The NHL has announced its plans for expanding hockey interest globally. The league will be sending four teams to Sweden next season for the Global Series games in November. The Minnesota Wild, Detroit Red Wings, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Ottawa Senators will participate in the event. The league’s second and final venture outside North America in 2023 will feature a game each day in Stockholm from November 16-19.
The NHL is trying to expand hockey interest in Australia while also cultivating and growing an already fervent fanbase in Scandinavia and across Europe. The Los Angeles Kings and Arizona Coyotes will play two exhibition games in Melbourne, Australia, in September. David Proper, the league’s senior executive VP of media and international strategy, knows they present different dynamics.
Proper said that the NHL needs to convince Australians that hockey is a sport worth following. The league is trying to polish the sport and the brand to the fan base in Sweden and get casual fans to become avid fans. The NHL is returning to Sweden for the first time since before the pandemic, when Buffalo and Tampa Bay played games at what is now known as Avicii Arena.
The NHL is expanding hockey interest in Sweden by having four teams in one building. The Wild, Maple Leafs, Red Wings, and Senators were chosen for their current volume of Swedes and the organizations’ history of them. Minnesota’s Jonas Brodin, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Filip Gustavsson, and Toronto’s William Nylander get the chance to play an NHL game in their home country for the first time.
The NHL hopes that having four teams in one building in Sweden could provide a blueprint for staging the World Cup of Hockey, which the league and NHLPA still hope to do in 2025 after scrapping plans to hold it next year. Each international trip presents its own challenges, including a new one last year when San Jose and Nashville went to Prague several months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The league has not received any concerns from Swedish officials regarding next season’s games. Minnesota winger Kirill Kaprizov and Ottawa defenseman Artem Zub are the Russian players under contract for next season, among the teams going to Sweden, and Toronto could bring back goaltender Ilya Samsonov.
Going to Australia is a tougher sell than Europe, given the travel and time commitment required. After initial rumors indicated Los Angeles would be facing the Boston Bruins, its foe is instead the Coyotes. Proper said that the league sees the Australia trip as a good team bonding experience. The idea of taking people abroad early on in the preseason, particularly to someplace that can be a once-in-a-lifetime-experience trip, is a really good way to get the team to bond, spend time together and really come out of the gates in a good place.
Leave a Reply