It seems like the National Hockey League will add new teams sooner rather than later.
Toward the end of June, there was plenty of talk about where the NHL would expand next. While a 32-team league works nicely with four divisions of eight, the price tag for a new expansion team could be around $2 billion.
Another league, Major League Baseball, is expected to expand in the near future, with cities like Portland, Nashville, Montréal, Charlotte, Vancouver, and Orlando being named as potential candidate cities.
That got me thinking: If the NHL were to expand to 34 teams and then eventually 36 teams to keep the divisions even, what cities could be in the mix? Here are some places we might hear about when it comes to NHL expansion over the next decade.
Québec City
It seems like Québec City is a city often brought up in expansion rumours, and for good reason. The city housed the Québec Nordiques from the World Hockey Association merger until their departure in 1995. While the Nordiques never won a Stanley Cup, the season after moving to Denver, the Colorado Avalanche won the Cup, made up of players who played for the Nordiques just a season before.
One hurdle for new expansion teams is building an NHL arena, and Québec City already has that covered. Centre Vidéotron was completed in 2015 and hosts the Québec Ramparts with a hockey capacity of up to 18,259.
Adding an NHL team in Québec City has another benefit as well, as the city isn’t too far from Montréal, creating a natural geographical rival. A return to Québec City would also give the NHL four Western Canadian teams and four Eastern Canadian teams.
One thing holding a team returning to Québec City back is that the Canadian Dollar continues to remain weak against the American Dollar. Another potential hurdle is the population of Québec City, as it has a population below 600,000 and a metropolitan population of about 840,000. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just a
slightly larger metro population than Winnipeg, the smallest metro population of any city in the league.
Fans of the Atlanta Thrashers protest the team’s move to Winnipeg.
Atlanta
Third time is a charm, right? There have been two NHL teams based in Atlanta – the Atlanta Flames and the Atlanta Thrashers. Both teams eventually moved to a Canadian market, the Flames to Calgary and the Thrashers to Winnipeg to become the Winnipeg Jets 2.0.
In June, a
Sportsnet article reported that a potential return to Atlanta has overcome one obstacle: getting funding for an arena. Forsyth County, a suburb of Atlanta, would host the stadium, which is expected to cost over $3 billion.
With committed owners, hockey in Atlanta could probably work, especially if they ice a competitive team from the get-go (think the Vegas Golden Knights). Atlanta also has the eighth-best metropolitan population in the United States, with only one city with a larger metropolitan population not icing an NHL team.
That said, is the city of Atlanta going to have a third attempt at hosting an NHL team? It doesn’t seem fair.
Houston
The only metropolitan area with more residents than Atlanta without an NHL team is the Houston area.
Unlike Québec City or Atlanta, the Texas city has never iced an NHL team, but the city hosted a WHA team and a minor league team. Starting with the minor league team, the Houston Aeros (and their beautiful logo) played in the city from 1994 until 2013, in both the International Hockey League and American Hockey League.
Over the course of the Aeros’ history in the AHL, they never averaged less than 5,000 fans a season. Their final two seasons, 2011-12 and 2012-13, saw them average 7,324 and 6,793 fans, respectively.
The city’s WHA team, also named the Aeros (with a far less cool logo), folded a season before the WHA-NHL merger of 1979, partially because they weren’t going to be integrated into the NHL.
In an
ESPN article in March, Emily Kaplan reported that Dan Friedkin, an American billionaire, was pushing hard for an expansion team in Houston and even had talks with the league. And you can see why, because on top of a large metropolitan population, Houston forms a natural rivalry with the Dallas Stars.
Phoenix
Don’t be shocked if the National Hockey League returns to Phoenix, Arizona, at some point in the future. Just look at Atlanta, well on its way to a third NHL franchise after two failures.
When Alex Meruelo, the former owner of the Arizona Coyotes, sold the team to Ryan Smith (owner of the Utah Mammoth, not to be confused with former Oiler Ryan Smyth), there was a clause that would allow him to reactivate the Coyotes if an arena was built in five years.
That hasn’t happened, and Meruelo stepped down, but interest in bringing hockey back to the desert remains. In January,
The Sedona Conference’s Craig Morgan reported that a newly elected politician had created a committee to bring the sport back, and even had a meeting with Gary Bettman.
All but three cities in the top 10 metropolitan populations of the United States have a team. Houston and Atlanta were already covered, but the Phoenix metropolitan area is the 10th largest in the country. It’s all about finding an arena.
Banner raising ceremony for the OHL Hamilton Bulldogs.
The Greater Toronto Area
The first four cities seem like the next logical expansions, but there are several other candidates. Another city that could host a team is the Golden Horseshoe, an area around Toronto.
It’s not unfathomable that the Toronto area could get another team, as it’s one of the most populous cities in North America. Markham, Ontario, seemed like a possible location, and there were even talks of an NHL arena around the start of the 2010s, but that fell through.
Hamilton is another city in the Golden Horseshoe that has been linked to an NHL team. Firstly, it has housed an NHL team before (Hamilton Tigers) in the 1920s. Former Blackberry CEO Jim Balsillie was even in talks with relocating a handful of struggling NHL teams to Hamilton, but that fell through.
Of course, Hamilton lies between Toronto and Buffalo, which would cause some territorial disputes that make expansion (or relocation) a little more complicated. The city has a 19,000-seat arena set to reopen in November of this year.
