.<\/p>\n When the NHL inevitably adds a 33rd and likely 34th team, it will be the first major sporting league in North America to go past 32 franchises. The NFL first hit the 32-team mark in 2000, when the Houston Texans were officially founded and began playing games in 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHL is quickly moving towards adding a 33rd team. According to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-414398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414398","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=414398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}