Houston is a football town but the Astros and Rockets have their own hard core supporters and if they are winning everyone is on board. I think with all the fortune 500 companies and northern transplants the NHL would be fine here but either way I don't care because the NHL is not a major sport in this country
Interesting replies. Now I'm wondering if there really is this much trouble with the Coyotes and the Thrashers if the NHL would be better off retracting the two troubled franchises.
Hockey would be great in Houston, but i just don't know if there is the support...It's a shame that the Stars will be the only NHL team in Texas...
I do think they would be better off contracting. I think Soccer has a better chance in the US than Hockey does in the South.
They need to get rid of two teams. make it 28 teams. or even better, six teams, and make it 24 league team.
Completely agree Any one or all of these teams (bottom feeders in attendance) could be eliminated and the league wouldn't miss much or anything 27 Tampa Bay 28 Phoenix 29 NY Islanders 30 Florida 31 Atlanta I mean, say there's one or two cities, like HOuston or Hamilton Ontario, ready to take on one of these sad-sacks by delivering them a pile of money in the hopes that hockey will one day be popular enough again to recoup the investment. That still leaves 3-4 moribund franchises in mediocre sports towns with no real love for hockey.
I wonder why there isn't a team up in Seattle or portland. I would think they have more interest in hockey than we do.
They usually don't get enough snow/cold (except for this year), just rain so there's not a big tradition of frozen pond hockey etc.
I think Hockey can work here if you have good marketing. Another problem lies in an arena where they can play in if it's not Les. There were two players in moving an NHL team last time, Les and Chuck Watson. Since Les has Yoda center locked up there needs to be another place in place for Chuck. Not sure but with the salary cap in place, I thought ticket prices also have come down a bit so I'm not sure what kind of attendance is needed but I would guess about 15k.
I'm not sure Watson is still interested. He's 10 years older now than he was when he came close to getting the expansion franchise. If he is, that place you're talking about will have to be out of city limits...somewhere in SugarLand or Katy, presumably.
Well, seeing as how I started this to have a hypothetical discussion about an NHL franchise coming to Houston, let me go ahead and ask this question next: Let's say that the Edmonton Oilers decided to up and move to Houston. Would Bud Adams have any sort of legal protection against a new "Houston Oilers" team, even if it is in a different sport?
no. he would have no protection for that, as i understand it. edmonton is my rooting interest because they kept meeting dallas in the first round of the playoffs over and over again. i'd love to see the oilers here...but honestly, i think it would be sad for edmonton to lose their hockey team.
