Bill Daly's latest comments about Europe could change the NHL forever
Bill Daly called European NHL franchises inevitable this week.
The league is already running the audition, and it starts October 12.
Daly told Pierre McGuire and Jimmy Murphy on The Sick Podcast's The Eye Test that the league is doing far more internationally.
He said franchises in Europe feel inevitable on some level, while refusing to attach any timeline.
Re NHL European/international expansion: "We're doing a lot more internationally; whether expansion is in the cards, on some basis at some point in the near future I think it's inevitable on some level; I can't give you a time period."
- Bill Daly
- Bill Daly
The concrete part of that answer was buried underneath it. Daly explained the NHL specifically designed a weekday package for distribution abroad, timed to a window where European football is not competing.
The audition nobody is calling an audition
That package is roughly ten Monday matinees at 1 or 2 p.m. ET, landing in European primetime.
The first is the Florida Panthers at the Buffalo Sabres on October 12, pairing Aleksander Barkov against Rasmus Dahlin.
Arenas, travel and ownership capital are the usual obstacles cited for a European division. The thing nobody has tested is whether Europe watches midweek NHL hockey in numbers worth building a division around.
These ten dates are the test.
There is a flaw in the pilot.
Germany has been a stated focus of the push, yet Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers and Moritz Seider of the Detroit Red Wings do not appear in a single Monday matinee.
Why the timeline runs through Texas
The money is already committed elsewhere. Daly said the league is primarily interested in Houston, with Austin still under evaluation and a term sheet with the Friedkin group targeted for completion by year end.
He wants that team playing in 2029-30, and an arena still has to be built. Europe cannot be next when the next slot is spoken for through the end of the decade.
So Daly's inevitable is real, but it is downstream of a scheduling experiment that starts with Buffalo.
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