Guys, in my opinion, a full arena does not do much to help develop hockey in croatia. How many full arenas has medvescak had the last several years? Quite a few I think, and there has not been much to show from that. The interests of Medvescak are not also the interests of hockey in Croatia in general.
I am no expert on hockey in Croatia, but if I am not mistaken not a single rink has been built in Croatia since Medvescak started "popularizing" hockey by entering the Slovenian league some five years ago er so.
Ask yourselves how many millions of dollars have been collected via tickets, and then ask yourself what is there to show from that... very very little. Overall it is great for Medvescak, but again, it leaves Croatian hockey without much.
If you really think that hockey has been popularized in Croatia, do go to a Mladost game and tell me what you think of it. The croatian league is barely heard of, its games are barely attended. The croatian league itself is in a very difficult and unfortunate state. But supposedly you guys say that hockey has been popularized. Sure, foreign hockey, not domestic hockey.
edit/add:
LOL. Croatia was by far the best in hockey in the former yugoslavia after world war two. Where did you get the idea that it has no hockey tradition?
I must add that partizan from belgrade killed croatian hockey to some extent, but sucking out their best players from towns that once had respectable hockey (other towns too)... sucked up players from varazdin, karlovac, sisak, zagreb... now, hockey did recover in part, so that Medvescak was the winner of the yugoslav league in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Well that is the problem your not an expert. Not even from my country, and you put some wrong facts or conclusions.
1. yes there is interest for hockey in croatia as people from all over croatia come to see it. It creates interest and desire to play the game. and building rinks
2. as has been said it is not Medvescaks job to build hockey rings, that is the job of the Cro hockey federation to ride on the wave of success.
3. again as i said in a place with 3 open 2 closed and 1 roofed ice rinks, makeing 1 ice rink from an outdoor to indoor and the building of the one roofed ice rink , that will be closed relatively soon, During Medvescaks popularity is a big deal. 50% more places for real development of club hockey. There should be more (especially in Zagreb) but this not even only up to the cro federation of hockey but the town and regions to fiance it or draw up papers for EU (Federation even offered to do it for them) to finance a bigger part of it. another rink was supposed to be builty, money was allocated in Zagreb for it, but at last minute before building money was withdrawn for mysterious reason by the mayor. For now many rinks are being built but open and not regulation size in every city also to popularize it as a first step. But this whole thing is more than has happened in last... ohhh 40-50 years since they built DS and Velesajam closed hockey rinks in the 70's. Oh yeah forgot there is also a plan in Sisak for another rink to be built (closed ), but we will see what happens. Croatia is a weird place to build things (atleast by the town or gov). Things either start building or expensive prep work and surveys are done and building either stops or doesnt start, and they spend alot of money on nothing.
4. There was never real tradition of hockey. it was popular in 50-60 and than in the 80-s, but you are wrong about serbian hockey, they have an even ****tier league and players than we do. The only republic to always have, and i mean always, a proper league and dominance has been Slovenia and professional clubs. rest were amateur clubs. Again Medvescak Gortan (80's) was made up of 70% Slovenian players, 15 % Russian/NA players and 15% Croatian. The situation is not all that different from today. And before any development could be made war broke out and hockey went plummeting down bellow what it was in the 60's.
5. as for the funding of Medvescak they are a bright spot in our sports overall as for what we got from it its too long and most of it covered by point no1. and answers of Coramoor and my self, you just didnt bother to read from someone more informed and you repeat this point of yours automatically. so read the posts again.
6. Cro league is an amateur league consisting of 3 clubs and on and off (now it will be more consistently) 4th club. For it to be succesful and draw a bigger crowd it needs both marketing, financing, more clubs and better players and more ice (which was discussed above). Better players is a project that will yield results in 15 years with the mass of kids going into hockey schools (if you say results have to come immediately than you are just a fool). Financing is the not something Medvescak should do for every other club now is it? that is to be done by each club seperately as it should be. For now they are sitting on their *****. And mind It can be done, as Medvescak started from the same horrible circumstances. What Medvescak DOES do is help the development of younger talents of all clubs by financing the EBEL youth categorie, which is the sum of all talented hockey players in Zagreb, which have better conditions. The league is a much harder and bigger project which will take much longer to be created properly
For now as talents grow up it will go youth system, than those who are prospects will go to farm team of medvescak, that will be formed next year (probably Austria 2 at the beginning, and as the talent grows and finances are there to EBEL), from where they will go to KHL if good enough, rest will go to the cro league makeing it stronger, just by sheer number of players coming.
7. as said before , again you didnt read a word of a person from there who knows things first hand, Slovenian league didnt popularize anything. it was to be a senior version of the EBEL youth program. ONly when Medvescak entered the EBEL did it start to popularize the game, most not really knowing the rules at first. But only when Medvescak got to the KHL did the institutions get of their bottom n start doing something.
There is more to say on each of the points but this is to long as is
). Not to mention have a nasty image. It is acting the opposite. Especially with the announced end result of haveing 16 foreign and 16 home teams. They are acting as they should, professional and fair. They want all teams to be strong to strengthen the league first and expand their market and revenue, and only second is increase production and retention of russian players. Russian teams are not privileged. Their goal is to rival NHL. they cant do that with haveing some constantly bad teams with low attendance only cause they are Russian. Its business.
