Ban'thalos won't show up if you haven't completed the quests to unlock the daily hub. As far as I can tell no one else has mentioned this. Is this true? and what does he mean by " the daily hub"
Probably true, and daily hub = you need to complete all the early half of the quests in Hyjal up untill you've done the quests to unlock the Molten Front daily quest hub.
It's the breadcrumb quest to open up the Firelands dailies hub. If you quested through Hyjal enough while leveling during Cataclysm, you auto-completed this, and got the next breadcrumb quest, Firelands Invasion: http://www.wowhead.com/quest=29388. But you only need the first one to be able to see the pets.