Expect the NHL to announce its 33rd team before the end of the calendar year.
There is a major qualifying factor to that statement: approval from the league’s board of governors.
“We’re moving forward in Texas,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said at the NHL’s European Media Tour last week, per The Athletic. “I expect, ultimately, we’ll be in a position to bring something to the board to get their view on it.
“... If we finalize that and the board approves it, then (at the) end of this calendar year we’ll have an announcement that we’re expanding to either Houston or Austin.”
The new franchise would be the second in Texas, joining the Dallas Stars, who relocated from Minnesota in 1993. Daly noted that the new team would begin playing in the 2029-30 season.
Houston is the biggest American city without an NHL team, according the U.S. Census Bureau, and the NHL is the only major North American men’s sports league without a team there.
Austin, on the other hand, does not have a “Big Four” team — the NHL would be the first.
The NHL saw major success when it became the first major league with a team in Las Vegas. Since then, the NFL and MLB have added teams there, and the NBA is exploring doing the same.
“I view Austin to be similar to our decision to move into Las Vegas at a time where the other leagues weren’t considering it in part because of the size of the market and midsize nature of it,” Daly said. “... We probably got lucky along the way, but as it’s turned out, the city is in love with that franchise.”
The proposed owner, regardless of which Texas city the league chooses, is Dan Friedkin, CEO of The Friedkin Group. Among other things, the company’s business ventures include:
- Southwest Airlines
- Gulf States Toyota
- Several golf courses
- 39 luxury hotels
- Several film production companies
- Three European pro soccer teams: Everton FC of the Premier League, A.S. Roma of Serie A and A.S. Cannes in the third tier of French soccer
Friedkin will pay $3.5 billion to get a team, which includes a $2 billion expansion fee and $1.5 billion to build an arena, which would be necessary in either city.
Expansion fees continue to increase drastically year after year. Ryan Smith paid $1.2 billion for the Utah Mammoth in 2024; One Roof Sports & Entertainment bought the Seattle Kraken for $650 million in 2021 and Bill Foley gave $500 million for the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017.
Has the NHL ever been in Austin or Houston before?
Neither Austin nor Houston has ever had an NHL team, but both have had high-level professional hockey.
Cedar Park, a suburb of Austin, is currently home to the Texas Stars, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Dallas Stars. That’s the second-highest level of hockey in North America, and some argue that it’s also No. 2 worldwide.
Houston was home to the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association from 1972 to 1978. The WHA rivaled the NHL at the time, sometimes luring its players with large sums of money.
The Aeros won the Avco World Trophy two of the seven times it was awarded, led both years by Gordie Howe, who was the most prolific NHL player of all time until Wayne Gretzky arrived. That on-ice success, however, did not equate to financial independence, leading the team to fold.
Hockey has since been proven to work in the “Sun Belt,” with nine NHL teams between California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina. The new team, if approved, would be the 10th, and it’s likely that Arizona and Georgia get teams relatively soon, too.
Another team by the “Aeros” name played in Houston from 1994-2013, switching in 2001 from the International Hockey League to the AHL. The team moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in 2013 as the result of an arena dispute with the NBA’s Houston Rockets, with whom they shared the building.
