Texas seems the answer when it comes to NHL’s next expansion, but where exactly remains a debate

Some 36 months from now, on a sheet of ice yet to be poured in an arena yet to be constructed, the NHL’s 33rd franchise will open for business in … Texas.

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Is that guaranteed? No. But to apply Wayne Gretzky’s deft skill of skating to where the puck is going to be, the signaling from league headquarters in New York points emphatically to Houston or Austin becoming the second of the NHL’s best little skateshops in Texas.

We pause here to offer our sympathies, and sorrowful personal regrets, yet again to Quebec City. More than 30 years since seeing Les Nordiques bolted for the Rocky Mountains, it grows increasingly obvious and painful that there will be no NHL redux to Mont Tremblant.

Rude enough that the team ran away, but so too have the NHL’s expansion economics. Quebec City has an ardent, avid hockey fan base, and a perfect rivalry with that recovering CH franchise in Montreal. No one up there has proven to have pockets or interest deep enough to resurrect the “Allez Nords!” dream.

Just days after the Hurricanes clinched their Cup win over the Golden Knights, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman revealed the league was in committed expansion talks with Texas billionaire Dan Friedkin. The working tab for the startup is around $3.5 billion, a price that includes the expansion fee (roughly $2 billion) and the projected cost of constructing a state-of-the-art puck paradise in some vacant Lone Star parking lot.

The 61-year-old is the head of the Friedkin Group, a Georgetown grad with a net worth estimated upward of $10 billion. He’s made his money in a variety of businesses, including ownership of Everton, that other English Premier League club in Liverpool, England. (Reminder: There always is a tie, however remote, to all things Fenway Park.)

If Friedkin consummates the deal, he’ll be paying upward of three times the $650 million Kraken expansion fee, and four the $500 million paid by the Golden Knights. League HQ grabs a chunk of the expansion fee for ongoing operations and general wellbeing, with the trickle down from the $2 billion translating to something around a $50-$55 million tsunami to each of the existing 32 teams.

Not to get ahead of the process here, but the only reasonable next question is what city will become the Original 33rd for $3.5 billion?

Bettman’s top lieutenant, Bill Daly, in his recent appearance on the “Sick Podcast-The Eye Test” told hosts Jimmy Murphy and Pierre McGuire that the league’s aim is to finalize talks with the Friedkin Group and have the league’s Board of Governors sign off by the end of this year. Doors to open, first game to be played in the brand new rink, noted Daly, in time for the 2029-30 season. (Big Dig contractors need not apply for the site work.)

Aside from the economics and due diligence around the NHL vetting prospective ownership, the key point yet to be determined (or revealed to the public): Houston or Austin.

Since the turn of the millennium, Houston has topped Jeremy Jacobs’s list of prospective expansion cites. The Bruins owner, now 86 and who rarely makes himself seen on Causeway Street these days, remains chairman of the NHL’s Board. If he still has a hankering for Houston, his influence on the Lords of the Boards could peg the needle that way. He has a history of going wherever the dollars lead.

Dallas, where the Stars have thrived since departing Minnesota in 1993, is well positioned vis a vis both cities as an intrastate rival. Austin is 200 miles to the south, and Houston 240 miles to the southeast. (For the record, there is no Hartford, Texas, if you’re looking to post up midway between the two franchises.)

At this hour, Houston’s population of some 2.3 million is more than double that of Austin (just below one million). But the state capital is on fire, attracting new industries, residential construction, and new families.

Unlike Houston, Austin is absent of MLB, NBA, or NFL franchises. Much like when the Knights opened the doors in Vegas in October 2017, moving to Austin would be a pure play for the NHL, not having to compete with any other big league franchise for a season ticket base, corporate sponsorships, suite sales, advertising, etc. The Knights/Vegas model is loaded with all kinds of good karma, not the least of which is the VGK having won a Cup (2023) and this year made their third trip to the Final.

