Houston has been on the NHL’s radar for more than 45 years.
About four decades ago, the National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle said that there was really no reason to limit the number of franchises in a league other than that was what the owners wanted. The National Hockey League has 32 franchises but it seems inevitable that the NHL will be adding teams in the future, probably sooner than later, even though the NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league is not in an expansion mode but quickly added that any potential expansion franchise owner would have to pay $2 billion to buy a franchise. There are at least three individuals in areas that don’t have NHL franchises in Alpharetta, Georgia outside of the Atlanta city limits, Salt Lake City and Houston who have expressed interest in getting into the league. Cincinnati and Omaha, Nebraska interests have contacted the league as well.
Houston has been a city of interest for the NHL for decades. In 1978, the owner of the World Hockey Association’s Houston Aeros Ken Schnitzer applied to join the NHL but was turned down. In the late 1990s round of NHL expansion, two Houston groups wanted to buy an expansion franchise but were effectively blocked by the owner of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets Leslie Alexander who held the exclusive use lease of the arena with the local municipality. Alexander tried to buy the Edmonton Oilers franchise in 1997 and move the team to Houston but the NHL found a local group to purchase the business and the NHL kept a presence in Edmonton. Present day Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta is talking to NHL officials about the possibility of getting a franchise. “We are talking to the NHL, but it’s got to be good for both of us,” Fertitta told Bloomberg. Expansion fees means hundreds of millions of dollars for owners’ pockets.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
