From Across The Pond
Hello fight fans and welcome to the first article of what I hope will be a long series. This column is going to be about the rough stuff in hockey generally, although mainly about the NHL. These articles will be strongly opinionated, so if there’s anything you disagree with, my e-mail is provided. I’m always happy to hear from anyone.
Firstly I’d like to tell you a bit about me, my
background and how I came to be writing this. My name is Ben Lloyd,
I am 16 and I live in Cardiff, which is in South Wales. For those of
you who have no idea where Wales is, it’s the small but
different country just across the border from England. On a map,
it’s the bit sticking out from the middle left part of Britain. This
means that hopefully these columns will have a different viewpoint
from all the others, from the other side of the Atlantic. I am a
supporter of my local side, the Cardiff Devils, and have no
particular attachment to any NHL team. I watch as much North
American hockey as I can, which is not much in this country. To give
you an idea about how low hockey is on the list of sports in
Britain, the deciding game of the Stanley Cup last year was cut from
our screens halfway into the first OT, and many hockey fans saw
Brett Hull’s goal for the first time at the beginning of October. At
the moment, I get to see one or maybe two games a week.
As I don’t have much space now, I thought I’d just
tell you a couple of things about British Ice Hockey. The top league
is the ISL, there are 8 teams in it, and it is basically a graveyard
for North American and Scandinavian veterans or players who couldn’t
make the grade. There is very little British talent to go around,
and the national side is trying to gain promotion to Pool B, which
means that very soon GB could be in the World Championships. There
may be a couple of familiar names to North American readers, such as
Frank Pietrangelo, who is in goal for Manchester Storm and a couple
of years ago Glenn Anderson played three games for Cardiff, but the
Devils could not afford to keep him. At one time British hockey was
one of the most physical styles in the world, but with the influx of
foreign players the standard has risen, and now the league is about
as tough as the NHL. The toughest guy in the league is probably Matt
Hoffman, and last season playing for Cardiff was former New York
Islanders enforcer Mike MacWilliam.
Well, that’s a bit about me and where I come from.
Nexttime I will be getting down to the serious stuff.
