Mongolia planning its first indoor facility

[MeHateHe]

no apparent completion date, but concept planned.
A new home for hockey: North Van architect designs Mongolia’s first indoor rink

Click to read more...

 

[singlesliceofcheese]

no apparent completion date, but concept planned.
A new home for hockey: North Van architect designs Mongolia’s first indoor rink

That's great. Albeit, it will be quite some time before we ever hear of a Mongolian player anywhere. The country lacks serious infrastructure.

 

[S E P H]

That's great. Albeit, it will be quite some time before we ever hear of a Mongolian player anywhere. The country lacks serious infrastructure.

During winter they have like 200 rinks made country-wide so the desire is there, but sort of crazy how they have zero. I am not excepting a 14,000 seat arena, but at least something. Something.

 

[Rcknrollkillnmachine]

Possible KHL destination.

 

[Yellow and the green]

Possible KHL destination.

not at least with this arena having only capacity of 2600

 

[JMCx4]

Very old thread. Construction of the "Ice Palace" began in April 2019 according to this National Teams of Ice Hockey article. This Press Reader article from April 2020 cites construction delays, but an October 10, 2020 opening was promised. I couldn't find any later web info on progress or opening of the facility.

 

[Albatros]

Very old thread. Construction of the "Ice Palace" began in April 2019 according to this National Teams of Ice Hockey article. This Press Reader article from April 2020 cites construction delays, but an October 10, 2020 opening was promised. I couldn't find any later web info on progress or opening of the facility.

This may answer your question regarding the situation in October at least (watch on Facebook):

 

[JMCx4]

This may answer your question regarding the situation in October at least ...

Thanks, that fills in the blank quite clearly (and melodically). At least it was starting to look like an ice arena at the time it was scheduled to be completed. The construction business is the same the world over.

 

[Lunacy]

This topic led me to this video on hockey in mongolia which was pretty cool. 5 years old but tried searching for it and didnt see any previous topic on it so.

 

[cjeagle]

Mongolia hosted the World Hockey Division IV Championships in their spanking new Arena this year. Here is the deciding match of the tournament which the Philippines won 7-6 in OT over Mongolia.

 

[GindyDraws]

Philippines is basically the worst team in the world, but good on Mongolia to finally get an arena built.

 

[SemireliableSource]

The worst team in the world who won a tournament between themselves and three other teams? Wouldn't that indicate they're not the worst team in the world?

 

[GindyDraws]

The worst team in the world who won a tournament between themselves and three other teams? Wouldn't that indicate they're not the worst team in the world?

I said "basically". The Division IV tier of hockey consists of nations where they do play hockey but the infrastructure is nonexistent, meaning they're the worst teams in the world and they're fighting to be the best of the worst.

Also, they were ranked last in the previous IIHF rankings before the new ones came out that bumped them above Singapore and Iran.

 

[cjeagle]

I said "basically". The Division IV tier of hockey consists of nations where they do play hockey but the infrastructure is nonexistent, meaning they're the worst teams in the world and they're fighting to be the best of the worst.

Also, they were ranked last in the previous IIHF rankings before the new ones came out that bumped them above Singapore and Iran.

To summarize a short history of Ice Hockey in the Philippines I will repost a reply I made in another thread.

Hockey was introduced to locals back in the 1990's when the first ice skating rink was built in a mall(today the Philippines have a total of 4 ice skating rinks most of which are located near the capital) and kids got motivated to play it after watching Disney's Mighty Ducks movies. Some of those kids grew up to be pioneers and early members of the national team.

An unofficial national team named "Manila Pilipinas" first participated at the HKAHC Invitational Amateur Ice Hockey Tournament in 2005 in Hongkong. They were second runners-up team in the Bauhinia Division, the lowest of the three divisions in the invitational tournament.

The Philippine national team participated again at the 2014 edition of the HKAHC invitational tournament. The team were champions of the Silver Plate Division, the second highest division in the tournament. It was in this tournament that the Philippines first played against another national side. They won 10–0 over a Macau squad, sanctioned by the Macau Ice Sports Federation.

A national federation the FIHL was formed in 2015 and they became an associate member of the IIHF the following year on May 2016. The Philippine national team participated once again at the HKAHC Invitational Amateur Ice Hockey Tournament for the 2016 edition. They settled for first runner-up place after they lost 4–3 in overtime to Mitsubishi Corp. in the Gold Plate Division final the highest division of the tournament. They also played against the national team of Oman in the tournament which they defeated 9-0.

