nhl to play first-ever regular-season game in germany; buffalo sabres face off against the los angeles kings OCT. 8, 2011 IN BERLIN
APRIL 11, 2011
New York/Toronto (April 11, 2011) - Saturday, Oct. 8, the Buffalo Sabres and Los Angeles Kings will play each other at the O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany, the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) announced today. It will mark the first-ever NHL regular-season game played in Germany and it will be a record fifth consecutive season the NHL will be playing regular-season games in Europe as part of 2011 Compuware NHL Premiere™ and NHL Face-Off™.
Tickets will go on sale Friday, April 15. More information on tickets is available here: http://www.o2world.com/nhl. Meanwhile, each NHL team will be offering travel packages. More information will be published on the team Web sites as it becomes available.
Additionally, the Kings will play a special exhibition game at the O2 World Hamburg, Germany on Tuesday, Oct. 4. Tickets will also go on sale Friday, April 15. More information on tickets for the exhibition game is available here: http://www.o2world-hamburg.de/kings.
The NHL is a truly global League with approximately 25% of NHL players this season having been born outside of North America. Sabres center Jochen Hecht hails from Mannheim, Germany, and left wing Thomas Vanek is from Austria. Other notable European players currently playing for the featured NHL teams include Anze Kopitar (Slovenia), Michal Handzus (Slovakia) and Alexei Ponikarovsky (Ukraine) of the Kings.
This is not the first time an NHL team has taken to German ice. After the 1958-59 season the Rangers and the Boston Bruins toured Europe including games in Berlin, Dortmund, Essen and Krefeld. In 1990, the St. Louis Blues and Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers participated in the Epson Cup against West German League champion EG Dusseldorf. In 2008, the Tampa Bay Lightning scored a 4-1 victory in a exhibition game against the hometown Eisbären Berlin at O2 World Arena in the 2008 NHL Premiere Challenge. In 2010, the San Jose Sharks defeated the Adler Mannheim Eagles 3-2 in a shootout in front of 13,600 fans at SAP Arena in Mannheim.
A complete overseas history of the NHL is available on media.NHL.com.
More information on 2011 Compuware NHL Premiere™ will be released at a later date, including broadcast information, training camp schedules and complete preseason schedules.
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For more Information:
Jonathan Weatherdon Schuyler Baehman
National Hockey League Players' Association National Hockey League
(416) 313-2316 (212) 789-2097