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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

Thanks Etienne, as you've probably guessed they don't show ice hockey on BBC Wales any more, or Glamorgan matches, or Welsh international football matches for that matter.

You should be very grateful you don't have to watch Glamorgan play at the moment. Even if this season has seen an improvement from abysmal to merely rubbish.

aaaahh Steve Moria, BBC Wales Monday nights, it's all coming back now



As for Glamorgan on BBC Wales,



and he played too,



It was a better time then.

A lot of the kids in school used to support the bracknell bees and would go to 'the beehive'. seems to have died a death, coinciding with Reading FC becoming rather good. Although even their recent demise has not seen the old black and yellow scarves reappear. Probably as its summer.

I once saw cardiff devils play, who were then the British champions, they played Moscow Dynamo in a curtain raiser charity shield sort of thing. lost 12-0

Jorge Porbillas wrote:

QUOTE:
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.

They are still playing at the 2,500 capacity Planet Ice Arena. A pre-fabricated structure down the Bay that I had never heard of until it hosted Sunday's Western Masters 6-a-side football tournament.

I once saw KISS play the old Cardiff Ice Rink, the pyro technician didn't allow for the lower roof than a normal arena venue and set the ceiling on fire.

Never having paid any attention to British Ice hockey, I decided to look up Steve Moria just now. It seems that while playing for Cardiff in 1988/89, he managed to score 178 points (85 goals, 93 assists) in 24 games.

This has to be some sort of world record.

What's a normal score in a British ice-hockey match, anyway? Do teams regularly score 8 or 9 goals per game?

I'd never heard of him either.

He scored 102 goals (and 232 points) for Blackburn in a longer season in 93-94.

Not bad for a guy who flopped with the New Haven Nighthawks.

More jaw-dropping stats here.

947 goals in 821 games since going to the UK. Unbelievable.

Are the BHL, BISL, BNL, EIHL and EPL all basically the same league with a bunch of re-brands, or are there actually divisions with relegation and promotion?

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

QUOTE:
Never having paid any attention to British Ice hockey, I decided to look up Steve Moria just now. It seems that while playing for Cardiff in 1988/89, he managed to score 178 points (85 goals, 93 assists) in 24 games.

This has to be some sort of world record.

What's a normal score in a British ice-hockey match, anyway? Do teams regularly score 8 or 9 goals per game?

That didn't put Moria in the Top ten that season. Scores were generally higher in the 80s, and there were more mismatches. A high-flying team would score 20 or more against shortbenched strugglers who would have some players on the ice for 45 minutes a game. When playing against a team operating three lines that can get ugly.

Today, scoring a point a game is the sign of a good forward, scoring two points a game would make someone the highest point scorer in the league. Teams average three or four goals a game.

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

QUOTE:
947 goals in 821 games since going to the UK. Unbelievable.

Are the BHL, BISL, BNL, EIHL and EPL all basically the same league with a bunch of re-brands, or are there actually divisions with relegation and promotion?

BHL, BISL, EIHL were all the top tier at the time, the EIHL being the current top tier. The standard varied according to the ability (and pay packets) of the Canadians playing in the league at the time, the Superleague (BISL) being a kind of bubble economy which attracted better players but had no sustainability. The BNL was the second tier. The EPL used to be the third tier, but since the BNL collapsed it is the second tier, without any change in playing standard.

It is several years since proper promotion and relegation systems have been in place, in that respect it has been a mess since the Superleague replaced the BHL.

It is a tad confusing to the newcomer. In summary the top level was: British Hockey League (1982-96), then Superleague (1996-2003), then a mess for a couple of years with both Elite League and British National League claiming to be the top level, until the BNL collapsed in 2005, leaving the situation we have today: the Elite League is the highest level, with the English and Scottish Premier leagues below it.