I've played a reasonable amount of hockey in the UK. My last club has played friendlies against EIHL teams, and I've also played around in the farm system a bit.
So I've got a pretty good idea of the state of hockey in the UK.
One area where I agree with you 100% is the arena issue, and i think that would also really be the biggest issue with most European cities playing at an NHL level.
Very few cities outside North America have rinks big enough for an NHL team. I honestly expect filling seats wouldn't be a huge problem in London, but building a 20,000 seat NHL-quality rink anywhere near London would probably cost pretty much all the money in the world. And there are a lot of hockey-crazy cities in Europe that support multiple professional teams, but have just built brand-new 10,000-12,000 seat arenas.
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I am a lunatic whose world revolves around hockey and Oilers hate.
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