re expanding to europe dusseldorf in pkortela apr lk hp hut fi pkortela snakemail hut fi writes deg has many german born forwards in the team in fact the majority of players are german born deg had average in spectator arena interesting one of our german friends here robert told me their forwards were all canadian germans perhaps somebody can sort this out for us my possible nhl european league site list switzerland berne zurich lugano and others ok this ain t north america and so on but i still doubt that any city having a pop of and below could support an nhl team of course switzerland probably should be judged as one large city because of small distances between cities but still germany dusseldorf cologne berlin munich mannheim rosenheim dusseldorf yes although the arena is an anachronism an open wall behind one of the goals essentially an outdoor arena cologne s arena only seats about berlin is about and no new facility will be built unless their olympic bid is successful munich does have an arena sweden stockholm gothenburg malmo gavle malmo is big enough but they also need a new arena the current one has seats i think finland helsinki turku tampere if we re talking about the nhl even helsinki would struggle to make it work turku despite an excellent arena and tampere are nowhere near big enough for major league hockey italy milan rome and the south are out of the question this could as well be africa to hockey fans romans were given the chance to host some wc games but showed no interest whatsoever all teams in the italian league come from milan and the smaller cities in the north france paris chamonix ruoen paris had their own volans francais sp pro team a couple of years ago i believe they even made it to the european club championship finals tournament one year but eventually folded due to lower than hoped for attendances the remaining cities seem to be too small to support a minor sport like hockey norway oslo austria vienna villach chech prag slovakia bratislava russia moscow st petersburg the easter cities lack the money and infrastructure to support pro hockey great britain perhaps most european teams will have to be like the tampa bay lightning anyway playing in a small seat arena backed by japanese money run by enthusiasts phil esposito heavy marketing fans that have difficulty telling what icing means london has been mentioned sheffield and birmingham also have large arenas and a new mega facility seats might be built in bristol in a couple of years netherlands no facilities to speak of their biggest arena in eindhoven seats fans for hockey petteri kortelainen marcu
