Hockey
information for minor hockey players,
coaches, parents, referees and fans.
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I.I.H.F. NEWS
(International
Ice Hockey Federation, Zürich, Switzerland)
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Following the NHL:s crackdown on obstruction,
the International Ice Hockey Federation has received
questions from federation officials, coaches,
national team managers and media regarding the
implementation of rules at the upcoming XX Olympic
Winter Games in Turin.
The policy statement posted on IIHF.com -- click
here for full version -- from IIHF President René
Fasel should answer all the questions and clarify
the situation.
Highlights of the statement:
“The revolutionary turn-around regarding rule
enforcement in the National Hockey League following
the lockout, has given the world of hockey a new
momentum to fully implement the crackdown on all
restraining fouls.
For the first time in hockey history we have
the opportunity for the IIHF and the NHL to be
on the same page when enforcing the rules and
calling restraining fouls like hooking, holding
and interference. In the time leading up to Torino
2006 and during the event it is our responsibility
towards the game and its fans to seize this opportunity
and showcase hockey as a sport of unique speed
and skill to an projected TV-audience of 2.3 billion
viewers.”
“It is our goal to call the games in Torino 2006
according to 2005-2006 IIHF Rule Emphasis Bulletin.
Click here for a pdf file of the document. The
document calls for attention on strict rule enforcement,
focusing on hooking, holding and interference
infractions. The basic objective of the rule enforcement
can be summoned with these lines:”
Players who use their skill and/or anticipation
and have gained a positional advantage on an opponent
shall not lose that advantage through illegal
use of hands, arms or stick by the defending player.
If a player is deprived of that advantage through
an illegal act, the appropriate penalty shall
be called.
Read
More...
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The Olympic ice hockey tournament, an IIHF event,
will as always be played according to the IIHF
Rule Book. This means that "big" goaltending
equipment measurements will apply in Turin. A
goaltender coming from the NHL will have the choice
of going back to the big equipment or staying
with their current. (The down-sized goaltender
measurements will apply within the IIHF starting
with the 2006-2007-season).
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The draw of the two three-team
divisions for the 2006 IIHF European Champions
Cup (January 5 – 8, 2006) was conducted in St.
Petersburg, Russia on Wednesday, June 15 as part
of the ECC General Assembly meeting on June 14
and 15.
The champion clubs of
the top six ranked European countries were seeded
according to the final standing* in the 2005 ECC.
The teams were seeded
to the two divisions from the following pairs:
First draw: Dynamo Moscow
(RUS) / Kärpät Oulu (FIN)
Second draw: HC Pardubice (CZE) / Frölunda
Gothenburg (SWE)
Third draw: HC Davos (SUI) / Slovan Bratislava
(SVK)
The divisions were officially
named after two legends of international hockey
– Alexander Ragulin (RUS) and Ivan Hlinka (CZE)
– who both passed away in 2004.
The result of the draw:
Alexander Ragulin Division
A1 Dynamo Moscow
A2 HC Pardubice
A3 Slovan Bratislava
Ivan Hlinka Division
B1 Kärpät Oulu
B2 Frölunda Gothenburg
B3 HC Davos
The teams play a single
round-robin within their division on January 5-7
and the divisional winners will meet in the Gold
Medal game on January 8. All games will be played
at the 12.350-seat St. Petersburg Ice Palace,
the venue of the 2000 IIHF World Championship
and also one of two venues for the 2007 IIHF World
Championship.
A tentative game schedule
was presented immediately following the draw.
Go to IIHF.com for the tentative schedule. The
schedule will be finalized following the requests
from TV-broadcasters.
The “Super-Six” club teams
of Europe will play for a record prize sum of
700.000 Swiss francs. The ECC General Assembly,
with the participation of representatives from
the six clubs, will decide on the distribution
plan of the prize money.
The final standing of
the 2005 IIHF European Champions Cup: 1. Avangard
Omsk (RUS), 2. Kärpät Oulu (FIN), 3.
HC Zlin (CZE), 4. HV71 Jonkoping (SWE), 5. Frankfurt
Lions (GER), 6. Dukla Trencin (SVK).
