When he batted a puck out of midair and into the back of the net in overtime to lift the Senators over the Detroit Red Wings during their November 2023 NHL Global Series game in Sweden, Tim Stützle set a high bar to clear for his future performances overseas.
Next December, Stützle and the Sens will head to Germany, specifically Düsseldorf — just east of where he grew up in Viersen — for two games against the Chicago Blackhawks. Stützle learned a few days before Friday’s official announcement from the league and couldn’t hold his excitement for too long.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone really, but couldn’t really hold it in,” said a smiling Stützle after Friday’s practice. “So I told a bunch of the guys, and obviously very exciting, it’s just like, 20 minutes from where I grew up.”
The 2026 edition of the NHL Global Series will mark just the second and third regular season NHL games in the country, after a 2011 game between the Buffalo Sabres and Los Angeles Kings. With a German superstar on the team, Senators president and CEO Cyril Leeder knew the ask would eventually come from the league.
“When we drafted Tim Stützle,” joked Leeder on Friday when he was asked when he knew the Senators would be heading to Germany.
“You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out, you’ve got one of the best players from Germany on your team that you’re going to be asked at some point. But it’s been fairly recent with the league, in the last month or two the discussions started on going over for the Global Series this year.”
Leeder laid out the business case for the NHL’s focus on Germany, with the nation of 84 million being the third-largest in Europe, the success of stars like Stützle, Leon Draisaitl, Moritz Seider, and J.J. Peterka in recent years, and strong domestic leagues.
“There’s no direct benefit for the clubs right now — we’re not as into the international business model as say, the NFL and the NBA, where the individual teams can do their own marketing deals, do their own partnerships, so from a team perspective this is good for us really because we get to showcase one of our stars in Europe,” said Leeder.
“I think for us as a small hockey country, it’s just trying to get better every year, keep working on those things, and try to get more kids to play hockey, I think that’s the biggest thing we can do,” said Stützle about growing the game in Germany.
“Be role models for them, show up every day, I think that’s going to be great as well. If I was that age, I would have loved to see the NHL over in Germany and I think that’s going to grow the game as well.”
