Until Salt Lake City moved the needle, chatter in Houston was running loudest.

The WHA's Aeros won a pair of Avco Cups and hosted the comeback of 40-something legend Gordie Howe for four seasons in the 1970s but bowed out of the big-time hockey race when the city was not included among the four absorbed into the NHL in 1979.

Relocation talk spiked intermittently over then-wayward franchises in Cleveland (now defunct) and Edmonton (new ownership), before the city's fortunes became the mantle inherited by Tilman Fertitta.

The Rockets' boss began talking up H-Town after joining the NBA ownership ranks seven years ago and speculation remains active these days, particularly after the latest round of comments from Fertitta about the potential of downtown hockey.

"We are talking to the NHL, but it's got to be good for both of us," he told Shelly Hagan and David Wethe of Bloomberg News. "We just know that when there's a concert downtown, how it activates downtown, we know what the Astros do for downtown, we know what even soccer does for downtown."