DUESSELDORF, Germany \u2014 The NHL is hosting its first regular-season\u00a0games in Germany\u00a0in 15 years, but the German league isn’t happy.<\/p>\n
German Ice Hockey League managing director Gernot Tripcke has voiced frustration, saying the NHL scheduled its games without discussing the dates with his league and its teams, and arguing they should work together to promote the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey announced their games in isolation, without consulting with the clubs, with us or with the (German hockey federation). That conflicts with the schedules of the 28 professional clubs here in Germany,\u201d Tripcke said in comments published by the dpa news agency on Monday. \u201cThis is something you can handle better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NHL announced in March it was playing two regular season games in Duesseldorf in December, the first in Germany since a one-off 2011 contest. Germany forward Tim St\u00fctzle and the Ottawa Senators will play the Chicago Blackhawks on Dec. 18 and 20, which are in-demand, pre-Christmas dates for German teams, too.<\/p>\n
The NHL said last month more games are\u00a0scheduled\u00a0for next year in Munich and Cologne, with Leon Draisaitl’s Edmonton Oilers among the teams playing.<\/p>\n
Tripcke said he hadn’t been contacted about those games, either, and called on the NHL to work with German hockey organizations to create a \u201cwin-win situation\u201d for local clubs and the NHL.<\/p>\n
The NHL has said it aims to \u201cgrow the game\u201d in Germany along with the NHL Players’ Association, with a focus on grassroots events and fan engagement, though details remain unclear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know what they’re doing around the games,\u201d Tripcke was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
The Cologne-born Draisaitl has become the face of the NHL in Germany and\u00a0carried the country’s flag\u00a0at the Olympic opening ceremony this year after a vote by German athletes and the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUESSELDORF, Germany \u2014 The NHL is hosting its first regular-season\u00a0games in Germany\u00a0in 15 years, but the German league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-892065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}