have even built a website<\/a> to help explain their motivation.<\/p>\n“This isn’t a business. There’s no fee and no commercial listing \u2014 we just think hockey people should meet more hockey people,” says the site.<\/p>\n
![\"Hockey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785747850_352_default.jpg\")
The Schmitt family’s home in Neukirchen-Vluyn is decorated with memorabilia from their local hockey teams. (Submitted by Ingo Schmitt)<\/p>\n
Schmitt said he learned to skate on frozen lakes when he was a boy, but it wasn’t until an aunt took him to a local game that he fell in love with the sport. The family is now an active part of Germany’s relatively small but passionate hockey community.<\/p>\n
Schmitt says while it’s difficult due to the time difference to watch many NHL games on TV, they are avid supporters of their local team. And while Senators star Tim St\u00fctzle hails from a nearby town and has said he’s looking forward to his homecoming in December, Schmitt insists his family doesn’t play favourites.<\/p>\n
“It’s not about Tim St\u00fctzle. We really don’t have a favourite here,” he told Ottawa Morning.<\/p>\n
Guests may come and go as they please, but are welcome to join the family to prepare meals and hear about other local attractions such as the popular Christmas markets and D\u00fcsseldorf’s Altstadt, which claims to host the longest bar in the world.<\/p>\n
LISTEN | The Schmitts’ full Ottawa Morning interview:<\/p>\n
Ottawa Morning8:38German family offers to host two Sens fans when the team plays in D\u00fcsseldorf<\/p>\n
Ingo Schmitt is offering to host fans of the Ottawa Senators at his family\u2019s home in D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany in December, when the Sens play two regular season games against the Chicago Blackhawks during the NHL\u2019s Global Series.<\/p>\n
While the Senators have played several games in Sweden, this will be the team’s first foray to Germany, where the NHL is hoping to continue growing the sport.<\/p>\n
Schmitt says they’ve received lots of positive feedback about the offer, but so far have had no takers. He’s confident the right hockey fans will come along.<\/p>\n
“For us it’s important to meet people from abroad, to get to know them, to talk about hockey,” he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-844072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n