WC: Team GB 2019 Roster

[GBHockey]

As most of us know, or should know, Team GB will be facing the likes of Canada and Finland in the upcoming World Championships in Slovakia. This is the first time Team GB have appeared in the top group for a long, long time so whilst we acknowledge we will more than likely get pummelled, the excitement across the hockey world here in the UK is immense.

Team GB will prepare for the Championships with a series of warm up/exhibition games.

Wednesday 6th February: Great Britain v Dinamo Riga (KHL) – Skydome Coventry
Friday 19th April: Great Britain v Italy – Skydome Coventry
Sunday 21st April: Great Britain v Hungary – Planet Ice Milton Keynes
Saturday 27th April: Great Britain v Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (KHL) – Motorpoint Arena Nottingham
Sunday 28th April: Great Britain v Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (KHL) – Fly DSA Arena Sheffield

The roster for the first warm up game in February, against Dinamo Riga has been announced and can be found below.

Netminders
Ben Bowns – Cardiff Devils
Jackson Whistle – Sheffield Steelers - Dual Nat.

Defence
Tim Billingsley – Nottingham Panthers - Dual Nat.
Dallas Ehrhardt – Manchester Storm - Dual Nat.
Mark Garside – Belfast Giants
Steve Lee – Nottingham Panthers
Evan Mosey- Cardiff Devils - Dual Nat.
Ben O’Connor – Sheffield Steelers
David Phillips – Sheffield Steelers
Mark Richardson – Cardiff Devils
Zach Sullivan – Glasgow Clan
Paul Swindlehurst – Belfast Giants

Forwards
Ollie Betteridge – Nottingham Panthers
Jordan Cownie – Dundee Stars
Ben Davies – Guildford Flames
Robert Dowd – Sheffield Steelers
Robert Farmer – Nottingham Panthers
Luke Ferrara – Coventry Blaze
Mike Hammond – Manchester Storm - Dual Nat.
Lewis Hook – Belfast Giants
Robert Lachowicz – Nottingham Panthers
Ben Lake – Coventry Blaze - Dual Nat.
Ciaran Long – Manchester Storm
Matthew Myers – Cardiff Devils
Brett Perlini – Nottingham Panthers - Dual Nat.
Jonathan Phillips – Sheffield Steelers

This roster is likely to change for the other Exhibition/Warm Up games but most players featured here will likely appear on the final roster for the WC2019.

Click to read more...

 

[Eye of Ra]

would a tony hand in his prime be the top player for this team?

 

[GBHockey]

would a tony hand in his prime be the top player for this team?

Absolutely, the best British Born and Trained player in this roster is probably Ben O’Connor or Robert Dowd, but I’d say they’re quite far from Tony Hand quality. The best player in the selection is either Mike Hammond or Brett Perlini (Brendan’s older brother).

Billingsley and Lake are brand new additions to Team GB with both only becoming eligible this year having now played two seasons in the UK and having a British Passport, despite having not been born nor trained here in the UK.

I’d expect Coyotes Prospect, Liam Kirk to appear in the other exhibition games and more than likely make the final roster. He’s doing well with Peterborough in the OHL.

 

[robertmac43]

The entire roster is taken from the domestic league, correct?

Are there 2 domestic leagues in the UK? I was just there on a trip in November and was intrigues at hockey in England.

 

[ChaiTiefling]

The entire roster is taken from the domestic league, correct?

Are there 2 domestic leagues in the UK? I was just there on a trip in November and was intrigues at hockey in England.

Technically four - EIHL, NIHL1, NIHL2 and SNL, however Elite is the only pro league. We've been missing a functional second tier since the EPIHL collapsed in April 2017, possibly even since the BNL's demise in 2005.

All these players are on EIHL teams, yes. There may be additions from overseas once we get to the tourney itself, this likely isn't the final list.

 

[robertmac43]

Technically four - EIHL, NIHL1, NIHL2 and SNL, however Elite is the only pro league. We've been missing a functional second tier since the EPIHL collapsed in April 2017, possibly even since the BNL's demise in 2005.

