FORT WORTH, Texas — Air conditioning is the only thing preventing the National Hockey League’s “Frozen Four” from melting.
If you are upset about the final four teams in the NHL’s respective conference finals, blame Texas.
If you are inclined to celebrate that the NHL’s final four teams in the playoffs are in Texas, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, the Dallas Stars deserve a lot of the credit.
The Dallas Stars will play the Las Vegas Knights in the NHL’s Western Conference finals while, in the East, the Carolina Hurricanes play the Florida Panthers.
The Stars, as much if not more than any other franchise, grew the NHL and hockey in places to the point where Texas is now a logical, and viable, option for a second team.
The Stars could soon finally have a natural geographical rival.
This week, voters in Tempe, Ariz., rejected, by a wide margin, multiple proposals to build a new hockey arena for the Arizona Coyotes as part of a new entertainment complex in the Phoenix suburb.
The vote was a massive blow for a franchise that moved from Winnipeg to Phoenix in 1996; the Coyotes have played in three arenas since moving to Arizona, and their history in the Phoenix area has been beset with financial problems with various ownership groups.
The NHL has done everything possible to keep the Coyotes in Arizona to ensure it has a place in the Phoenix market, but the Coyotes may soon go the way of the Atlanta Thrashers.
The Thrashers were an expansion franchise that began play in 1999; they lasted in Atlanta through 2011. The team moved, against the preferences of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, to Winnipeg in 2011 where they have since enjoyed stability.
The lack of a new arena, and continued uncertainty surrounding the Coyotes, opens the door for other cities that are interested in having an NHL franchise.
Houston would be near the top of the list.
Houston has never had an NHL franchise. Houston had the Aeros of the American Hockey League; the franchise moved to Iowa in 2011.
The city features the Toyota Center, where the Houston Rockets play. The city also boasts a population of 2.3 million, fourth largest in the U.S.
Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $8.2 billion, has made it no secret he would like to have an NHL team in Houston.
If the Coyotes leave Arizona, which is still at least one year away, expect Kansas City, Portland, Atlanta (for the third time), Quebec (for the second time), Salt Lake City and Sacramento to have ownership groups push to buy them and relocate the franchise to their city.
You will notice all of these cities but one are in climates where it freezes only in ice boxes.
The Stars built hockey not just in Texas, but all over the U.S.
The success of the Stars franchise establishing hockey in a place where it never previously existed is a major contributing factor why the sport is now played all over the U.S., and there are 32 teams in the NHL.
Former Anaheim Ducks and Dallas Stars public relations director Rob Scichili worked with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1992 when he started to hear rumors that the Stars would leave Minneapolis and relocate to Dallas.
“A reporter from Toronto asked me if I thought that this could work; that if people would watch hockey in Texas,” Scichili said in a phone interview. “Now, I am from Dallas. That’s where I grew up. I told him, ‘I don’t know, man.’ I knew that no one knew anything about hockey there.
“I knew there had been some minor league teams here and there, but that was about it. As a sports fan, I had my doubts.”
As of the 1990-91 season, the NHL had 22 franchises. In the U.S., the teams in the West or South were the St. Louis Blues, and L.A. Kings.
The San Jose Sharks started in 1991. The league added the Florida Panthers and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in 1993, the same year the Stars moved from Minnesota to Texas.
“The Stars were the poster child of how you do it,” Scichili said. “(Former team president) Jim Lites came in and said, ‘We have to build rinks and we have to get the kids playing the game.’ He was exactly right.
“The Stars built rinks. And then they started to play.”
The players themselves weren’t so sure how this would go. They were too busy playing, and really not too worried about the future of the NHL.
Craig Ludwig, who is from Wisconsin, had played in the NHL for 11 seasons, and was with the Stars when the team moved to Texas. He had lived in the north all of his life.
“When we came here people didn’t know who we were,” Ludwig said. “We liked it because it was in the 70s in the winter. We didn’t know it would get in the 100s in the summer.
“It seemed to us that the sport was brand new here. They knew we played on blades, there were swinging sticks, there was fighting and a lot of contact.
“(The Stars) did a great job of teaching and introducing the sport here. It’s really nice to see how it’s grown here.”
After the Stars moved to Texas, the NHL either added, or teams moved to, Denver, Phoenix, Raleigh, Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa, Las Vegas, Seattle.
They have not all worked. The situations in Atlanta, or Phoenix, were, or are, a mess.
But the NHL is no longer a Canadian, or northeastern American, league. It could be going to Houston in the near future.
“Blame” Texas.
