The NHL Global Series is a great opportunity for the NHL internationally. It’s also a great honor for local officials.
This year’s NHL Global Series Challenge saw the Nashville Predators and San Jose Sharks travel to Europe to take on Switzerland’s SC Bern and Germany’s Eisbären Berlin, respectively.
NHL officials also headed over to work the exhibition games alongside their international counterparts.
Swiss referee Miroslav Stolc and linesman David Obwegeser skated alongside an NHL referee Justin St. Pierre and linesman Derek Nansen as the Preds battled SC Bern in Switzerland on October 3.
The following day, German referee Andre Schrader and linesman Tim Heffner – both officials in the Deutsche Elite League – took the ice with NHL ref Francis Charron and linesman Ryan Galloway.
Stolc and Obwegeser recently worked on the 2022 IIHF World Championship. Schrader and Obwegeser donned the stripes for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
The NHL has scheduled four additional matches – all ones that count as part of the regular season.
The Predators and Sharks will meet next at Prague’s O2 arena to kick off the 2022-23 NHL season with a back-to-back on October 7 and 8.
The Columbus Blue Jackets and Colorado Avalanche will cross the pond in November for a pair of games in Tampere, Finland, on November 4 and 5.
Officials have yet to be confirmed for those games. Linesman Libor Suchánek, the only full-time European NHL official, was born in Plzeň, 100 kilometers from Prague.
The NHL has played 38 regular season games outside of North America over the past 25 years, with games in Japan as part of Game ONe (1997-2000), the Premiere Series (2007-2011), and the Global Series (2017-2022). ).
They’ve also held six international preseason games, as well as 41 exhibition games featuring an NHL team skating against a local club.
Read more on the NHL Global Series at NHL.com:
https://www.nhl.com/news/t-291813464