All these players are on EIHL teams, yes. There may be additions from overseas once we get to the tourney itself, this likely isn't the final list.

Interesting this will be a fun team to follow this coming year. I would love for hockey to grow in GB as it would have great implications on the overall growth of the game.

 

[kabidjan18]

So, who are they going to naturalize for the upcoming tournament?

 

[MeHateHe]

I think it's a mistake to play club teams in advance of the championship. Even if they get beat up a little bit, playing national sides will better prepare them for the pace and style they will see at the WCs.

 

[Friar85]

As most of us know, or should know, Team GB will be facing the likes of Canada and Finland in the upcoming World Championships in Slovakia. This is the first time Team GB have appeared in the top group for a long, long time so whilst we acknowledge we will more than likely get pummelled, the excitement across the hockey world here in the UK is immense.

Team GB will prepare for the Championships with a series of warm up/exhibition games.

Wednesday 6th February: Great Britain v Dinamo Riga (KHL) – Skydome Coventry
Friday 19th April: Great Britain v Italy – Skydome Coventry
Sunday 21st April: Great Britain v Hungary – Planet Ice Milton Keynes
Saturday 27th April: Great Britain v Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (KHL) – Motorpoint Arena Nottingham
Sunday 28th April: Great Britain v Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (KHL) – Fly DSA Arena Sheffield

The roster for the first warm up game in February, against Dinamo Riga has been announced and can be found below.

Netminders
Ben Bowns – Cardiff Devils
Jackson Whistle – Sheffield Steelers - Dual Nat.

Defence
Tim Billingsley – Nottingham Panthers - Dual Nat.
Dallas Ehrhardt – Manchester Storm - Dual Nat.
Mark Garside – Belfast Giants
Steve Lee – Nottingham Panthers
Evan Mosey- Cardiff Devils - Dual Nat.
Ben O’Connor – Sheffield Steelers
David Phillips – Sheffield Steelers
Mark Richardson – Cardiff Devils
Zach Sullivan – Glasgow Clan
Paul Swindlehurst – Belfast Giants

Forwards
Ollie Betteridge – Nottingham Panthers
Jordan Cownie – Dundee Stars
Ben Davies – Guildford Flames
Robert Dowd – Sheffield Steelers
Robert Farmer – Nottingham Panthers
Luke Ferrara – Coventry Blaze
Mike Hammond – Manchester Storm - Dual Nat.
Lewis Hook – Belfast Giants
Robert Lachowicz – Nottingham Panthers
Ben Lake – Coventry Blaze - Dual Nat.
Ciaran Long – Manchester Storm
Matthew Myers – Cardiff Devils
Brett Perlini – Nottingham Panthers - Dual Nat.
Jonathan Phillips – Sheffield Steelers

This roster is likely to change for the other Exhibition/Warm Up games but most players featured here will likely appear on the final roster for the WC2019.

Why hasn’t a GB team been playing in some of the EIHC tournaments? You see the French, Italians, Hungarians, Austrians, Slovenians, Koreans, etc putting together teams and competing in most of the international breaks but the British don’t. Is it funding?

 

[GBHockey]

Why hasn’t a GB team been playing in some of the EIHC tournaments? You see the French, Italians, Hungarians, Austrians, Slovenians, Koreans, etc putting together teams and competing in most of the international breaks but the British don’t. Is it funding?

I think they have been invited to International Competitions/Tournaments but they just don't seem to accept them. I think it's a case of the domestic league, EIHL, having no winter break at all as well as there not being much funding for Team GB.

The EIHL play every week September thru Early April, with no real break. The longest break a team could get is generally 5 days but that isn't massively frequent. Especially over Christmas/winter, there will often be teams playing 3 or 4 games a week.

Politics is what is holding Team GB back, the IIHF have offered several times to assist with development and other things but GB just don't want it. The players currently in the GB setup are the best there's been for a long time, but they will still get hammered at the Championships and more than likely hammered by the KHL teams during the exhibition games. I'd be surprised if we don't get relegated and then I'd say the chances of us being promoted to the top tier again are maybe 40%. There are a small handful of good potential players coming through but not enough to sustain GB at the top level. GB are very much a team who will be back and forth between D1A and D1B.

