British Ice Hockey

[bovril]

Is it any good?

I really enjoy watching North American matches on TV - and i quite fancy watching some over here

Anyone been?

[ad hoc]

British Ice Hockey

Go. The standard will be a lot lower than the NHL, but it's a great experience, and much much more enjoyable live than on TV. (Plus you can actually see where the puck is)

[ad hoc]

British Ice Hockey

I should say, I haven't been to any games in Britain, but I watch it fairly frequently in Romania (where the standard is a I believe slightly lower than Britain)

[ursus arctos]

British Ice Hockey

What ad hoc said. It's a great sport to watch in person at any level.

And the NHL will be back in London for another early season match before too long.

I would also highly recommend the Swiss League for unparalleled atmosphere (even if the standard of play in Russia, Finland, Sweden and maybe the Czech Republic is higher).

[bovril]

British Ice Hockey

i am reasonably close to Sheffield. Do Manchester have a team?

Are the arenas full though? Or is the atmosphere a bit crap in front of a small crowd?

[ad hoc]

British Ice Hockey

Sheffield's team are (or at least were) one of the best in the country, I think. Though it seems these days that Coventry are the top team.

I thionk Coventry are coming to my town for the qualifying round of this year's ice hockey equivalent of the Champion's League.

[Mitch]

British Ice Hockey

I used to watch Sheffield Steelers when I lived there, and they used to get a full crowd. Although the last game I went was Basingtonstoke Bisons, and they're not really well-supported.

It's a great, cheap, night out, but I don't know how good the standard is? At least, I think it's fine, but my friend from Vancouver who I go with thinks it's pretty amateur stuff.

[ad hoc]

British Ice Hockey

I think he's probably right, but I think whether that matters terribly depends on whether you have experienced top-class hockey live. I never had, having just enjoyed the NHL on TV, so what I see here (while recognisably inferior skill-wise even to a novice) is actually much better because the live experience makes such a difference.

[Mitch]

British Ice Hockey

Yeah, I suppose it's a bit like watching live boxing really, in that it only makes sense as a spectacle when you realise how brutal it can be!

[evilC]

British Ice Hockey

Blimey! Only just noticed this thread.

I used to go to watch Guildford Flames occasionally and it was pretty good. They only ever played in the second tier of English Hockey and have remained all the stronger for it, as the top flight seems to have frequently been in turmoil over the last couple of decades. (I think they actually can't be promoted due to insufficient capacity (or something) at their arena, the Spectrum Centre.) I never saw a sell-out crowd at the Spectrum, even though I thought I was choosing some of the 'big-rivalry' fixtures to go to: Slough Jets, Basingstoke Bison, Bracknell Bees.

Anyway, yeah - it's okay. As others have said, just don't expect NHL, Scandinavian or Russian-standard hockey.

http://www.britishicehockey.co.uk/

Looks like it's in the middle of being updated. Hopefully that is the case, as I believe that is the definitive British hockey site.

And a journalists' site:

http://www.ihjuk.co.uk/

[Gangster Octopus]

British Ice Hockey

Whatever happened to the Harringey Flyers?

[Oldelpaso]

British Ice Hockey

British hockey is North American in style, as opposed to the less physical style favoured on the continent. This is largely due to the long history of clubs employing Canadian cast-offs. At the highest level (the Elite League) the standard is probably equivalent to the ECHL (third tier in North America). The arena era is over, after several teams went bust, and teams have now realised that they need to develop at least some British players to stay in business.

Manchester does have a team, Manchester Phoenix (who I watch from time to time), but as they play in Altrincham its the wrong side of the city for easy access from Yorkshire. The best introduction would probably be a Sheffield-Nottingham match, its the biggest rivalry in British hockey, or the lesser rivalry of a Roses match.

The biggest teams are the survivors from the arena era, Sheffield, Nottingham and Belfast. They get average crowds of 3-4,000. The likes of Coventry and Manchester get about 2,000 and perennial EIHL strugglers Basingstoke and Edinburgh get a few hundred. There is no promotion and relegation; instead there is a lot of political wrangling. The (English) second tier are almost all based in the south, the exception being Sheffield Scimitars, the "other" Sheffield team. The fact that Sheffield can sustain two teams pretty much makes it Britain's Hockeytown. Below that comes the English National League, probably the equivalent of non-league.

Generally British hockey is a small but friendly community.

[Kowalski]

British Ice Hockey

How are Cardiff getting on?

I used to watch their highlights on BBC Wales and I remember they won all everything about 16 years ago. They also used to have a 16 year old keeper who was interesting someone in the NHL.

[Reed John]

British Ice Hockey

That sounds good. Having been to several ECHL games I can say that the lower standard of play is more than compensated for by the price of the tickets and one's proximity to the action.

Of course, I love hockey so much that I can find high school hockey (or worse) entertaining.

[ursus arctos]

British Ice Hockey

High school hockey is generally quite entertaining.

We've just lost our hockey team over a stupid fight with the municipal authorities over use of the rink. Which means that the Italian league will now consist exclusively of teams from ski resorts and mountain towns, which is quite a shame.

This being Italy, nothing is over until it's over, but it may be time to start looking at the fixtures for Lugano and Ambri-Piotta (the journey to Lugano takes half as long as that to what is now our nearest Italian club).

[Etienne]

British Ice Hockey

Kowalski, Cardiff seem to a mid-table side at the moment. They had a bit of disruption recently as the Ice Rink was knocked down to make way for a retail development, not quite sure whether they are still playing in a temporary venue.