Long forgotten is the initial concern that the NHL, in that last pure expansion play, was the first of North America’s four pro leagues to set up in the gambling mecca. In retrospect, such concern has been rendered risible, with the legalized sports betting industry now the rich green blood that courses through the economic veins of all North American pro sports. Bettman and his NHL bros proved to be at the vanguard with their bet in the desert.

Per a statement on its Pursuit Sports, the Friedkin Group’s sports platform, an NHL franchise in either city would be a “huge success.”

“We have wanted for some time to bring an NHL team to Texas,” continued the statement, “and we are excited that the process has now begun.”

Sure sounds here like we’re on to the June 2029 Texas expansion draft. The draft in 2021 proved not to be as kind to the Kraken as it was to the Golden Knights four years earlier. Both franchises have done extremely well at the gate, but the rules tightened ever so slightly after the VGK’s profound success, and Seattle has not come close to replicating the good times.

For a $3.5 billion investment, and particularly for the $50 million or so that 32 teams will receive, here’s hoping the next franchise up will get its hands on some real goods in the NHL’s Texas Two Step.

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July came and went with the Flyers the lone club to roll out a mega offer sheet, one which forced the Ducks to match it (at five years and $90 million) to retain restricted free agent Leo Carlsson.

As predicted, it did not lead to a green wave of big offer sheets around the league. It did send what continues to be shifts that ultimately will sting every team’s payroll, particularly those clubs with high-end talent emerging from their first (entry level) contracts.

Chicago quickly followed the Carlsson news with a five-year, $75 million deal for budding franchise cornerstone Connor Bedard — experience: three seasons, 219 games. San Jose on Wednesday ponied up a five-year, $94 million extension for ex-Boston University center Macklin Celebrini after two seasons and 152 games.

Celebrini’s deal, with an average annual value of $18.8 million, will position him as the league’s top earner when it kicks in come October 2027. Anyone remember when the NHL considered “college kids” little more than roster curiosities?

But there’s a slim chance it will hold at No. 1. Former UMass standout Cale Makar, the Avalanche superstar defenseman, is less than a year from reaching unrestricted free agency. He will be 28 this October, has his name etched on the Cup (2022), and his 507 points rank him No. 1 in blue-liner production since the start of his 2019-20 rookie season. (Quinn Hughes is No. 2 with 482.)

Makar, right now, would be the prime candidate to secure the NHL’s first max deal, as in 20 percent of the league-established salary cap figure.

The cap is expected to pop from $104 million this season to $113.5 million for 2027-28. (We’re a long way from the $39 million of 2005-06.) A max deal, if Makar were to sign next summer, would bump him from his current $9 million AAV to $22.7 million. Again, man, those college kids.

Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, about to enter a two-year extension with a $12.5 million AAV, now looks vastly underpaid — a consequence of that Flyer offer sheet to Carlsson. Nikita Kucherov, if he were younger, would be pressing Makar from that “max” honor next summer. His deal ($9.5 million AAV) expires next spring, and though he remains among the hottest 4-5 scoring hands in the game, he’ll turn 34 prior to his UFA date.

What we will see, in very short order, is teams forced to tie up their premier talent near the max figure. If three players earn, say, an average of 15 percent each, that leaves GMs to divvy up 55 percent across the rest of the roster. Using that $113.5 million figure, that’s $62.4 million to tie up, say, 18 more players.

Here’s where it gets difficult: Those 18 players would average $3.5 million. That’s hard on the eyes, especially for steady, veteran performers, when top-end guys are making $15 million-plus. Truth is, a group of 6-8 players will chew up a vast majority of the $62.4 million, with upward of half the roster scratching around the bottom of the cage for around $1 million per season — league minimum.

The order of the day, compliments of the Flyers, will not be more offer sheets. It will be a bifurcated, K-shaped payroll, with perhaps 100-125 players within a stick’s length of a 20 percent max payout and maybe 300 asking for, and getting, only workman’s wages.

