Houston never really has been a contender for an NHL franchise.
It is April Fool’s Day, a day where it seemingly is okay to play a practical joke on someone. Here is the question. Is someone trying to pull a practical joke on the National Hockey League by wanting to land an NHL expansion team in Houston, Texas? Dan Friedkin, according to media reports, is interested in landing an expansion franchise in Houston. The NHL’s deputy commissioner Bill Daly did confirm that league officials have spoken “on a number of occasions about potential interest in a Houston expansion franchise.” Daly did not identify the party or parties that might have an interest in getting a National Hockey League franchise. Houston has never really been a serious contender to get an NHL franchise.
In the 1970s, when the World Hockey Association had a franchise in the city called the Aeros, that featured Gordie Howe, there seemed to be some talk about Houston landing an NHL franchise in some sort of merger between the two leagues. That wasn’t to be and the Aeros franchise folded in 1978, one year prior to a so-called NHL expansion that took in four WHA teams. When the National Hockey League decided to go from 21 to 28 teams following an NHL owner meeting in the late 1980s, Houston once again became a city of interest and in that 1997 round of expansion, there were groups from Houston vying for an expansion franchise. Houston failed to make the cut. The then owner of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, Leslie Alexander, attempted to buy the Edmonton Oilers franchise in 1997 but the NHL found local ownership in Edmonton and kept the franchise in the Alberta city. There are questions about Houston as a viable hockey market starting with an arena. Would the potential team play in the city’s present arena or want a new building? That is question one.
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Gordie Howe was a member of the WHA’s Houston Aeros.