[Stumpy Pepys]

British Ice Hockey

I used to get free tickets to watch the London Knights in Docklands. Decent evening out and not bad crowds.

The entire London team was Canadian of course.

[evilC]

British Ice Hockey

London used to be one of the only teams to get the occasional ex-NHLer in their ranks. They even had a few good-ish ones in the last NHL strike season, I seem to remember.

I always thought it was a shame that the Battersea Power Station (whose state is a crying shame anyway) was never made into a multi-purpose sports/music venue. It could have been a 20,000-seater ice rink, convertible to basketball arena and concert hall - all with ample bar/restaurant space. It would have been awesome (and I say that with no hint of an American accent!). I was doubly surprised when such plans were not included in the Olympics scheme. A real opportunity missed, I think.

[Jorge Porbillas]

British Ice Hockey

Cardiff Devils were playing on a temporary surface in the Bay whilst their rink was being built and they were training in Bristol - not sure what's happened recently.

I watched Deeside's under 19s play recently - only because the family had been skating and their match kicked off (?) just as we were having a quick panad in the rinkside cafe.

The standard was really good - well, considering I'd just spent the best part of three ours on my arse any sort of skating about dead fast would have been good!

[ursus arctos]

British Ice Hockey

"they dropped the puck", Jorge.

[blameless]

British Ice Hockey

Ah, the London Knights. I saw a few of their games 8-9 years ago, but it always seemed to me that they were a bit of an artificial creation, plonked in London to attract passing trade, and lacking the hardcore of fans that the likes of Sheffield or Bracknell brought with them. I was sad (but not surprised) to see them go under.

Somewhat surprisingly - as the majority of the UK ice-hockey scene is centred around S.England - the oldest continuous rivalry is between two Scottish teams: Fife Flyers and Paisley Pirates have been slamming each other into the walls since the late 1940s.

[Gangster Octopus]

British Ice Hockey

I used to work with someone who married a Canadian Ice Hockey player who came over to play for Bracknell. Or Basingstoke. Somewhere like that...

[NHH]

British Ice Hockey

This is a fascinating scene - I've been rotting around on Wikipedia, and the following questions came to mind:

1) Why do these leagues fold and start with such regularity? It seems there's a base for British ice hockey which has been ill-served by revamps, rebrands, reorganisations and such like. I heard that in the 50s and 60s, there was real hope for the sport which faded as they never took their advantages. In the early noughties, I recall Manchester Storm being touted as having a very different, family-friendly offering to football which could threaten smaller tams in the manchester area. Yet they folded about two years later.

2) The Storm were reformed by their fans as the Phoenix. Are they still owned by supporters, or have they sold out? How are they owned and run?

Anyone able to help?

As an aside, I attended a meeting of London Knights fans in about 2003; they were wondering if they could do the same as the fans in Manchester after AEG pulled out. Nothing veer came of it I suppose, but was noticeable was the feeling that although they had all started off as consumers, they had become fans, and AEG had no sense of what this shift meant.

[Oldelpaso]

British Ice Hockey

I'll try, given that I wrote a large chunk of the Wikipedia article on the Elite League

1) A lot of it is tied to the fortunes of rinks. In British ice hockey's golden era of the 1930s to 1950s there were far more rinks in the country, and ice skating was a popular pastime. By the 1960s many rinks had shut, and the league was no longer viable. National competition returned in 1982, and ran with a degree of stability for more than a decade.

Then came the mid-nineties and the Superleague. Again, this was partly driven by the available venues - arenas in Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle were all built, and their operators launched ice hockey and basketball teams to inhabit them. In attempts to buy success, team rosters became dominated by Canadians and Americans, without a single homegrown player in some cases. The popularity of the sport soared for a while, and a match between Manchester Storm and Sheffield Steelers even broke the European attendance record. However, the novelty faded and crowds dwindled. The arena overheads remained, and consequently several teams went under. In 2002, the Superleague faced the prospect of having only 4 teams for the new season, and folded completely. The fallout from that still has reverberations today.

Two leagues attempted to fill the void, the existing second tier (the British National League) and the new Elite League. Oodles of politics and various parties acting out of self-interest followed. Only one league survived, the Elite League. The BNL sides either joined the Elite League or stepped down a level. The Elite League is looking like it might be more sustainable than some of its predecessors, but only time will tell.

2) Financially and legally Phoenix are a separate entity to Storm; the rights to the Storm name got trapped in legal administrative hell, plus in the final months Storm acquired a reputation for not paying bills. So a clean break was made.

Phoenix are bankrolled by a guy called Neil Morris, and have been from when the team first took to the ice. He makes his money from corporate event management or something like that. He's the one who put up the money for the new rink in Altrincham. Almost all roles within the club are held by people who were involved in Friends of Manchester Ice Hockey (FOMIH), the group you mentioned. Most of them are volunteers.

[Moonlight Shadow]

British Ice Hockey

I live very close to where the Phoenix play and I was tempted to catch a game or two. Small rink, robust hockey and what seems to be an active community but the prices(15£ the cheapest seat) put me off. That's how much you paid to watch the Swiss league playoffs final in Geneva this season just gone(it's a a tenner during the regular season)

The Storm were the exact opposite, it was cheap as chips to watch them and it attracted lots of dads with kids which meant the place felt like a kindergarten the time I went. They did have some pretty impressive crowds, filling up the MEN arena a few times (18K) mind you.