Forget it,
The european Teams (german slang) würden nen Teufel tun, to do that.
even if you find an owner he would not get money from the states for a new arena and the old teams won't share their arenas.
Also Hockey is not that big here.
But on the plus side, the first few years the arenas would be full. You saw what happened in colonge (biggest hockey arena in the world) was sold out. So if we could watch NHl games here in western europe it would fill the arenas.
also the flights would destroy every game here.
You would have to schedule it in a way where ther european fans can watch the games in america. So you have to have very early games (around 12 or 1 am) for us to watch.
Then you have to share some rights with the local Tv stations. The German Ör tv stations have money, because they don't have to pay for teh CL anymore. But the people in germany don't want to pay for sports on TV. thats why the DEL has some problems. I even suggested The ÖRs to get more Del hockey into their Sportsprogramm, but they what to have the most popular sport on: Football.
So even though i would like the idea there are some big problems:
- no arenas
- european legues will not want that
- Football is just to big
- for a niche sport like hockey people don't want to pay (in germany)
- you need a lot of creativity for the schedule
- people do not want to pay 100 bucks for a mediocre seat (for 15 euros you get a good spot on the Nordtribüne in Dortmund)
- won't get that nmuch money from the local TV stations
- infuse a lot of money into the community and arenas to grow the game (at least in germany, Uk, france, spain, italy, Austria, poland, etc.)
+- is there a rule against some things our fans do in the NHL? Chanting, big cheorgraphies?
+ the arenas will be full for a few years
+ Will grow the game
The only way they could do something would be if they would open an only european league like the CL.
But i don't think that would work. Football is just to big in europe.
Just forget it.
Schedule some more games earlier and get some Tv stations in europe to show the stanly cup playoff finals and see what happens.
The Superbowl is known here because you can watch it without paying money and it's in the media. But the stanley cup is not really in the media and most people don't even know the cup.
So you might have to let the europeans watch at least the final series without paying money, to grow the game here. Also the next world cup needs another united european team. That was awesome.