LAS VEGAS — On a day when the temperature hit 110, the search was on for signs of ice hockey.

And there should be signs, since Las Vegas is pushing hard to get a National Hockey League franchise, which would be the city’s first in any major pro sports league. (NHL commissioner Gary Bettman recently said expansion was not a sure thing and that league officials will meet again in December to discuss the issue).

The first stop was along West Flamingo Road. Next to a liquor store and behind a tiny casino sits the Las Vegas Ice Center, the local mecca of hockey.

The Ice Center has two of Las Vegas’ three ice rinks. It serves 41 adult leagues and more than 350 kids in travel and house leagues and is home to UNLV’s club team.

“We’re busier now than we ever have been,” general manager Bob Della Rocca said. “People who come here are shocked. … Hockey here is a love affair — a niche love affair.”

Della Rocca is one of the more than 13,500 people who have paid season-ticket deposits for the team that does not exist.

“Would it make it here?” he asked. “I won’t say it would be easy, but, yes, I think it will. I’m from Long Island and I saw the (New York) Islanders struggle for years. If you don’t win, even with an established fan base, it can be tough.”

In the Ice Center’s lobby is a list of the Sunday night league teams. Among them is one named “Wirtz.” That’s the team from Wirtz Beverage-Nevada, as in the company owned by the family that owns the Chicago Blackhawks.

To be clear, there is already a hockey team in Las Vegas — and a relatively successful one. (And we don’t mean the Blackhawks, who were in town this week for a little break between games in Vancouver and San Jose).

Just east of the Vegas Strip is the UNLV campus, home to the men’s 10-7 Rebel ice hockey club, part of the American Collegiate Hockey Association.

“We’re trying to grow the visibility of the team in Las Vegas,” said Zee Khan, the team’s general manager. “Hockey is growing like crazy here.”

Speaking of college hockey, the University of North Dakota and University of Minnesota just agreed to play a game on Oct. 27, 2018, at the Orleans Hotel’s ice arena. So Las Vegas has that to look forward to, but what many in the city — most notably billionaire Bill Foley — want is an NHL team.

They have the colors: gold and black (same as West Point, where Foley attended).

They have an arena, or at least will in March when the $375 million, 20,000-seat Las Vegas Arena MGM arena, rising next to the New York-New York hotel and casino, is finished.

They even have many suggestions for team names: Bones, Flamingos, Outlaws, Rat Pack, Dealers, Aces, Black Knights, Scorpions, Miners and our favorite, the Strippers.

“We’ve actually had hockey here for a long time,” said Steve Carp, a sports writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “There was a semipro team in the ’70s, and the IHL (International Hockey League) had the Las Vegas Thunder in the 1990s and later the Wranglers of the ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League) for more than a decade in the 2000s.

“Combine that with the fact we have so many people who grew up with the game from other parts of the country as well as from Canada, and there’s an audience that’s a lot more savvy about the game than you might think.”

Las Vegas, which has hosted the NHL awards, has also had a few NHL games, one of which was quite memorable.

On Sept. 27, 1991, in 80-degree heat, the Los Angeles Kings played the New York Rangers in an exhibition game on a portable rink in the Caesars Palace parking lot before a crowd of roughly 13,000 fans wearing T-shirts and shorts and very few hockey sweaters. It was the first outdoor game between two NHL teams.

Everything was going as planned until the tarp used to keep the sun off the rink fell. Then giant grasshoppers, attracted by the lights, swarmed onto the rink.

“They would land on the ice and freeze right there, so by the end of the second period they were everywhere — it was kind of funny,” Luc Robitaille, Kings president of business operations and former player, told lakings.com.

The Kings won 5-2; one of their goals was scored by Wayne Gretzky.

The site of that historic game is no longer a parking lot, having been swallowed up by the hotel-casino expansion. A Caesars Palace representative said he was not even sure of the exact spot and lamented that there are no mementos or markers commemorating one of the NHL’s oddest games.

Las Vegas certainly has an unusual past and present with hockey, so back to the key question: Can the city really support an NHL team?

“They would have to win, make the playoffs and compete for a Stanley Cup,” Carp said. “Early on, the fans will turn out because of the novelty of having the city’s first major-league pro sports franchise. But Vegas doesn’t tolerate losers.

“When UNLV basketball wins, the Thomas & Mack (arena) is packed. But when the Rebels struggle, there’s a lot of empty seats. It’ll be the same with the NHL team.”