Will the Czech Extraliga be played in Germany?

According to the new rules, every Czech Extraliga arena will has to be invested with 3,500 seats at least, but now the Ivan Hinka´s stadium has just 2,000 seating places for spectators.

The reconstruction works will swallow part of the 2012/13 season and app. 8,32 million €.  The owner of the ice rink, the city of Litvínov hasn’t enough budget of free money now, but wants to keep the Extraliga in the city and started seeking for a strong financial partner for the reconstruction, Litvínov also wants the guarantees of the current strong hockey club partners that they won’t end their financial support of the club.

"The city should invest big amount of moneys for the ice rink reconstruction but we don’t know if the partners will stay with hockey in future. From the other hand, the partners condition for giving us the guarantees is the well-suited arena, regarding the APK rules,” vice mayor of Litvínov Karel Linhart said, "it is a never-ending loop, so we decided to create a mutual declaration of the hockey-club support.”

Except the others, mainly the actual general partner of the club, Benzina, and the traditional big partner Unipetrol RPA should be signed to the declaration.

According to the best estimation, the project documentation of the reconstruction could be done until the end of March 2011. If everything will go well, HC Litvínov should play the part of 2012/13 outside of Litvínov. The hockey club management is thinking about few near situated destinations: Chomutov (the civic club is playing in CZE 1.liga), Ústní nad Labem (CZE 1.liga) and – amazingly – Dresden, Germany (ESC Dresdner Eislöwen – 2nd Bundesliga).

"Yes, this is already possible,” Jiří Šlégr, former defender of Litvínov,  the NHL teams Boston,  Detroit, Pittsburgh, Edmonton, Atlanta and Vancouver, the member of the triple-gold club and current corporate director of HC Litvínov said.

"We have lot of fans there, they’re traveling to Litvínov to see our home games and also to the near Czech-German border cities for our away games, so we could have good fans-support there,” current Litvínov forward Vojtěch Kubinčák added.

The support of the Dresden fans is so big, that the club will play one home game there during the next season. But there is a question of the Litvínov’s Czech fans and their traveling to the Dresden home games. "It could be really complicated, traveling to the Germany and back, it isn’t joyful at all. If the Dresden will be chosen, the club should arrange bus trips for the fans,” Kubinčák said.

From this reason, the North-Bohemian club is also thinking about combined solution: Some of the games they could play in Germany, other in Chomutov or Ústí nad Labem.

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