Ice hockey in Australia has been enjoying a slow but steady progression into the world of Australian sports over the past few years.
In the past two weeks, the Australian men and U18 boys teams have both won gold medals in their World Championship Divisions, and will be promoted.
In February, our women’s team took top seeds Netherlands all the way to a shootout, but lost by one penalty shot to be left with a still-impressive silver medal, though not yet promotion.
Two of these World Championship events were held here in Australia, in Melbourne and in Newcastle.
And while the sport’s biggest show is under way – the NHL’s Stanley Cup finals – the Australian Ice Hockey League began last week with a league now boasting eight teams, with Perth in a trial process looking to join next in 2012.
The Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) includes two teams from each of Melbourne and Sydney, with one from Adelaide, Gold Coast, Canberra and Newcastle. The NSW Central Coast had a team from 2005-2008.
AIHL teams play 24 games each that stretch from April to August, with the finals tournament held on the first weekend of September.
As the results of the Australian national teams prove, the high standard set by the AIHL is equivalent or exceeds some of the European leagues. The Aussie men’s team defeated Belgium and Serbia in the World Championships early this month, which both have national professional leagues.
The semi-professional AIHL is able to punch above its weight for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the AIHL runs in the off-season of the Northern Hemisphere leagues.
The second is that the lifestyle and weather of an Australian winter is often as attractive as a summer in colder climes, with the benefits of travelling and playing hockey in and around Australia.
With most of the teams enjoying the services of professional or college-level import players, and local players mostly picked from the Australian men’s, junior and youth teams, the AIHL feel they have something to brag about.
Certainly mainstream media is starting to come around.
While coverage has always been strong in the smaller communities such as Canberra, Adelaide and Newcastle, penetration has been minimal in the country’s two biggest footy strongholds, Melbourne and Sydney.
Melbourne, however, is starting to come around after the Olympic dual-rink facility opened on the doorstep to the CBD in time for last year’s Vancouver Winter Olympics. The success of the 2010 AIHL Finals and this year’s IIHF World Championships has seen increased media interest and almost surprise from major papers.
AIHL Finals were broadcast on Fox Sports in 2008 and 2009, but other than local news coverage the AIHL hasn’t been able to get the interest of the big-city free-to-air networks.
The AIHL believe that it will be word of mouth, quality of entertainment and innovative communication such as social media that will give them the break they need to leave novelty behind and reach the status of being a major minor sport.
Success, as they say, doesn’t happen overnight.
jocus
Guest
There's definitely interest in ice hockey in Sydney but there's a large difference in awareness of the sport. A lot of people are completely unaware of the opportunity to play ice hockey in Sydney, let alone Australia. Simple advertising in local newspapers can draw larger crowds to games and from there participation/awareness of ice hockey. A problem with the growth of the sport in terms of participation is cost and time. The cost of equipment and entry into the ice rink for development is definitely a turn off when compared to the cost of playing a sport like football. It can take a lot of time to learn how to skate and play, especially at an older age. It would be great to see at least one NHL/AIHL game on One HD broadcasted each week.
Big Steve
Guest
the biggest problem with the groth of hockey in Australia is the difficulty in getting a game. As a b/c leauge player its to hard to find a team to play in as demand exceeds the number of teams. the closing of black town has made this worse. This is making a niche sport even harder to get into and means one of the greatest sports in the world to play will never have significant expsnsion in Aust. Go Avs.
p.Tah
Guest
In Sydney ice hockey is becoming more and more popular with high school kids. I'm not aware if there are any comps for them to play but they certainly follow the NHL eagerly. I've attended a few NHL games. Amazing skills and exciting to watch. It would be good if the game increased it's presence here.
Ice Pete
Roar Pro
I know you're trolling here Sharminator but for the benefit of others: * All sports were minority sports at some time, Rugby League was a rebel sport back in 1907, which incidently was the time when ice hockey first began in Australia. Ice hockey was quite popular and well known in the 50's and 70's, but was at the mercy of rinks closing or financial troubles * The outside weather hasn't been a factor since the 1880s when indoors refrigerated rinks were invented, nothing better for the kids than to play hockey on a hot summer's day, so nice inside the rink! Other comments aren't worthy of a response. I'm quite happy you don't care Sharminator, that means you don't need to comment on any future articles or comments. For those who have mentioned TV rights: the AIHL have been trying to do so for a few years now. Currently the only way to get onto TV is to pay to be played, rather than the other way around. For now it's likely to be online TV or streaming that will provide fans the opportunity to watch games they can't attend.
sharminator
Guest
Its nice that some people are keen on minority sports. But come on .. you are having a laugh .. we dont have much ice in Australia .. and no Australian city ever has regular snowfalls. We are a beachside, sunny country. A sport based on ice and cold weather is never going to be popular here ,,, like surf life saving is never going to be popular in Russia. And there are not exactly a plethora of ice rinks where kiddies can get into the sport. The comment above that Ice Hockey is "bigger than the storm for interest" in Melbourne is simply laughable. "In the past two weeks, the Australian men and U18 boys teams have both won gold medals in their World Championship Divisions, and will be promoted." The key point is ... in what divisions ... in the Mens Seniors we competed in IIHF World Championship Division II Group A ... and after the championships we were ranked 34th in the world. Ice Hockey ... who cares ...
al
Guest
or the crowds?