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Suspension
for Doping Violation
Belarus player Tsimafei
Filin suspended two years for testing positive
at 2005 IIHF World Championship
The Disciplinary Committee
of the International Ice Hockey Federation has
suspended the Belarus player Tsimafei Filin for
two years from all competition or activity authorized
or organized by the IIHF or any IIHF member national
association. The Deciding Panel of the committee
took the decision on June 28. Mr. Gerhard Mösslang
(GER), Mr. Ivo Eusebio (SUI) and Mr. Martin Holmgren
(SWE) were the panel members with regards to this
case.
Tsimafei Filin, 21, tested
positive in a random doping control on April 30,
2005 following the game Slovakia – Belarus at
the 2005 IIHF World Championship in Vienna, Austria.
Both the A-sample as well as the requested test
of the B-sample confirmed the presence of the
metabolite norandrosterone of the anabolic steroid
nandrolone. The player was immediately removed
from the championship.
It was furthermore confirmed
that the concentration was more than 250 times
higher than the WADA reporting threshold of 2ng/ml.
In a letter to the Belarus Ice Hockey Federation
dated June 7th, 2005, the player admitted to having
taken the banned substance.
The period of suspension
started on May 4, 2005 (the date of the confirmation
of the B-sample) and will end on May 3rd, 2007.
The decision may be appealed
to the Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) in
Lausanne, Switzerland within 21 days. The Belarus
Ice Hockey Federation has decided to initiate
an anti-doping program for clubs taking part in
the national championship.
The decision regarding
Ukrainian player, Oleksander Pobyenostsev, who
also tested positive during the 2005 IIHF World
Championship has been postponed due to further
IIHF investigation.
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SC
Bern Tops Euro Leagues Attendance Figures
SC Bern sets an all-time
European attendance record – tops club chart for
fourth consecutive year
The defending Swiss champion
SC Bern set a new all-time attendance record for
a club team in Europe for the 2004-2005 season.
SC Bern recorded an average of 15,360 fans in
22 home games in the 16.771 BernArena, to top
all European clubs for a fourth consecutive year.
The Swiss league plays a 44-game schedule.
This is the first time
the 15.000-barrier is broken in European club
hockey. SC Bern surpassed the old record set last
year by an average of more than 2.000 fans per
game. The club recorded an average of 13.034 in
the 2003-2004 season.
The impressive increase
is rather surprising considering that the 03-04
champion SC Bern has been struggling for the entire
season, even to make the playoffs. The club clinched
the eighth and final playoff spot on the last
day of the regular season. SC Bern eliminated
first-place HC Lugano in five games in the first
round.
As all the top European
leagues have now concluded their regular seasons,
the annual IIHF count of Europe’s Top-25 clubs
shows that the ranking among the top eight clubs
has not changed from last season. The average
of 11.676 recorded by Frölunda HC (Gothenburg)
is an all-time record for the Swedish Elitserien,
as the club has been filling the 12.044-seat Scandinavium
arena for a capacity rate of 96,9 percent. The
club sold out 16 out of 25 home games. The Swedish
league plays a 50-game regular season.
Russian Lokomotiv Yaroslavl
has the best capacity rate of the top ten clubs
with 98,9 percent at the 9.046-seat Arena-2000.
Editor's Note:
10 of the 30 NHL teams (in 2003/04) had attendance
less than the Euro Team's attendance.
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Cooler heads must prevail
for the good of the game
For hockey fans, the playoff
times are the best of times. This is the stage
of the season when the players elevate their game
to another level and when the superstars of the
game really show that they are the best players.
The arenas are full, the games are tense and many
of them are decided in dramatic fashion, in overtime
or a shoot-out.
Unfortunately, this period
also brings out the worst in people. From what
I have seen myself and from the reports I have
been getting from other leagues I must draw the
conclusion that the image and public perception
of our sport is deteriorating.
The playoffs in several
European nations are showing the ugliest part
of our game. Fights and incidents leading to severe
injuries are occurring almost on a daily basis.
Coaches are inciting the players and fans by calling
a playoff match-up a 'war'. Teams are constantly
criticising the referees, making them fair game
for the media and fans to carry the criticism
further.
The atmosphere around
the playoffs is starting to resemble the one at
a wild-west saloon where unshaved men are exercising
frontier justice. Instead of going to their best
players to make them score or execute the perfect
play, many coaches give unwarranted ice time to
the so called 'character guys' whose only objective
is to take out the skilful player.
