EIHL: Best Of Enemies
Rivalries.
They are a quintessential part of all modern-day sports. From the local derbies between geographically-close football teams to the extended play-off series seen in many North American sports, rivalries drive up both fan and media interest in particular games and the sport in general.
As ice hockey teams in the UK live on such a financial knife-edge, attendance of fans to these big rivalry games is crucial for the short- and long-term sustainability of the clubs. Paying customers pay the wages of the players and retention of the talent can only be safeguarded by ensuring a high footfall. Even the EIHL has woken up to this fact and as such has re-jigged the schedule so that more of these rivalry games occur between teams in order to generate a style of hockey that brings more people through the door.
Why had the league lost its way in the first place? Why had these games lost their prominence in the UK?
They used to exist. There are plenty of anecdotal stories from the days of the Heineken League and games between the likes of Murrayfield and Fife or Whitley and Durham where the intense passion of the fans was translated onto the ice through the players.
That’s been lost over recent years.
You could point at the influx of imports who know little about the storied history of the teams; transient players who stay around the league for maybe a year or two. However there are enough local lads dotted around that have been involved in previous games for them to transmit how important the fans see these fixtures.
Ice hockey has always been a family-friendly sport but there has been a move away from the violent nature that originally made the game popular. This is in part due to an increased worldwide activity on player safety and ensuring that serious injuries are being avoided, but the UK has perhaps taken this too far.
UK hockey has slowly limped towards the European style where physical play isn’t banned, but is seriously frowned upon. During this time, fan bases have been continually shrinking to the point where some teams have disappeared from the hockey landscape.
The past two seasons in Coventry have been examples of this trend.
A more skilful but less physical team entered the ice and failed to impress on many levels. One of the most important reasons that those sides didn’t resonate with the fans was because they were perceived to be not trying hard enough.
The reason for that perception?
They weren’t putting their bodies on the line and playing a physical game.
It’s these physical encounters that spice up rivalries. Moving away from that physical style across the league has sanitised games to the point where they have become uninteresting on a regular basis.
The so-called “biggest rivalry in UK hockey” has become repeatedly tedious; fans get excited but the players produce the same old game on the ice, no different to any other game. Rivalry teams should hate each other; have a real passion for getting one up on the opposition. They shouldn’t be organising golf tournaments against each other as a social engagement.
This was exemplified this past weekend in the Challenge Cup games between Coventry and Cardiff. Two sets of players gave absolutely everything, with Coventry coming out on top in both encounters – but only just. The game boiled over after the whistle with tempers flaring and encounters on and off the ice. Both teams would probably agree that it was taken too far (fighting after the whistle can never be condoned) but the passion that was shown, most coaches and fans would happily pay double to see.
The game in the UK has been crying out for characters that generate talking points and put backsides on seats. In Benn Olson and Devin Didiomete, the Blaze and Devils have just those characters. Love them or hate them, they have been instrumental in bringing the rivalry between their respective clubs back to the fore from when they used to compete in the BNL. And that rivalry will be sure to practically sell out the arenas in Cardiff and Coventry when the two teams next meet over the Christmas period, a time when fans have a lot of options to spend their money on.
From a business point of view, it simply cannot be turned down or ignored any longer.
