NHL reportedly looking at playing games in Australia as early as next year
Since 1938, the NHL has played a ton of games across the world including in Europe, Japan, China and even an exhibition match in Puerto Rico. But now the league has their eyes on a new location to host games, Australia.
During the 32 Thoughts segment on Hockey Night in Canada, Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman mentioned that the NHL is doing a site survey in Australia next week or two and are looking at playing games there in either 2023 or 2024.
"Yes, so sometime over the next week or two, the NHL is going to be having a site survey in Australia. Its nothing firm, but I do believe the league is looking at playing a couple of games there and the question would it be in early 2023 or maybe 2024. But there will be a site survey underway," Friedman said.
Australia is no stranger to hockey and this would be a big boost to grow the game down under. In 2000, the Australian Ice Hockey League formed and currently has eight teams that play a 20 game regular season, with the top-four making the playoffs.
Their men's national team is ranked 36th by the IIHF and as of 2019, compete in the Division 2B tournament at the World Championship. They haven't played since 2019 as the lower level events in 2020 and 2021 were cancelled by the IIHF and this year they had to withdraw from the tournament.
Do you think the NHL should tap into the Australian market? Let us know in the poll below!
| POLL | ||
OCTOBRE 22 | 142 ANSWERS NHL reportedly looking at playing games in Australia as early as next year Should the NHL play games in Australia? | ||
| Yes | 78 | 54.9 % |
| No | 64 | 45.1 % |
| LIST OF POLLS | ||
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