 

[member 305909]

I like to make a comparison between hockey and rugby in Finland and GB.

Namely, in Finland hockey is a main-stream spectator-sport when as rugby is an esoteric sport and you will be hard-pressed to find people in Finland who know anything about rugby.

In GB it is the other way round concerning those two sports.

 

[Pieck]

Jackson Whistle – Sheffield Steelers - Dual Nat.

Lol I remember this guy, he played for the Canucks Young Stars team a few years ago

 

[Stubu]

I like to make a comparison between hockey and rugby in Finland and GB.

Namely, in Finland hockey is a main-stream spectator-sport when as rugby is an esoteric sport and you will be hard-pressed to find people in Finland who know anything about rugby.

In GB it is the other way round concerning those two sports.

American football has a league and some media exposure but you're correct about rugby, it's non existent. (Shame, I like rugby better, feels more "raw" in a way.)

Cricket might be an even more fitting example. I'm not sure you can find 10 Finns who understand the rules.

 

[Stubu]

A potentially daft/nitpicking question: shouldn't it be "Team UK", not merely "Team GB", if the roster includes players from Belfast Giants?

 

[Gianpaolo]

I
Politics is what is holding Team GB back, the IIHF have offered several times to assist with development and other things but GB just don't want it. .

Interesting! Can you please tell more about? Which kind of help was offered by the IIHF? Who refused this help?

 

[stastny12]

Saw them played last year. Definitely don't have needed quality to keep themselves in elite group. I hope that they show me I'm wrong. It's really good to see some unusual hockey countries.

 

[Vandalay Industries]

Yeah, GB will definitely be relegated and they might actually be relegated next year as well to go to Division 1B. GB doesn't have a youth programme. It will be impossible for them to get into the top flight for real without schooling players a whole better than they do now.

 

[GBHockey]

Interesting! Can you please tell more about? Which kind of help was offered by the IIHF? Who refused this help?

It was a few years ago now, I remember Rene Fasel commenting during a press conference at some point I think, stated that they'd offered some assistance to IHUK (Ice Hockey UK) and they'd turned it down. I can't remember the exact issue but I remember there being some GB fans disappointed.

This is an article where Fasel discusses things slightly: https://www.thenational.scot/sport/...ic-exit-confirms-the-need-for-unified-vision/

 

[GBHockey]

A potentially daft/nitpicking question: shouldn't it be "Team UK", not merely "Team GB", if the roster includes players from Belfast Giants?

If we were going to do that we might as well rename ourselves Team British Empire as half the roster is Canadian and American!

 

[Gianpaolo]

It was a few years ago now, I remember Rene Fasel commenting during a press conference at some point I think, stated that they'd offered some assistance to IHUK (Ice Hockey UK) and they'd turned it down. I can't remember the exact issue but I remember there being some GB fans disappointed.

This is an article where Fasel discusses things slightly: https://www.thenational.scot/sport/...ic-exit-confirms-the-need-for-unified-vision/

Thank you for posting the link. Unfortunately I can see two of similarities with the way of thinking dominating in the Italian hockey:
1. the more Canadians in the national team, the more chances to archive goals. This is not necessarily true, because the skills needed to perform at World Championship and to be successful in the domestic league are not the same.
2. only an high level of imports guarantees a high-level of the game, every fan wants to see a winning team playing entertaining hockey, therefore the more imports in the team the more fans in the arena. This is also not entirely true, because some fan likes more franchise players fighting on the ice than spectacular players waiting for an offer from a better league.
EIHL seems to me a business without a real passion for the game of hockey, what if one day the business is over?

 

[GBHockey]

EIHL seems to me a business without a real passion for the game of hockey, what if one day the business is over?

This is exactly how it is unfortunately!

There's probably two or three teams in the league who prioritise hockey over the business side of things. One of those is Cardiff and they're on track to win their third league title in a row (league is prioritised over playoffs here).

The other big teams such as Nottingham, Sheffield and Belfast are all business first, results second.

The fans in the UK are pretty passionate about the sport, and if their team is underperforming they'll make the team well aware. But as the owners tend to be business before sports fans, the complaints usually fall on deaf ears.