I have seen sickening
incidents in the Swiss playoffs and relegation
games, with vicious two handed slashes to the
head and mindless attacks on goaltenders. In Sweden,
a former Swedish national team coach, who is now
a columnist for a boulevard paper, gave in his
column the other day advice to the lesser team's
character guy to take out the star player on the
number one ranked team by 'roughing him up a little'.
The lack of respect for
authority is apparent. Slovakia and Germany have
recently had incidents where players have attacked
referees with sticks and fists. Just a few weeks
ago a game between two of the most skilled teams
in the Russian league erupted in a massive brawl,
resulting in 322 penalty minutes, a new record
for the Superleague.
Everyone, coaches, players
and in some cases even the referees seem to accept
that a different kind of rule book comes into
use when the playoffs start. This cannot be the
case. The same interpretations, which existed
in October, must be in place in March. Just like
in U.S. sports, we too have 'March Madness', but
there is nothing positive with this version.
The whole rhetoric of
vengeance and vigilante environment that surrounds
the playoffs in Europe could lead to someone losing
control just like Todd Bertuzzi did when he crippled
Steve Moore one year ago. Do we need another Bertuzzi-incident
for people to come back to their senses? Or does
anyone need to be killed before everyone realizes
that this has gone too far?
The national associations
and the leagues have a good and pretty consistent
routine for suspending players for violent conduct.
They are not nearly as good when it comes to suspending
or fining coaches or managers for inciting comments.
Any league which calls itself professional, must
have an ongoing routine for severely fining anyone
in the game who indulges in verbal attacks or
makes public statements which are considered as
detrimental to the best interest of the sport.
What we need is a collective
cooling-off. The image of our great game calls
for that.
René Fasel
IIHF President
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IIHF
World Women Ranking, Canada still ranked number
1
Canada is still the top
ranked team in the IIHF World Women Ranking, despite
the 1-0 Game Winning Shot (“Penalty shootout”)
loss to the USA in the gold medal game of the
2005 IIHF World Women Championship. The IIHF World
Ranking serves to reflect the long-term quality
of the countries’ national team programs.
The 2005 IIHF World Women Ranking is based on
the performance in the last three World Championships
(2005, 2004 and 2001) and also in the 2002 Olympics
in Salt Lake City.
The U.S. earned the maximum
1200 points for their win in Linkoping, Sweden,
while silver medallist Canada received 1160 points.
Canada still leads the women’s world ranking
with a total of 2960 points, but USA is close
behind with 2940.
Finland retained their
position as the number three in the world, but
the 5-2 Swedish victory in the bronze medal game
put the Swedes, now with 2760 points, only five
points behind Finland’s 2765.
Germany is the new number-five
team with 2625, the same total as Russia, but
the Germans get the higher position due to their
fifth-place finish in Sweden. Russia finished
eighth and was relegated to division I. Click
here for the updated 2005 IIHF World Women Ranking
which will next be recalculated following the
women’s Olympic ice hockey tournament in
Turin, February 11 – 20, 2006.
Stanley Cup coach
Jean Perron leads Israel to division I
Israel, the middle-eastern
country with one rink (Matula, in north Israel)
has earned promotion to Division I of the IIHF
World Championship after winning the gold medal
in the 2005 IIHF World Championship Division II
in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro.
The win is one of the
biggest feats that international ice hockey has
ever seen. The team, coached by Canadian Jean
Perron, who led the Montreal Canadians to the
Stanley Cup victory in 1986, defeated Iceland
4-2 on Sunday, April 10 to clinch the division
win. Perron also coached Israel’s under-18
team in the IIHF World Championship program, leading
that team to a third-place finish in the U18,
division III in Sofia, Bulgaria in March.
Israel's recreational,
college and minor league players, most are immigrants
from North America or Russia, can now look forward
to facing division I team made up largely of full-time
professional players. Division I, formerly known
as the B-Pool, is the level below the top-16 IIHF
World Championship.
Israeli standouts were
goalie Evgeny Gussin, who allowed 11 goals in
five games, and forward Oren Eizenman, who had
ten goals and 14 points in five games. Three of
the goals were game winners. Israel started too
look like a serious promotion contender after
a 7-4 win against Belgium, one of the founding
IIHF nations, in the third round.
Click here for recaps
of all recently concluded World Championships
in the IIHF program.
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Draw
for 2006 IIHF European Champions Cup