For years, Houston has felt like the one city that was most likely to get an NHL team next.
Houston is one of the biggest cities in the United States and with population comes fans with money to spend and ratings to provide for broadcasts. If the Coyotes were to move out of the Phoenix area, an already large market, moving to an even larger city would be deeply appealing to the league.
Like Salt Lake, Houston has an NBA owner who is eager to add an NHL team to their portfolio in Tilman Fertitta. In February, Fertitta told Bloomberg that he sees an NHL team as a major boost to downtown Houston and that with the success of the Astros in Major League Baseball, the Texans in the NFL, and the city's MLS team, Houston is absolutely a sports city, and the NHL would only add to it.
What doesn't make Houston an absolute slam dunk (sorry) is that Fertitta wants any deal to bring a team there to work for both sides. Read: Fertitta doesn't exactly want to break the bank to make it happen. While expansion fees are costly, the price tag to buy the Coyotes and relocate them might not be quite as tough.
That's all negotiating, however. The reality here is Houston would make for a massive media market to add to the league and giving the Dallas Stars a regional rival to help build them up would be huge. And, if you like conspiracy theories, you could argue that when the NHL moved the Coyotes to the Central Division when Vegas entered the league, they were greasing the skids for them to move to Houston in the first place.
