NHL still has work to do before approving expanding to a 33rd team in Houston or Austin, Texas

LAS VEGAS (AP) — While the NHL may soon expand to Houston or Austin, Texas, the road to adding a 33rd team still has some obstacles to clear.

With the league in the middle of a process of exploring possible expansion with billionaire Dan Friedkin and his family , Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said Wednesday the Board of Governors still needs to be fully sold on the idea.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the board," Daly said at the annual North American preseason player media tour. "I don’t want to treat it like a done deal because it’s not. It’s not a done deal on the Friedkin side, and it’s not a done deal on our side. And that’s why it’s kind of a nonbinding term sheet. We’re both going to work hard to achieve that goal. But, at the end of the day, it might not happen.”

The next board meeting is set for Sept. 22 in New York. The last meeting there in June was when Commissioner Gary Bettman unveiled the six-month agreement with the Friedkin family, which would require a total investment of $3.5 billion between the expansion fee and cost to build a new arena.

Daly said at that meeting and in recent weeks, some teams expressed concern about going beyond the current number of 32.

“We don’t have clear direction yet from our board that everybody wants to expand,” Daly said. "We’re certainly going to have that conversation with them at our upcoming meeting, kind of get direction from them as to kind of where they are on the subject. It’s been my impression over the last two years that if we found the right place and the right owners and it would add to the league, that there would be support — board support — for expansion. But we’ll make sure of that before we expand, for sure.”

One of the determinations that needs to be made is Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city, or Austin, the state capital that would fit the mold of other places where hockey has thrived as the first or only of the four major North American professional sports leagues there.

“There’s some benefit to coming first: It’s an up-and-coming, growing city, young, affluent — it has a lot going for it,” Daly said. “But Houston is enormous, and it is a major market that we’re not in. We don’t have the same footprint across the United States that the other major professional leagues do. So, to add a city of Houston’s size and demographics to our league, there would be certainly benefits associated with that.”

Either would need a new, state-of-the-art arena, Daly said, though having one ready for the 2029-30 season may be an aggressive timeline. A spokesperson for the Friedkin family's Pursuit Sports, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the situation.

The NHL Players' Association is monitoring the process, and Executive Director Marty Walsh has had some general conversations with Bettman about expansion over the past couple of years.

“We have really no say in what happens, so obviously we’re going to watch and see what happens,” Walsh said. “And if it happens, we’ll represent the players and talk about a bunch of different things, and if it doesn’t happen, we have a strong league right now.”

See AP’s full NHL coverage here