Secretary_Salami: The case for British Ice Hockey

Ice hockey? The UK? Those two terms don’t go together that well, one might think. Do they even play ice hockey in the UK, I’ve heard people wonder. Doesn’t the UK suck at ice hockey? While justified questions that reflect on the current state of ice hockey in the UK, it has not always been like that, nor does it need to be like that in the future.

Surprisingly enough, the UK has a strong history with ice hockey. I’ll spare you the long history lesson and tl;dr, the UK has won the gold medal in the Olympics of 1936 and brought home many more medals in the 1920s and 1930s. Outside of the World Championships and Olympics, the first ever European game of ice hockey was played between Oxford and Cambridge in Switzerland and the first European ice hockey league was established in the UK in 1905. Take that Finland, Sweden and Russia!

While the national teams didn’t enjoy large-scale success on international arenas after the Second World War , the domestic league grew in popularity up until the beginning of the 2000s, when we saw the withdrawal of several teams from the league. Only recently has the new Elite Ice Hockey League managed to gain back the long-lost popularity, however it is still far behind the likes of the Swiss NLA, multinational KHL or Swedish SHL.

The historical case for the first ice hockey world cup since the 1950s to be held in the UK is there, far rooted in the sporting history of Britain. But what about the current state?

The ice hockey world is dominated by a few countries that year on end find themselves winning game after game, however team UK has not been able to rise up to the challenge of taking on the likes of Russia, Canada, the US, Finland or Sweden. Heck, team UK has for long struggled to even qualify to be in the final competition for the IIHF World Cup. However, even that has seen a positive change in recent times.

Team UK has qualified for the Skoda Cup, that is the world cup, twice in a row now. In 2019, in the UK’s first world cup since 1994, when it was looking grim for team UK, they managed to win the relegation game against team France in stunning fashion on overtime, making them through to the next world cup [M: supposed to be arranged in April 2020]. While the success of the national team has been moderate to say the least, they have been able to prove themselves worthy of staying in the running for the next world champion. What better way to honour that, than arranging the games in front of a British audience?

Furthermore, arguing the case on the benefits on the national league and with it, the economic benefits in the long run; there is a clear pattern of increased attendance rates at domestic league games in the season that followed hosting the world cup: Slovakia saw the attendance rate of their Extraliga rise by 43.1% after successfully hosting the 2019 world cup and the Danish Metal Ligaen’s attendance rates went up by 26% after hosting the 2018 world cup. The benefit that Britain hosting the IIHF World Cup would bring would be undeniable on the EIHL and the local teams, not to talk about the publicity the sport would get in the country.

Venues, I hear someone ask? The perception that the UK is some completely backwards country when it comes to ice sports is utterly false. In the 1990s, with the expansions of the domestic league, came a boom in building NHL-style facilities for ice hockey. While not as big in terms of capacity, certainly as high-quality and suitable for play. The two arenas I would suggest as hosting venues for the world cup games are the SSE Arena in Belfast and, while smaller in capacity, the Viola Arena in Cardiff. Should Viola Arena as a venue be rejected due to the limited capacity, England has various arenas to offer; the FlyDSA Arena in Sheffield or the National Ice Centre in Nottingham are far and beyond qualified as IIHF venues.

Hosting the games in Northern Ireland and Wales would spark long-needed interest, investment and tourism in these countries, which, undeniably have been forgotten about at times by the Westminster Government. I am sure the Northern Irish Executive and the Welsh Government would be overjoyed to welcome hundreds of thousands of ice hockey tourists to their respective countries, should a British bid for the games be successful, and I am sure both the Belfast Giants and the Cardiff Devils would welcome the attention and publicity that lendning their home arenas for the games would bring.

Now, what the next government, whomever that might be, must do, is to investigate a British bid for the 2026 IIHF World Cup thoroughly. With the evidence I tried to lay out, in my mind there should be no doubt that Britain could, and should, host the 2026 world championship games. With reports that ice hockey is the fastest growing winter sport in the country, with devoted fans and excellent venues in the country, it is time for us to make hay while the sun shines!

Secretary_Salami is the Deputy First Minister of Wales and a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The views in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Independent.