Opening Day will be at the Brimstone Arena on Sunday June 22nd @ 3 PM EST (8 PM GMT)

Lots of news and stuff before we get started so here goes:

The Player Signing Period will close tomorrow and teams that want to sign more than 6 players will be able to do so.

As of right now, the Little Latvia Grizzlies are on a hiatus from the league as they look for a new owner. What that means is that we will only have 7 teams in the league, and because of this we're re-conferencing the Loveshack Lemon Lollies into the Eastern Conference.

This gives us 3 teams in the Western Conference and 4 teams in the Eastern Conference. As of right now, we do not have a regular season schedule made up (Owners keep posted on /r/NDZHLOwners for news on that) but for now we can schedule the Opening Day game times and festivities. Since this will probably be the only time all the teams will be together in one arena I've decided that for Opening Day we will all get our 1 inter-conference game in, with Western teams playing Eastern teams.

The festivities and game times (in EST) are as follows:

• 3:00 PM - Opening Ceremony (I'm sure someone will come up with something for this, whether it's launching fireworks or an elaborate choreographed dance number).

• 3:02 PM - Mt. Augusta vs. Aytos SK The opening game will be between an experienced team and a new expansionary team who's owner is familiar with NDZ hockey. This allows everyone to get a glimpse at how the game is played.

• 3:15 PM - Swisston vs. Orion Another inter-league game, with the Beasts from the East battling the Best of the West (nicknames subject to change).

• 3:30 PM - Brimstone vs. Roma A game between two completely new teams, and the host of the Opening Day festivities gets their chance to shine.

• 3:45 PM - Brimstone vs. Loveshack The way last season worked each home team played two games on any given gameday. We'll keep that trend going here as Brimstone and Loveshack will finish the Opening Day festivities with the first conference game of the season.

• 4:00 PM - Celebration Post game commentary will be provided as well as an all out fist fight if the matches get a little too rough. This will be followed by goodbyes from all players as we depart from Brimstone on the rails headed home.

For those who are new to the NDZHL, I highly recommend you log out in Brimstone before gameday. It makes it so we can get started much faster and don't have to wait on people traveling the rails who under-estimated how long it would take for them to get to Brimstone.

All in all, this Opening Day is going to be incredible and I hope to see a lot of fans. Thanks to Brimstone for allowing us to hold it in their arena and for the support of everyone in the league.

Let's play some hockey! :D