Bob McKenzie reported this morning that the NHL will play four games in Europe to start the 2008-09 season: The Ottawa Senators will play the Pittsburgh Penguins in Stockholm and the New York Rangers will play the Tampa Bay Lightning in Prague, each playing twice on the weekend preceding the domestic opening of the regular season. This follows the mixed results from the League's foray to London to kick off this season.If the League is on a mission to become a global sports entity like the NBA -- once a David Stern disciple, always a David Stern disciple -- playing regular season games to hockey-mad crowds in Prague and Stockholm is a great idea. I think, overall, the pluses outnumber the minuses in a big way here. If there's a short list of reasons to not play overseas, I'm pretty sure HNIC's Scott Morrison's logic ranks somewhere below "because EuroTrip sucked." Morrison opines that the rights of Senators fans to see Sidney Crosby in Ottawa outweighs the League gaining a stronger foothold in potentially very lucrative foreign markets:
All teams are compensated for losing one home gate, so there is no revenue loss. But in the case of the Senators, for instance, there is a greater cost involved. They lose the buzz of having Sidney Crosby and the Penguins come to town. They lose that excitement that is attached to a visit from The Kid. And Senators fans lose the opportunity of seeing Crosby in person. It means one fewer visit next season.Boo-hoo. I'm no Mr. Spock, but I'm pretty sure the needs of the many outweight the needs of 20,500 fans in Ottawa that will still get to watch Crosby come to town again later in the season. I'd like to see the hard economic data that suggests taking one Crosby visit away from Ottawa will adversely affect anything except the media's time spent star gazing in the Penguins' locker room.
