NHL may be taking things a bit too far

LONDON -- History will be made here today.

The Ducks will take to the ice for the first time as the defending Stanley Cup champions. The Kings will launch the career of a 19-year-old goaltender who is so good he may be beyond their time-tested ability to ruin young netminders.

And the NHL, oblivious to the idea that fans in Southern California deserve to see these events from a distance of something less than 5,500 miles, will drop the puck on the 2007-08 season in a city and country that Commissioner Gary Bettman himself noted on Friday “may not be the strongest hockey markets in the world.”

Welcome to NHL Premiere Series 2007, a somewhat snappier slogan than We’re Here to Get More European Eyes to Our Website and Sell 30 Jerseys in Prague.

The Kings are participating because their parent company, AEG, runs the O2 Arena, a mini-Staples Center newly fitted with ice. Like the Kings, it is a work in progress and in need of finishing touches.

Its name is fitting, though, since 02 is the approximate percentage of teams and arenas in this world not controlled by AEG.

Bettman likes AEG, which rescued the Kings from financial ruin a decade ago. AEG wants an NHL tenant for the Sprint Center, the arena it manages in Kansas City. If AEG pulls off a jolly good show here this weekend, maybe Bettman would look more kindly upon its efforts to lure a team to the Midwest.

It’s all so cozy. All so unfair to players whose training camp was condensed and whose already punishing travel schedules were padded by nearly 11,000 miles so the NHL can “delve in slightly” to the European market, as Bettman so curiously put it.

The NHL has sent teams to play regular-season games in Japan but hadn’t previously staged more than training camps and exhibition games in Europe. Bettman said he’s not contemplating adding European teams to the NHL any time soon but didn’t rule it out. Staging regular-season games is a test.

“We’re the first here,” Bettman said. “I think that there’s a basketball league that’s got a couple of exhibition games coming shortly. There’s a football league that’s got a regular-season game coming.”

That would be the NBA, his former employer, and the NFL, whose teams play only once a week and play only eight road games per season.

The NHL decided to play games here that count because the London market “respects authenticity,” Bettman said, citing the expected sellouts today and Sunday to support his point.

“A couple of points won or lost in October, end of September, can be the difference of making the playoffs,” Bettman said.

Which is why these teams should not be here.

By sending the Ducks and Kings eight time zones from home, Bettman has compromised their ability to win those precious points and has subjected them to the risk of jet lag and fatigue-related injuries.

The Ducks last season earned points in each of their first 16 games, an NHL record and a huge boost to their championship drive. They won’t come close to that this season, after they’ve been forced to play the role of puck pitchmen in a city where people don’t much care for ice in their drinks, much less in their arenas.

“Just being over here you have to remind yourself it’s the start of the NHL season, with all the distractions,” Ducks center Andy McDonald said. “Before you know it, we’re going to be five or six games deep and going back home.”

The Kings, hoping that these games will be remembered not for their site but for morale-boosting saves from goalie Jonathan Bernier, don’t need the extra mileage, either.

“Every season opener is really important and every start is really important, so we realize that and we’ve got to get focused,” said center Anze Kopitar, the star of the Kings’ exhibition tournament in Austria this week and a budding superstar.

“London is a nice city, but we’re here to play hockey and we’ve got to focus on that.”

Bettman said he plans to “debrief” players and executives of both teams about this experience a week or so after they’ve returned to North America and their jet lag has faded.

“If this works well, we’re going to want to use this as a steppingstone,” he said, before backtracking. Steppingstone, he said, is “too big a term in terms of what we’re doing. We’re responding to interest.”

Growth is good. Growth is essential to the future of every league. But is the desire to appease interest of a few fans here or a few more in Switzerland and Slovakia adequate justification for cheating fans in Southern California and putting an undue burden on the players who are the league’s best asset?

Chris Pronger, appointed the Ducks’ captain Friday, said players were “upset” when the possibility of traveling here was mentioned to them last spring but they eventually came around. He said they welcomed the chance to build the sport and brand the league, phrases right out of Bettman’s marketing handbook.

Pronger may not be so happy if he gets hurt on the soft ice here. Try marketing that.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.