Is the NHL going to add teams in Europe?
That’s the question the entire hockey world — including a major player agent — has been asking since the NHL doubled down on its efforts to have permanent operations overseas.
“We’re not looking at putting an NHL team into Europe,” Keith Wachtel, president of business for the NHL, told the Deseret News Monday morning.
He explained that the objective is to expand hockey as a sport, rather than the NHL as a league. Europe, after all, is already home to some of the best hockey leagues in the world — leagues that comprise a significant feeder system for the NHL.
“I think it’s different for us than it is for the other sports,” he said. “We have that infrastructure. They’ve been in place for a long time. So, our goal is to work very closely with those federations to continue to grow the sport of hockey.”
But could the league explore that route at some future point?
“Will there be some sort of NHL Europe or things like that in the future? You know, that’s not something we’re focusing on right now,” Wachtel said. “Time will tell. We’re focused on making sure that the health and vitality of the sport, the sport of hockey, continues to grow in all of these countries.”
On Thursday, the league announced a partnership with Bayern Munich, one of the most popular soccer teams in the world. Also included in the announcement was a commitment for existing NHL teams to play regular-season games in Germany for the next three seasons, including four games in 2027-28.
The Edmonton Oilers will play twice in Cologne and the Boston Bruins will have two games in Munich, with both opponents to be announced at a later date.
That, combined with the full-time league office the NHL established in Switzerland last year and the implementation of European time zone-friendly start times in this season’s schedule, ignited discussion about whether European expansion was on the horizon.
“While certainly atypical, we felt like there was a really good opportunity to do something unique and different.”
— Keith Wachtel, NHL president of business
Growing the game is at the heart of the partnership with Bayern. The NHL conducted a study to determine which European country it could impact the most, and although the results were close, Germany surfaced as the best place for the league to invest.
The process consisted of multiple voyages across the pond, where league officials tried to learn everything they could about German culture.
Wachtel described the trips as “lots of conversations about the marketplace, understanding the consumer, understanding the sports landscape, the entertainment landscape, what sports are doing well.”
They considered everything from Christmas markets and Oktoberfest to grassroots-level school programs, but the top cultural phenomenon they found was an obsession with Bayern Munich. Whether an individual is a die-hard fan of the team or hates it mightily, everyone pays attention to it.
“While certainly atypical, we felt like there was a really good opportunity to do something unique and different,” Wachtel said.
The NBA and NFL are also exploring European markets, with their main strategy being international games. While the NHL is also doing that, this Bayern partnership aims to give the league a significant presence there far longer than the day or two a year that they play games.
They want kids playing the sport, be it on ice or concrete, and they want people wearing the merchandise.
Are Global Series games making a difference in Germany?
There’s no doubt German hockey has experienced immense growth recently.
A decade ago, the country had never produced a true NHL star. Marco Sturm, who now coaches the Bruins, was Germany’s all-time leading scorer with 487 points — productive, but by no means extraordinary.
In the mid-to-late 2010s, Leon Draisaitl arrived on scene as the first German superstar. Now, at age 30, he has more than doubled Sturm’s career totals, and he could realistically play another 10-plus years.
Tim Stützle is poised to become the second-highest-scoring German of all time this season, and he’s only 24 years old. Other German NHL players include JJ Peterka, 24, and Moritz Seider, 25.
More are on their way, too.
Five Germans have been drafted into the NHL in the last two years. At least one, Max Calce, is projected to go in the first round in 2027, and several more will likely be selected at some point in the draft.
Historically, international tournaments have been dominated by Canada, with occasional wins going to Sweden, Russia, the United States, Finland and Czechia. With the progress the NHL hopes to see, Germany could add itself to that list a generation from now.
Will the NHL ever play an outdoor game in Europe?
A European outdoor game was always part of the agreement.
“From the beginning, which is true, from our first meeting, (Bayern chief of marketing Rouven Kasper) said, ‘We’re going to do this, but you have to make sure that one day, you play an outdoor game at Allianz,’” Wachtel recalled.
“We said, ‘You know what? Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t want to aspire for a league that has done almost 50 outdoor games to do that?’”
Planning for that eventuality is still in the feasibility stage, so it won’t likely happen for some time, but that’s the goal. And if they can successfully install NHL-quality ice in a roofless stadium in Florida, how hard could it be to do one in Germany?
“That is our North Star of our deal with Bayern, would be to play an outdoor game in front of 80,000 crazy German hockey and football fans with a game,” Wachtel said.
Will the Utah Mammoth ever play in a Global Series?
There’s no question Utah carries significance on the international scale.
Salt Lake City will join Beijing as the only cities to host the Olympics multiple times in the 21st century; Utah headquarters one of the most worldwide churches; and although it’s landlocked, the Salt Lake City airport has direct flights on a regular basis to Europe and Asia.
Is that enough to get the Utah Mammoth into a Global Series game?
Not necessarily.
“The No. 1 focus is bringing NHL players back home to their countries,” Wachtel explained.
The recently announced series features Germans in Draisaitl, Peterka, Sturm and Lukas Reichel. The 2026 Global Series will see Stützle play near his hometown in Düsseldorf against the Chicago Blackhawks, where Reichel played until he was traded a week before the announcement went live. Another part of the 2026 Global Series will put Sebastian Aho, Nikolaj Ehlers and Jesperi Kotkaniemi up against Kaapo Kakko in their home country of Finland.
Utah may have been under consideration for a game in Germany before they traded Peterka to the Bruins, but as it currently stands, most of their stars hail from North America.
That said, the league occasionally plays games in countries with few to no current NHLers. In the Arizona Coyotes’ final season, for example, they played the Los Angeles Kings in a pair of games in Australia. Other teams have competed in China, Japan, Puerto Rico, Norway and the United Kingdom.
In all cases, the league chooses the teams that have the best ties or recognition in the selected region, as well as teams that have particular interest in going.
While the Mammoth might not be at the top of the list for games in established hockey countries, Utah might have enough international presence to play elsewhere at some point.
