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http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/news … ?tx_ttnews[backPid]=955&cHash=3161d02de7
Has some interesting topics which have been going around committees and boards for the past wee while, particularly moving the NZIHL to summer and having a team playing in the Australian league.
I argued against moving to summer at a recent Southern meeting. Although our clubs with outdoor rinks don’t feature prominently in our national league teams, the move would be bad for them. And Thunder is a team largely made up of students and this would mean that they’d have to choose between hockey and a summer job out of town. I doubt many of them could afford the hockey without the summer job.
Yeah I have similar view to you Kyle.
The move on NZIHL to summer is not the right move I don’t think, and neither is moving the AIHL to summer. For the same reasons as you mention, Thunder would not be able to field a team, we rely too much on university players.
What I think would be a better solution would be to leave the respective competitions as they are, then have a summer competition putting the NZ players into AIHL.
From what i have heard is that the AIHL is interested in a North Island and a South Island team competeing over there.
So if you retain our national league and use it as selection the North and South Island teams, then you could play that combined league over the summer meaning the best players in the country (guys that will make up Ice Blacks) will be coming out of the highest level competition when they go the IIHF world champs.A guess the arguement against this would be player fatigue, too much hockey, but if it is only the top 40 odd players in the country then most of them would be devoted to making IB’s etc and will want to be playing a lot of hockey. And as it stand NZIHL is only 3 months long, the new summer league could be used in place or in conjunction with IB training camps so you are not adding any time to IB prospects hockey time there.
Also playing over summer, won’t you lose U20’s and U18’s as they will be going to worlds.
And you won’t have the same access to imports, although I believe the league is moving towards reducing imports anyway, so that may be moot point.So in summary I think they have their proposal backwards. Retain the countries independant leagues in the Winter months, because they are not broken, and it will allow the thunder to keep competing.
Have the new hybrid competetion in the Summer months so that the elite players can be peaking for their world champs.
Otherwise you have them coming out of world champs going into elite competition, dropping back a level for summer then go to world champs.The cycle should be come out of Worlds go into independant national leagues, pick your age group and North Island and South Island teams from there.
From the North Island and SOuth Island teams competeing in hybrid competition, pick your IBs for worlds. Natural progression I thinksI suspect money would be a major barrier to people playing in two leagues which followed each other.
My suggestion would be that an Ice Blacks training squad should tour Australia playing AIHL teams, including a decent bunch of age group players, say in Feb. You could spend a week in Sydney and play all three teams that are in the region.
And that an AIHL team should come here each year for pre-season and tour for a week playing all the NZIHL teams in May. Different team each year. Both leagues could help fund both tours.
Summer hockey would be a disaster. Half the rinks are melted and the players leave town for summer – utterly daft concept.
The only rink that would be affected by summer hockey would be Queenstown, and they have opened in the Summer before, although I am not sure of the quality of the ice. Maybe a queenstowner can inform us?
Dunedin would probably be the only team affected by player drain over the summer.
So its pretty clear to see why Southern wouldn’t support the concept.
But I don’t see Canterbury and Auckland being adversely affected by Summer hockey, apart from the lack of imports.I actually quite like Kyles suggestion, of the touring option, perhaps you could have a couple of Australian teams touring, or one based in North Island, one based in Southe Island.
I have talked to someone in AIHL about this, and he suggested a week long tournament to be hosted in one or other of the countries. Featuring the Australian teams and North Island and South Island.
Tekapo, Naseby and Alexandra would all be without rinks. Running the NZIHL when their ice is melted puts them at a heck of a disadvantage.
Just because they don’t have games doesn’t mean they don’t have players on the teams, or potential players who want to be on a team in the future.
Gore also sometimes melts over the summer – it was melted this most recent summer.
I understand that Southern initially supported the idea of moving to summer, and was the prime pusher of it. Their reasoning was that it would mean that the senior open grade would be viable again during winter. I think we’ve managed to turn that around.
I’d much rather see the southern open grade played during the main part of the season, and the national league teams exclude their top three lines or so.
That would then leave Dunedin with a team, probably Alex and Gore. Could be played the same time as SNC tournaments. Taking out all those top players (who already get 16 games in the national league) would bring down the level and mean that younger juniors, top midgets, newer players to checking hockey could partake in it.
I don’t think Alex, Naseby and Tekapo without rinks would affect NZIHL one iota.
If there were players wanting to make NZIHL, they would be able to play all winter, and Stampede and Thunder coaches would be able to watch all their games and see them play. If they were in either of the NZIHL teams, they would need to train with them anyway. So if anything would be beneficial to them.Yeah I agree with Kyle, Southern Open should run in conjunction with NZIHL, so for example when Thunder is playing, Thunder Coach could send 4th/5th line guys and 3rd goalie away with juniors etc away. Means they are getting ice time, hopefully they have enough skill to bring others up, creating a deeper talent pool for Southern, and means if their are a lot of injuries guys who are actually playing hockey can be called up.
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