The NHL was never more popular in Europe than in the fall of 2011. The NHL launched their official European language site and GameCenter Live was made available for international viewers, but the bigger news was the havoc regarding NHL TV rights in Europe– from UK to Russia.

It was the perfect time for the Swedish betting company Oddset to launch their “Let Europe Watch” campaign, whose mission is to make NHL weekend games watchable for European countries. The spokesman for the movement? NHL legend Peter Forsberg.

It’s hard to watch NHL hockey over here [Ed note: Fedor lives in Moscow]. Consider that most NFL games start in the afternoon, the NBA has at least 4-6 games during “watchable” times during the weekend, and baseball has those early games even on weekdays. But the NHL? They’ve got maybe 3 or 4 afternoon games each week. And the NHL may have more Europeans than any other American professional league – only 76.6% of the NHL players in 10-11 season were born in Canada or the US.

7PM EST is 12PM in the UK, 1AM in central Europe, and 3-4AM here in Russia. Those are the three biggest European hockey markets. But 1PM would be 6, 7, and 9-10 respectively.

Why would this work for the NHL? Having a large, solvent fanbase in an entirely different market would give the NHL a little extra economical security– a safety cushion in these economically-challenging times.

I’m grateful to Sweden for starting the campaign. Somebody should’ve done this already, and Sweden was a perfect fit. They have the third most NHL players (6.4%). So now 22,609 signed letters are on their way to the NHL’s headquarters in New York. Hopefully the message will be received, and changes will be made soon.

You can like the “Let Europe Watch” campaign on Facebook. Sharing is caring. Thank you.

Kuznetsov and his teammates celebrate his hat-trick. (Photo credit: Mike Sturk)

19-year-old Caps prospect Evgeny Kuznetsov had 0 points heading into Russia’s third World Junior Championship game. On Monday, he was shutdown in Russia’s 3-0 victory over Switzerland. On Wednesday, a frustrated Kuznetsov still could not land on the scoresheet despite rifling nine shots on goal against the Slovaks.

Enter Latvia. After not registering a point in the game’s first 27 minutes, Kuznetsov exploded, tallying an insane nine points over the next 33 minutes pushing Russia to a 14-0 victory.

You can check out video of his big night below the jump.

After scoring his first goal of the tournament on the power play in the second period, Kuznetsov then tallied another three minutes later. Then he assisted on the next four goals, spanning only 13 minutes of game time. His most impressive helper came on a nifty backhanded pass to Nikita Gusev for a power play goal. Six points, 13 minutes.

Kuznetsov got his hat trick three minutes into the third period, displaying his patented patience in front of the net. Sadly, only two hats were thrown to the ice from the Calgary crowd.

“Why were there only 2?” Kuznetsov quizzed Allhockey.ru’s Andrey Osadchenko after the game. “What is this? A funeral? I was hoping Zislis would at least throw his panties, and he didn’t.”

Kuzya then went on to assist on two of Russia’s final four goals to give him nine points total, the second most ever in a World Junior Championship game. Only Sweden’s Peter Forsberg (against Japan in 1993) has done better.

With his huge night, Evgeny leapfrogged Canada’s Mark Stone, Ryan Strome, and 2011 third overall pick Jonathan Huberdeau, and is now tied with teammate Nikita Gusev for the WJC points lead. He also almost matched his entire output in last year’s WJC (four goals, seven assists) in one game.

Russia’s next game comes against Sweden on Saturday.