Kitchener-Waterloo is another city that has come up as a city that could potentially host a new expansion team. There are a bunch of cities within a 100-kilometre cluster, including Cambridge, Guelph, London, Brantford, Hamilton, Mississauga, and Brampton. The key here is that Kitchener-Waterloo is far enough away from Toronto and Buffalo that it won’t cause issues.
Cincinnati
Around the 2024 All-Star break, league commissioner Gary Bettman noted that a handful of cities wanted an expansion team. Houston and Phoenix are the most notable ones, but he also named Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Omaha.
Starting with Cincinnati, they’ve had a few professional teams before: the WHA’s Cincinnati Stingers, the AHL’s Cincinnati Mighty Ducks, and the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones, the current professional hockey team of the city.
As for population, Cincinnati has a metro population of just over 2.25 million, a sizable population. That said, a potential team would need a new arena, and the city is relatively close to the already existing Columbus Blue Jackets.
Kansas City
Kansas City has already had an NHL team, with the Kansas City Scouts representing the city from 1974 until 1976. Eventually, they moved to Colorado for six seasons before relocating to Newark as the New Jersey Devils, where they remain to this day.
They have an arena capable of hosting NHL games, and even have an ECHL team (Kansas City Mavericks), but the interest in bringing a team to the city is essentially nonexistent. The reason the team left in the first place was due to poor attendance.
Like Cincinnati, the Kansas City metropolitan area has a respectable population of nearly 2.2 million people, but the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals dominate the region.
Omaha
For some reason, Omaha is a city that has come up in expansion talks. There’s no NHL arena, but a local developer wants to build one in the suburb of Gretna. That local developer, Rod Yates, has met with the league about an expansion team, although it doesn’t seem likely.
If the city were to somehow get an NHL team, it’d be the first Big Four American sports league to reach that market, a market with a metropolitan population of a little over a million. It’d instantly become one of the smallest markets in the league, without the backing of loyal Canadian fans like Québec City would have.
Fans watching an ECHL Indy Fuel game in Fishers, Indiana.
Indianapolis
Three markets popped up when the Collective Bargaining Agreement was being negotiated earlier this year: Indianapolis, New Orleans, and Austin.
Read about that here.
Starting with Indianapolis, Indiana, they’ve never had an NHL team, but they had a WHA team named the Indianapolis Racers. If that team sounds familiar, it was Wayne Gretzky’s first professional hockey team.
The city has also housed three International Hockey League teams, as well as one American Hockey League team. Moreover, the ECHL’s Indy Fuel plays in the suburb of Indianapolis.
Although Indianapolis is in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest, it has a sizable metropolitan population of over 2 million residents. Moreover, the Indiana Pacers and the Indiana Colts have a loyal fanbase, so a hockey team may be able to survive.
New Orleans
It was reported in February of this year by
Kevin Weeks that representatives from the city of New Orleans had a meeting with the NHL to bring an expansion team to the city. There’s an arena capable of hosting NHL games, the Smoothie King Center, which was opened nearly 30 years ago.
New Orleans already has two Big Four North American teams, the New Orleans Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans. Like Omaha, its metropolitan population barely reaches 1 million people. The city hasn’t fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago.
As for their hockey history, they had an ECHL in the late 90s and early naughties named the New Orleans Brass, but they eventually folded. There hasn’t been a hockey team in the city since. The city would be a fun place for a Nation Vacation, though.
Austin
If Houston doesn’t work out as the new addition to the Battle of Texas, Austin could. It’s a rapidly growing metropolitan area and an untapped market among the other Big Four North American sports leagues. The city itself has nearly 1 million people, with a metropolitan population of over 2.5 million people.
It’s growing fast, too. In 1940, the city itself (not the metropolitan population) had just 87,930 people in it. It’s boomed significantly since then, going from just under 800,000 people in the 2010 census to nearly a million in the 2024 census.
What’s more is that a suburb of Austin already hosts a team, the Texas Stars. The Stars are affiliated with, you guessed it, the Dallas Stars. Last season, the Baby Stars averaged over 6,000 people at home games in an arena that has a capacity of just under 6,800.
The NHL was first to Vegas, and that’s worked out well for the league. Could they do the same with Austin? It also helps that a team in Austin would be a geographical rival for the Stars.
Portland
Portland isn’t a city typically linked to an NHL expansion team, but it’d be a fun geographical rival for the Seattle Kraken. They already have a National Basketball Association team, and there are talks of a Major League Baseball team, so why not add an NHL team?
The city has a 30-year-old arena named the Moda Center, which hosts the Portland Trail Blazers. It has a capacity of 18,280 for hockey, more than large enough to be considered an NHL arena.
Portland also has a sizable population, with about 650,000 people in the city proper and 2.5 million in the metropolitan area. The downside of a Portland NHL team is that it would essentially destroy the Western Hockey League’s Portland Winterhawks.
Milwaukee
Back in 1994, Jane and Lloyd Pettit attempted to bring a team to Milwaukee, but due to high entrance fees, they backed out, and there has been no such attempt since. Which is rather unfortunate, as they are incredibly close to Chicago, which would set up a nice rivalry between the Original Six team and the hypothetical Milwaukee team.
Like Austin, Milwaukee has an active AHL team, the Admirals. Last season, they had an average attendance of 6,182, the third-highest average attendance in franchise history (up from 6,139 in 2023-24).
As for population, the city has a population of just over 560,000 in the most recent census. The metropolitan population sits at about 1.5 million, which would be one of the lowest for an American NHL team.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. Follow her on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.
