BASINGSTOKE – UK. What a year it has been for international hockey. Vancouver 2010 Olympics graced us with the worlds brightest stars and with a brilliant climax to the games between USA and Canada. Fast forward to May and Germany and Cologne, Mannheim and Gelsenkirchen, towns you wouldn’t normally associate with ice hockey. But what these towns have offered from the 7 th of May has been some of the most exciting international hockey in a long while.
The annual Ice Hockey World Championships can be a hit or miss experience as often it depends on what players are available to the teams and whether or not the available players are interested in joining their national teams after a grueling regular season in their respective leagues.
This year the competition has unfortunately coincided with the Olympic games and many players have declined the opportunity to play at the world stage. In some cases declining to play has resulted in a national out cry as it was with Sidney Crosby, and followed by criticism by the heads of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association Kalervo Kummola, and the President of IIHF, Rene Fasel and Jaromir Jagr. Crosby understandably declined after reaching the Stanley Cup finals in two consecutive years, playing at the Olympics and then going to the second round in the 2010 Stanley Cup play offs. Kummola meanwhile criticized younger Finnish players for not attending, a sentiment closely echoed by Jagr.
Whilst some of the bigger stars may have said no, one look at Canada’s and Russia’s rosters tells you otherwise. Ovechkin, Semin, Kovalchuck, Gonchar, Malkin and Varlamov are just a few to mention for the Russians while Canada has, Cory Perry, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, Matt Duchene, Francois Beauchemin and Brent Burns.
Lack of stars or not, the games have provided great entertainment. Who would’ve thought that Denmark would be playing in the Quarter Finals, or Switzerland beating Canada, or Russia only managing to get 3 goals past Belarus despite their immense firepower. Perhaps most shocking of all was the NHL studded roster of USA falling in the first stage of the competition and narrowly avoiding relegation. Though the USA will be in the competition next year, rather embarrassingly it won its last game against Italy only after penalty shoot-out.
At the time of writing this the Quarter Finals are in progress and rather surprisingly two teams that many weren’t perhaps expecting to see this late in the tournament are Denmark who play their Scandinavian counterparts Sweden and the host nation Germany, who face their rivals Switzerland. Other pairings in the Quarter Finals are Olympic re-matches in Finland – Czech Republic and Russia – Canada.
Though it is an Olympic year, the IIHF World Championships have provided possibly the most exciting ice hockey in the World Championship level in a long while. Germany too has played a brilliant host to the games, drawing over 400,000 spectators to enjoy the hockey and it seems the beverages. It is also worth noting that the opening match between Germany and USA set a world record for spectators after the game was played in front of a capacity crowd over 76,000 at Gelsenkirchen Veltins-Arena, home to Schalke FC of the Bundesliga.
Contact Janne.Virtanen@prohockeynews.com
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