The Prague Post Online: Sports: NHL games in Prague are a hit

December 1st, 2008

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NHL games in Prague are a hit

Organizers look to lure young stars in the future

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 8th, 2008 issue

The National Hockey League will be back, say organizers of the Oct. 4 and 5 games at O2 Arena. The New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning opened the season with two games — both 2-1 Rangers’ victories — in front of sellout crowds of more than 17,000.

Although the anticipated box-office draw, Jaromír Jágr, was missing after moving from the Rangers to Russia’s Avangard Omsk over the summer, the hype was palpable nonetheless as more than 8,000 spectators gathered in the stands for both teams’ training sessions the day before the first game.

“It was a little weird to have people in the stands for a practice, but it shows they are big hockey fans,” Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist said.

“We’d like to go on,” said Vladimír Šafařík, director of Česká sportovní, which organized the event. “If we could bring over Pittsburgh with [Sidney] Crosby or New Jersey with [Patrik] Eliáš, it could be quite attractive, too.”

Tickets for the game ranged from 3,000 to 12,000 Kč ($168–672). Czech organizers were keen on bringing the Rangers to Prague mainly because of the Czech stars on their roster, especially Jágr and Martin Straka. However, both players left the team before the season.

“It looked like the fans didn’t know who to support,” said Jan Slepička, a TV hockey anchor who, in the early 1990s, worked as a scout for the Edmonton Oilers.

Tampa Bay forward Václav Prospal — arguably the biggest Czech star playing in the games — bought dozens of tickets for his relatives.

“Maybe the Rangers got bigger support because they had so many Czech players on the team over the past seasons,” Prospal said. “But we could not expect there to be huge groups of Rangers or Lightning fans.”

A repeat of the NHL showdown in Prague has received support from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. He said that the season-opening doubleheaders in Prague and Stockholm (where the Ottawa Senators took on the Pittsburgh Penguins) “are hopefully ushering in an era of a more permanent presence for the league [in Europe].”

While unlikely to establish franchises in Europe, the NHL is creating “a program where we’re coming back on a regular basis to satisfy and address the interest that we know is in our game here,” Bettman said.

Disinterest in hockey in Europe’s major cities, such as London and Paris, combined with limited financial resources in smaller capitals like Prague, and taxing travel schedules are among the roadblocks to expanding east. The league says its current focus is to increase exposure to boost product sales and viewership on cable and the Internet.

Bettman and NHL Players’ Association Executive Director Paul Kelly insists the NHL will continue targeting the European market, with Germany as a likely destination for future visits. Russian cities have also expressed interest in hosting games, Kelly said.

However, Bettman said the NHL may hesitate to stage games in Russia because of disputes with Russia’s new Continental Hockey League about respecting player contracts.

“You have to do it in an environment where everybody’s working together and there’s joint cooperation,” he said.

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com

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