 

[3 Minute Minor]

Politics is what is holding Team GB back, the IIHF have offered several times to assist with development and other things but GB just don't want it. The players currently in the GB setup are the best there's been for a long time, but they will still get hammered at the Championships and more than likely hammered by the KHL teams during the exhibition games. I'd be surprised if we don't get relegated and then I'd say the chances of us being promoted to the top tier again are maybe 40%. There are a small handful of good potential players coming through but not enough to sustain GB at the top level. GB are very much a team who will be back and forth between D1A and D1B.

This is misleading. The IIHF offered to assist with development of a new governing body because IHUK has absolutely zero affiliation with the junior program (EIHA & SIHA). These associations actually voted to merge into a new governing body and the work is apparently taking place to do so right now.

A potentially daft/nitpicking question: shouldn't it be "Team UK", not merely "Team GB", if the roster includes players from Belfast Giants?

They play for Belfast, they're not from Belfast.

Yeah, GB will definitely be relegated and they might actually be relegated next year as well to go to Division 1B. GB doesn't have a youth programme. It will be impossible for them to get into the top flight for real without schooling players a whole better than they do now.

They have a youth programme. It's not great but they have one. It developed a player like Liam Kirk so... it exists. And they are actually getting better results at U18/U20 than most of this GB Senior team ever experienced.

If we were going to do that we might as well rename ourselves Team British Empire as half the roster is Canadian and American!

Half the roster is not Canadian and American.

For example you marked Brett Perlini and Jackson Whistle as dual nats. Both of these players played in the EIHA junior setup. The only differences between O'Connor and Perlini are their birthplace and Perlini found a little more success in NA. Perlini was born in Canada to Fred Perlini but moved to England as an infant and grew up British. They both left at the age of 14 for Ontario. O'Connor went OHL route, Perlini went NCAA.

Perlini and Whistle were both eligible for the GB U18s and U20s but skipped the tournaments.


Tim Billingsley, Dallas Erhardt, Mike Hammond, and Ben Lake are the only 4 that never grew up in GB although Hammond was born there.

This is exactly how it is unfortunately!

There's probably two or three teams in the league who prioritise hockey over the business side of things. One of those is Cardiff and they're on track to win their third league title in a row (league is prioritised over playoffs here).

The other big teams such as Nottingham, Sheffield and Belfast are all business first, results second.

The fans in the UK are pretty passionate about the sport, and if their team is underperforming they'll make the team well aware. But as the owners tend to be business before sports fans, the complaints usually fall on deaf ears.

Cardiff is maybe the most business-first team these days. It was their managing director that coined the term (or at least popularized it) "The EIHL is not a development league." and his teams have backed up that statement. They had one of the most promising young British D-men sign with Cardiff and they put him on the 4th line as a winger. 2 years later and he's back in Scotland trying to re-discover his game after totally losing his identity in Cardiff. Not to mention Josh Batch who was making the GBs regularly for a couple of seasons before Cardiff moved him to the 4th line wing role as well.

Sheffield under Thompson was ready to sacrifice business for hockey and the fans ran him out of town months after they had the first British trained NHL draft pick. Nottingham has the most used Brit-pack in the league with the likes of Perlini, Farmer, Lee, Betteridge, Lachowicz.

 

[snipes]

They should naturalize or grant citizenship to some Canadians to join their team.

Given the close ties between the two countries it should be easier than other nations.

 

[Danmark]

So you Think Samuel Duggans move to Cardiff is a bad choice?

People was talking about him, being the biggest talent in British hockey sine Tony Hand.

Now his numbers are very limited.

I hope Russell will take a look at Scott Conway. His numbers in NCAA er very promising. He sould be a part of the national programme.

 

[jonas2244]

They should naturalize or grant citizenship to some Canadians to join their team.

Given the close ties between the two countries it should be easier than other nations.

You have to play two years at a domestic league to be able to play for a country. I doubt that there are Canadiens/American who would be able to give Team GB a significant boost would do that, they'd rather stay in NA or join a European league which pays better salaries.