The NHL/NHLPA collective bargaining agreement expires Sept. 15, 2030. If there’s a lockout brewing four years from now, it will be over the owners’ plea to lower the max cap figure from 20 percent. They’ll harken back to when McDavid, the game’s No. 1 superstar, made a tick over 12 percent. Yes, the good old days, until the Flyers tipped over the cash register.

Peter Laviolette, proud son of Franklin and Westfield State college (Go Owls!), will be reunited with Artemi Panarin, his former charge with the Blueshirts, when he takes over the Kings’ bench next month.

“Lavvy,” the winningest US coach in NHL history with 846, will pass Ken Hitchcock with four more wins and be No. 6 on the all-time list behind Scotty Bowman (1,244), Joel Quenneville (1,012), Paul Maurice (956), Lindy Ruff (950), and Barry Trotz (914).

Laviolette, after his one-year respite following his time on Broadway, will be coaching his seventh NHL club.

Quiz: Who are three coaches to be named bench boss of a record eight NHL teams? (Two coached the Bruins, and none of the three is among the aforementioned five topping Laviolette on the win list.) Answer below.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge, knitting together Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, finally opened on Monday, following months of political rigamarole sparked by the White House. Murray Howe, one of Gordie and Colleen’s three sons, gave a heartfelt tribute to both parents during the bridge’s opening ceremony, noting how his parents loved life and people. “They dedicated their lives to building bridges,” he said. Gordie, age 88 when he died in 2016, learned in 2015 that the bridge would be built as a tribute to him and his 25 years with the Red Wings. Murray’s recollection of what his dad had to say: “Well, that sounds pretty good to me.” … The Wings, by the way, remain without a general manager, weeks after Steve Yzerman was abruptly booted to a “senior adviser” role. Yzerman, after a solid run in Tampa’s front office, moved into the DRW GM job in 2019 and the Wings failed to make the playoffs during his seven seasons in charge. They’ve now logged 10 consecutive playoff DNQs. Mercy. Fully understand Viktor Arvidsson liking coach Todd McLellan (perhaps Yzerman’s best hire), but still hard to fathom what attracted the ex-Bruins winger to signing in Detroit instead of working out a similar deal (2 years/$5M AAV) in Boston … Mostly junkyard dogs left in the free-agent pickings, and right now it appears Patrik Laine might have to settle for a tryout invite to someone’s training camp. Ouch. Surgery to repair a core muscle tear limited the 6-foot–4-inch winger to only five games with the Canadiens last season. The No. 2 pick in the 2016 draft by Winnipeg, Laine is still young (28) and averaged 35 goals in his first four NHL seasons (2016-20). He made $8.7 million AAV on his last deal. No one’s coming close to handing him that, but might he be enticed with a $2 million one-year “show me” deal just to get back in the game? … Quiz answer: Mike Keenan, Roger Neilson, and Rick Bowness were bench boss of eight NHL teams, the latter of whom will be back with Columbus this season. Keenan and Bowness each had brief tours behind the Bruins bench … Daly, in the “Eye Test” podcast, noted the NHL’s eagerness to gain more exposure overseas, and referred to an emphasis on weekday matinees in North America made available for prime-time viewing across Europe. McGuire said he envisioned the NHL one day establishing a six-team European division … Former Boston College center James Hagens, the top Bruins prospect who is likely to start the season here as a third-line winger, was among the 21 invitees to attend last week’s NHL Rookie Showcase in Chicago. In prior years, it was staged as a September event in Washington, D.C., but the NHLPA requested it be shifted earlier, allowing kids more time to settle into a training/rest groove ahead of training camp. Hagens, by the way, is expected to suit up for the annual Prospects Challenge next month (Sept. 13-14) in Buffalo. Only the Sabres and Bruins are attending this year, in part because camps for rookies and vets are squeezed slightly tighter by the NHL’s move from 82 to 84 regular-season games … Exchange rate on the Canada dollar carried a 40 percent discount as of Friday. A Canadian-based club, faced with paying the equivalent of Celebrini’s $18.9 million salary, would have to pony up $26.41 million CAD. That, mes amis, is a load of loonies.

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