While the National Hockey League of the United States and Canada gets most of the attention in the world of professional ice hockey, along with its feeder programs in northerly countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, the United Kingdom has its own rich hockey tradition dating back almost as long as the NHL has.
While Canada has long dominated the sport, as one might expect given that the sport began in Montreal, the UK has a sneaky history of success in the sport, especially when you consider the fact that it isn’t really on people’s radars on a global basis. Indeed, England has proved instrumental in the founding of the sport, as it was a game between English Army veterans in Canada where players first got the idea to use what later became the puck, created by sawing off parts of a ball in order to create a flattened disk.
As with just about any sport that exists today, British ice hockey enjoys a robust sports betting market, with some of the best betting apps in the United Kingdom offering Deposit Match Bonus Offers for anyone who wants to wager on ice hockey. Here’s a look at the past century and change of British ice hockey, including the dizzying heights of success and bright moments amidst relative anonymity.
Olympic Success
While today it’s thought of as the quintessential winter sport, olympic ice hockey was actually first played during the summertime. The Winter Olympics didn’t exist until 1924, nearly three decades after the modern Summer Olympic Games began being played, and so a selection of winter sports were shoehorned into the 1920 summer games, one of those being ice hockey.
At the Chamonix Winter Olympic Games in 1924, Great Britain came in third place behind the usual suspects at the time, Canada and the United States: the Soviet Union and Russia’s dominance wouldn’t begin for a few more decades.
Funnily enough, Great Britain won Olympic gold for ice hockey before the United States or Russia did, as they were the first team to unseat the Canadians, doing so by way of a round robin victory. As the Winter Olympics didn’t take place again until 1948 because of the ramifications of the Second World War, Great Britain then enjoyed 12 years as the reigning world champions, the second longest streak behind Canada and the Soviet Union, who are both tied at 16 years.
It’s been a long time since those early days of success, though, as Great Britain hasn’t qualified for the Olympic tournament since 1948 on the men’s side. The women’s team, on the other hand, has never qualified for the Olympic tournament at all, but with a renewed emphasis on ice hockey in recent years, it’ll be interesting to see if that changes moving forward.
IIHF Women’s World Championship – U.S. v Japan – Herning, Denmark – August 25, 2022, Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix via REUTERS
Professional Ice Hockey Today
While the NHL remains the gold standard for men’s ice hockey today, the United Kingdom still has their own contribution to the sport in the form of the Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL)… the renewed emphasis on ice hockey success that I mentioned earlier. Founded in 2003, the ten team league sports clubs from all over the United Kingdom: one team apiece in Wales and Northern Ireland, three in Scotland and five in England itself.
Funnily enough, it’s been Northern Ireland’s club, the Belfast Giants, who have enjoyed the most success by far. In the 20 full seasons since the league’s inception, Belfast has sported the best regular season in six of them, along with three playoff championships following the conclusion of the regular season.
Professional ice hockey existed in the United Kingdom in fits and starts before the modern iteration of the EIHL, with many of the current clubs raising championship banners from those earlier days: the Sheffield Steelers, therefore, boast the most playoff championships with 10, five of which have occurred since the league’s reboot.
NHL Contributions
Just as most talented association football players from the United States and Canada look to take their talents across the pond to play, whether in the Premier League or one of the other divisions of European football, the dream for ice hockey standouts that Great Britain does manage to produce is often playing in the NHL.
53 players born in the UK have made it to the NHL. Two of them, goalie Charlie Gardiner and defenseman Joe Hall, have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. In the past couple years there have been a handful of active NHL players from the UK. The most recent one, Nathan Walker, was released by the St. Louis Blues on Sunday, October 8, and will look to pick up with a new club before the next season starts.