After gaining IIHF associate membership ni 2016, the Philippine national team participated at the 2017 Asian Winter Games, which was their first official tournament. They participated in Division II of the tournament. The team lost 10–5 in their first official match against Kyrgyzstan. Philippines secured their first official win as an IIHF member when they defeated Qatar with a score of 14–2 and this was followed by an 8–3 triumph against Kuwait, who were competing as the Independent Olympic Athletes. The team finished third in their division following their 9–2 win over Macau in the play-off for third place.

Also in the same year, the Philippines participated in ice hockey at the 2017 Southeast Asian Games which is the biggest sporting event in SEA and is a high profile media event in the region that helped elevate the sport of ice hockey in the national consciousness where they won the Gold medal after defeating Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. It is during and after this event that the local media first started following the team and writing articles about ice hockey regularly. To prepare for the tournament, instead of joining another invitational club tournament abroad, the Philippines organized the 2017 Philippine Ice Hockey Tournament where they finished third to New York-based Islanders Red and first placed Singaporean side Pandoo Nation that consisted of many players from different nations including the US, Canada, Japan and Singapore.

In 2018 the Philippines decided to host the Top Division of the IIHF Challenge Cup of Asia from 3 to 8 April 2018, their first IIHF-sanctioned tournament where they settled for bronze(based on goal differential) after tying in points with champions Mongolia and runners-up Thailand. The national team improved its best finish in the tournament in the following edition of the tournament in 2019 hosted in Malaysia. They lost to Mongolia in the final settling for second place.

They experienced a slight bump in their upward trend in 2019 after finishing 3rd in the SEA Games next to champions Thailand and runner up Singapore due to untimely injury issues and last minute coaching changes. The lack of preparation showed. They then went on hiatus for the next few years due to the COVID Pandemic postponing their scheduled entry to the IIHF World Championships in 2020 after gaining full IIHF membership in 2019.

They would finally make their IIHF World Championship debut by taking part in the 2023 Division IV tournament in Mongolia this year in the process defeating their former tormentor and host Mongolia to win the Gold medal. They swept all three games against Indonesia 14-0, Mongolia 7-6 in OT(margin should have been higher except for all the penalties levied against them which allowed Mongolia to catch up), and Kuwait 14-0 to earn a promotion to Division III B.

They are already making plans on doing better next year in the 2024 Division IIIB World Championships and preparing for the revival of ice hockey in the SEA Games in 2025 in Thailand where they will need to take into account the Thai Swede reinforcements of the Thai national ice hockey team which plays in a higher division(IIIA) of the IIHF World Championships. Fortunately the coach and program director they just hired this year knows the Thai national team inside out as the former Thai national team coach the past few years and they have 2 years to prepare for them.

 

[cjeagle]

I said "basically". The Division IV tier of hockey consists of nations where they do play hockey but the infrastructure is nonexistent, meaning they're the worst teams in the world and they're fighting to be the best of the worst.

Also, they were ranked last in the previous IIHF rankings before the new ones came out that bumped them above Singapore and Iran.

With regards to infrastructure the Philippines actually has 4 indoor ice hockey rinks (2 of which are Olympic sized). Mongolia by comparision only has one indoor ice hockey rink the one shown in the video which they just constructed. Before that they basically played ice hockey outdoors when the weather permits it.

As I enumerated in the previous post above the Philippines have been competing in various competitions(including the IIHF sponsored Challenge Cup) and won many of them against many nations in the region. It took them awhile to get full IIHF membership(because of all the IIHF requirements) which allowed them to join the IIHF World Championships, but when they finally did thsi year they promptly won the DIV IV division by lopsided scores of 14-0, 7-6 OT (margin should have been higher over Mongolia but a lot of penalties were levied against them by the somewhat biased referee allowing the host to catch up) and 14-0. That is pretty dominating to me. They also have won games in other tournaments from teams in the Div IIIA and IIIB IIHF World Championships in the past so we know they will be competitive in those as well when they start competing next year after getting promoted.

The IIHF has very strict rules and requirements for gaining full IIHF membership and accumulating points to be listed in the IIHF rankings which is why there are only around 50 countries in the list. Those include infrastructure requirements(presence of ice hockey rinks with international caliber dimensions), the presence of an IIHF sanctioned national ice hockey club league, recognition and membership by their federation in the country's IOC(Olympic) council, a development program for both men and women, etc.

The Philippines had to tick each of those one at a time before being given full IIHF membership(they were previously an associate member for a couple of years while fulfilling all those requirements) in 2019 so it took them some time to get ranked but as you can see from their results they actually belong to a higher IIHF WHC tier and a higher rank already.

They were scheduled to make their debut in the 2020 IIHF World Championships but Covid shut down all the ice hockey rinks in the country(and the rest of the world for a couple of years as well) for 3 years which prevented them from training and preparing for their debut. When they finally did they won it all in Div IV.