Daniels
Guest
not knowing alot about ice hockey but rom what i saw, these guys deserve a far higher amount of respect than some other sports around the place (I have netball, WNBL, NBL and baseball in mind here
PaddyBoy
Guest
That's because baseball is huge in western Sydney.
Timothy Flynn
Guest
This is the fastest sport on earth. The venues in Sydney and Melbourne are good, the rest very average. The idea of TV has been canvassed before and it never ceases to amaze me that Baseball what a reckon is a lot of coverage for a minority sport on One HD. Perhaps they can dip their toe and start supporting the locaL AIHL competition. Come to Liverpool Ice Rink and see the Ice Dogs battle for the 2011 season. Go Doggies!!!!!
Kasey
Guest
@John..point by point 1. TV coverage of games, I don't see why this cant happen...ABC Sport would be the logical choice 2. promotion could lead to bigger arenas, I don't believe the Adelaide Super dome(36ers is able to host Ice hockey, but I could be wrong. 3. The A-League is hardly a debacle....typical of a (probable) sokkah-hater - you cant resist getting a dig in at football in an article about "Ice Hockey" for crying out loud. Yes, expansion of the HAL could have been handled better. TV rights...Foxtel were the ONLY mob willing to pony up(in 2005) some money for a comp that didn't exist yet....lets just wait and see how things go with the re-negotiation(in 2012-13) before we start labeling the HAL TV deal a debacle shall we. Finally, I think the word you were searching for in an attempt to look intelligent was compliment, as in: "If the AIHL take these points into consideration, who knows we might just have ourselves a nice little niche comp to COMPLIMENT our football codes in the winter." accommodate does not fit your sentence..next time try harder and perhaps read the article, as the OP states the AIHL takes place during the seasons of our dominant football codes and for this reason, the best I feel the league can aim for is niche status, but there's no reason it cant be a well run and interesting niche league..good luck to them I say.
John
Guest
Very interesting article. If I could just make a couple of points / suggestions. 1) Get some TV rights with 1 game on free-to-air. I assume the ABC could pick up one game. Lets face it, the rights won't be much, but with a bit of promotion who knows. 2) In my home town of Melbourne, if the team becomes big enough in the long term there is always the opportunity to start playing games at Hi-Sense arena, where I believe the technology exists for there to be an ice lay-out. This could be the same in other cities. 3) Learn from the debacle that is the A-League. Whether this be expansion, TV rights and coverage, home grounds (in this case rinks), relationships with other sports, media and governments and finally promotion and advertisement. If the AIHL take these points into consideration, who knows we might just have ourselves a nice little niche comp to accommodate our football codes in the winter.
James
Guest
'Bigger than the Storm for interest'...interesting statement. I wonder what the pay TV figures say about that........
The recalcitrant
Guest
In Melbourne at least the Melbourne Ice is bigger than the Storm for interest.
Kasey
Guest
I went to 2 Adrenaline games last year and thought it was great fun, even if the Ice ArenA is a dowdy old dump of a place to watch a game at...I wish a minor League or NCAA college hockey arena could be cloned and plonked down in Adelaide's CBD ASAP. Would only have to seat 1000 to 2000 and it would be perfect:) A New season begins very shortly and I'll definitely be at the drop of that first puck.
PaddyBoy
Guest
Went to the finals last yeat, flew down from Sydney to yo see the mighty Bears. Surprising level of quality in the AIHL.
Adrenaline Fan
Guest
Interest in Ice Hockey is certainly alive and well in Adelaide, most games are pretty packed out at the Ice ArenA and every time I mention to people that Adelaide has an Ice Hockey team they want to know how they can get tickets to games etc. It's a shame the Ice ArenA is such a small venue because with the right marketing the Adrenaline could easily pull in larger crowds.
Cracker
Guest
I'm surprised it's as developed in Australia as this article says. But I did get into it when I was a kid watching Mighty Ducks. The NHL is on Fox Sports these days so it gets some coverage. I follow Vancouver after visiting my cousins this time last year and being caught up in the fanatical following the sport has over there. A busy city virtually shuts down when a Vancouver Canucks game starts. It was interesting that while Canadians love pro ice hockey that a lot of them actually play rugby union. The participation for rugby was quite extensive but there is limited professional opportunities, a bit similar to field hockey in parts of Australia.