Report: Bruins vs Kings In Australia On Hold

Not so fast on the Boston Bruins to head down under next fall?

Plans for the Bruins to play a two-game set against the Los Angeles Kings in Melbourne, Austraila next September, have reportedly been put on hold. According to TSN NHL Insider Darren Dreger, the NHLPA has put things on hold due to travel concerns.

“The National Hockey League was hoping to announce as early as this week a scheduled trip to Australia where the Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings will play that two-game set in Australia in September,” Dreger said on the latest edition of TSN Insider Trading. “The NHL Players’ Association still has some logistical travel concerns. So they essentially pulled the pin at the last second. It doesn’t mean those games won’t be played in September; they will; it’s just a delay to the formal announcement.”

Those travel concerns are very likely focused on the fact that it would take the Boston Bruins 23.5 hours to fly from Boston to Melbourne, Australia.

As reported by Boston Hockey Now and Melbourne Ice head coach Kerry Goulet earlier this month, the Boston Bruins, the Kings, and the Vancouver Canucks were teams being considered to start the 2023-24 regular season in Melbourne. As Dreger reported, though, it appears that it will only be the Bruins, and Kings, and given that he said September, these will be preseason games.

The Boston Bruins are no strangers to playing overseas. The Bruins kicked off their Stanley Cup-winning 2010-11 season in Prague, Czechia, against the then-Arizona Coyotes. The Boston Bruins then played the Calgary Flames in two preseason games in Shenzhen, China, just before the 2018-19 NHL regular season. That’s two straight times that the Boston Bruins wound in the Stanley Cup Final after starting the season or preseason overseas, as they went on to Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final but lost to the St. Louis Blues.

There has been some speculation that these Bruins-Kings games could be held outdoors in Marvel Stadium, which happens to be run by Delaware North and Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs.