It’s been 20 years of this. Does Bettman just hate the idea of hockey in Houston? Does he have some financial models and demographic data that doesn’t show support for hockey?
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The Rays stadium is a dump in St. Pete which is on the far west side of Tampa Bay which is a long distance from the major population center of Tampa. People are reluctant to drive in heavy traffic for about 2 hours both ways along I-275 and I-4 for a weeknight baseball game. The Lightning’s arena is nice and is located in central downtown Tampa, much closer for most of the population center.
The Rays are trying to get a new stadium in St. Pete which is just asinine. Hurricane Milton ripped the roofing skin off the dome in St. Pete which means the Rays will be playing in the Yankees spring training stadium in Tampa this season. They’ll probably draw better here, lol.
I agree with your pretense that hockey in the south can succeed if the product is good and is attractive to the fans.
Good analogy would be like the Astros playing on Galveston Island.
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I have to drive 43 minutes to get to a sports stadium in Houston. I don’t complain about the concrete, the video board, or the parking. The only thing I complain about is Coach Hughey and the missing Engineering pavillion.
The biggest issue, as I understand it, is that since the Toyota Center lease gives the Rockets’ owner first choice of event dates, an NHL team would have to either share an ownership group or play in their own arena. Neither Les Alexander nor Tilman Fertitta have been super interested in bringing an NHL team here, so if someone else was interested in bringing NHL hockey here they’d need to build an arena, too. That would probably have to happen without public funding since we’re not building and maintaining two Toyota Centers on the county budget. It would be an extraordinarily heavy lift without the buy-in of Rockets ownership, which hasn’t seriously tried since Les Alexander failed to buy the Oilers.
I have seen stories that the Rockets lease has a no compete clause at Toyota Center so Tillman needs to own the team unless a new building is built and there might be a milage clause I have heard 20 or 25 miles is the wording in the lease.
Tillman did say recently that they got a new ice machine at Toyota Center.
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If Tilman wants it he’ll find a way to get it. My question is, with his new responsibilities in Italy would he be inclined to spend time on a major project like that? Maybe. He has trusted allies that do his operational and financial stuff. I don’t know how much time the actual ambassador is required to reside in-country either. It probably wouldn’t make much difference, in retrospect…unless the NHL has a clause requiring owners to reside in the country of the franchise.
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same as an astro
An Astro is an Astronaut. Is Apollo just referring to the space shuttle? (Dumb question, I know)
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Referring to the Apollo program of course: Houston we have a problem!
Now THAT is KEWL!!!
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Terry Ruskowski - we called him Stitch in the day. One of the best hockey fighters of all time.
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WHA and ABA memorabilia is worth something.
John Gray gave me a broken stick that I still have also.
Decision….buy season tickets if we get a NHL franchise or save that money for my son’s inheritance, meager as it is?
No brainer….Go Apollos! Or whatever the name is. 
Cam Connor was the fighter. I remember a game Dineen put him in, even though his arm was in a cast, just to provoke a fight and get one of their guys in the penalty box.
Remember the chants of “SKI! SKI! SKI!” every time Ruskowski got the puck?
Then there were the cattle calls during pre-game warmups when they were skating counterclockwise and switched to clockwise.
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He was a fighter, but he had nothing on Stitch.