Hockey in NZ is a lot bigger than I expected before coming down here.
Not so much on the North Island, but on the South Island pretty much every town over 5000 people has an ice rink and a pretty decent minor hockey program. I play in a beer league that has quite a few players, and there's a higher organized league that gets newspaper coverage when they play.
A couple NHL games are on Sky Sports every weekend, and tonight there was a 1 hour NHL playoff preview on Sky Sports 1 right in the middle of prime time.
They're never going to be top-10 in the world, but I'd be surprised if they aren't top-20 in 10 years time. There's a solid level of infrastructure, some good grass roots stuff happening, and the level of players being produced is not half bad.
The had a solid showing (3rd in their pool) in Division II at this year's World Championships, so they should move up several spots in the world rankings again.
They seem to be the kid brother of Austraila even in hockey though, reading the latest wc (div II) results. I guess Austraila will next year play in div I with some pretty decent competition, with teams with some top level experience in the past. A lot of ex soviet states, great britain, italy etc.
Kiwi's ended up picking up the Silver. They narrowly lost to Serbia but did beat Belgium. More information here:
http://www.iihf.com/de/home-of-hock....html?tx_ttnews[backPid]=955&cHash=4eaf6b5019
New Zealand certainly is slightly behind Australia, although they did for the first time defeat them last year in a game that got some national attention.
The New Zealand National Hockey League is growing stronger and stronger every year and is starting to develop some talent. Some of the better players have been starting to play in Canada with others playing minor pro in Germany. Junior A I believe is the highest a Kiwi has made it in Canada.
What remains a major hindrance to bringing the sport closer to mainstream is the price and the limited rink time. The sheer cost of getting gear over to New Zealand adds hundreds of dollars to even the cheapest equipment.
Plus, in New Zealand's biggest city there's only two rinks which between them host:
- A 4 division Beer League
- Home rinks to two National League teams
- U19, U16 and Junior leagues
- Figure Skating
- Curling
It is a growing sport here though. With SkyTV starting to show a game or two of the NHL a week as well as NHL On the Fly for the playoffs, the attention's starting to be piqued of people who usually wouldn't bother with such a minority sport.
There's a relatively small but pretty passionate NHL community here, many who post on HFBoards. Sadly though, many have removed their New Zealand flag from their user after having their opinions dismissed simply because they are Kiwi's.
But, it's a great achievement for a small country with a smaller hockey population. Glad some of you took the time to read it. Corey's a great guy who's done pretty much everything one could do hockey wise in New Zealand. Glad to see him go out on such a high note.