How Can The NHL Continue To Grow The Game After Global Series?

When a swarm of young hockey fans wearing Pittsburgh Penguins toques all have their phones out to take a picture with Sidney Crosby outside a hotel in Sweden, you know the NHL’s doing a decent job growing the game outside of North America.

The first of two NHL Global Series games between the Penguins and Nashville Predators took place at Avicii Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday, with the second game commencing on Sunday. And the hype is palpable. Former NHL goalie Glenn Healy was among those who signed autographs for fans outside the hotel, and not only did spectators pour into the rink for the game, but they were also cheering the Predators on at practice on Saturday. (Thanks to Valtteri Karjula for sharing his Global Series experience in The Hockey News Community forum.)

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Friday’s 2-1 overtime win for Nashville featured some exciting action, with Swede Filip Forsberg tying the game late in front of nearly 13,000 fans.

This latest installment of the league’s Global Series comes at a time when the NHL is expanding its European footprint by opening up an office in Zurich, Switzerland.

It will be a thrill for Swedish fans to see Penguins stars Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Swedes Erik Karlsson and Predators star Filip Forsberg live and in person, the truth is that there’s plenty of room for growth in the league’s blueprint to grow the game outside of North America.

As THN.com’s Avry Lewis-McDougall wrote about not all that long ago, the NHL could eventually combine its trips to Europe with outdoor games in places like London, England’s Wembley Stadium and Stockholm’s Strawberry Arena. The prospect of playing in front of 50,000 to 90,000 European fans at an outdoor game would no doubt be financial music to the NHL’s ears, and the visual grandeur of an open-air stadium hosting an NHL game or two is something the league and its sponsors would bend over backward to be part of.

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That said, another option for the NHL to increase its footprint would be to host a week’s worth of games – say, four or five games in a seven-day span. To do so, you’d have to involve multiple teams. While the logistics of doing so would be tricky, the benefits of having a full week of games is something that absolutely should put additional games on the league’s radar.

In any case, the NHL needs to examine all avenues to capitalize on fan interest overseas.

One day, it should make sense for the league to go beyond Sweden, Finland and Czechia for regular-season games. Back in 2008, more than 17,000 fans filled the O2 Arena in London for games between the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks, and from 1997 to 2000, the NHL played games in Japan. With a rink being built in Milan, Italy, for the Olympics, it may make sense to go there for the Global Series, or perhaps play some more games in Asia.

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But for now, placing deeper roots in places like the United Kingdom and Scandinavia is the most logical evolution for its entertainment product. So there may be additional baby steps for the NHL, but everything NHL-in-Europe is skewing positively, and that means more hockey-related revenue for players and the league to divvy up between themselves.

Imagining the NHL will one day have a full-time team outside North America is a pipe dream at the moment. But the fact that the league now has a permanent office is a testament to the growth of the sport.

And while it will be exciting for Swedes to host some of the best players on the planet this weekend, there could be even better days soon to come for European hockey fans and players.

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