Thrilling U20 Women Get Ready for Battle I Welcome I Bulletin I IIHF I Competition I Results I Gallery I Interview I I I 2 Icetimes March 2015 / Vol
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I Welcome I Bulletin I IIHF I Competition I Results I Gallery I Interview I i I IceTimesMarch 2015 / Vol. 19, No. 1 World Cup of Hockey returns Thrilling U20 Women get ready for battle I Welcome I Bulletin I IIHF I Competition I Results I Gallery I Interview I i I 2 IceTimes March 2015 / Vol. 19, No. 1 From the IIHF President run by top division newcomers Denmark all to fill a need for more European club hockey the way to the quarter-finals were both me- exposure across the continent, and I hope A great start morable events. I applaud both teams, and that in the future more leagues will be added also the local Canadian fans that enthusiasti- and that the CHL continues to grow. to 2015 cally adopted both teams and cheered them on through the tournament. As we move into the middle of the international by René Fasel hockey season, we turn our attention to the The spirit of ice hockey was alive and well preparations for the top division senior men’s A new year, and a new look for Ice Times by the time Canada and Russia faced off for and women’s tournaments. First on the list is as we move to a digital format for the gold, and the camaraderie and sportsmans- the 2015 IIHF Women’s World Championship, IIHF’s official newsletter. This is the first hip displayed by the teams added a spirit of which we preview in this issue. With the thri- step for what I hope will be plenty of di- friendship to what was an excellent World Ju- lling games we watched in Sochi 2014, I feel gital offerings from the IIHF as we move niors. that hockey fans in Malmo, Sweden should into the future. be in for a great tournament. Team Canada’s win over Russia was not the We’ve had some time to recover after a thri- only story of January. The United States ca- Just over a month later, we will drop the puck lling start to the 2015/2016 hockey season, pped off a great U18 women’s competition in Prague and Ostrava on 1st May, kicking off which saw Canada reclaim the World Junior in Buffalo with an equally exciting final game the 2015 IIHF World Championship. Stay tu- hockey trophy in a wild gold medal finale in against arch rivals Canada. ned, lots of great hockey left! Toronto. On the heels of our first two top division tour- International hockey’s premier junior tourna- naments of the year, the international hockey ment added another memorable chapter to world got some great news when the NHL the history books, as Toronto and Montreal and NHLPA announced the return of the The world cannot held court to a tournament that somehow World Cup of Hockey. The world cannot get managed to surpass already sky-high expec- enough of international hockey competitions, get enough of tations. and having this tournament come back is a international hockey blessing for our sport. It wasn’t just the finale that left people talking, competitions... but other storylines that developed through With this in mind, we also celebrated a suc- the tournament that not many of us expected. cessful inaugural season of the Champions A bronze medal finish for Slovakia, and a great Hockey League. This tournament has grown I Welcome I Bulletin I IIHF I Competition I Results I Gallery I Interview I i I 3 IceTimes March 2015 / Vol. 19, No. 1 IIHF CANADA FINLAND News and Notes The IIHF announced in December 2014 a A record-breaking average audience of 7.1 Jukka Jalonen, the former coach of the Finn- landmark three-year partnership with integrity million Canadians watched Canada’s thrilling ish men’s national team, will lead the U20 specialists Sportradar. Under the partnership, 5-4 victory over Russia on TSN (6 million) and national team to the 2016 IIHF World Junior Sportradar will monitor a total of three flag- RDS (1.13 million), making it the most-watched Championship on home ice. ship tournaments from 2015 to 2017 and will broadcast on record on specialty television deliver a total of 12 educational workshops, in Canada. The gold medal game ranks as He will replace Hannu Jortikka, who resigned which will be targeted at participating players, the most-watched World Juniors game ever after the seventh-place finish at the 2015 officials, administrators and coaches. – 6% higher than the 2011 gold medal game World Juniors in Canada. (6.7 million viewers on TSN and RDS). Overall, Sportradar’s Fraud Detection System will 13.4 million unique Canadian viewers tuned in The 52-year-old Jalonen was an assistant monitor the world’s betting markets on the to watch Team Canada reclaim World Junior coach with the Finnish men’s national team at IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, IIHF gold. Audience levels on TSN and RDS peak- the 2008 IIHF World Championship and be- World Junior Championship and IIHF Ice ed at 9.7 million viewers at 10:31 p.m. ET in came the head coach after the tournament. Hockey U18 World Championship for the next the game’s dying seconds as Canada held on He coached Finland at five IIHF Ice Hockey IIHF three seasons, ensuring that any suspicious for the victory. World Championships between 2009 and The 2015 IIHF International Coaching Sympo- odds movements or patterns are flagged, an- 2013 and at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games sium will take place 8-10 May 2015 in Prague, alysed and forwarded to the IIHF. Overall, 19.4 million Canadians – or more leading his country to gold at the 2011 World Czech Republic, during the 2015 IIHF Ice than half the country’s population – tuned Championship – the second after 1995 for Hockey World Championship. Furthermore, each of those tournaments will in to watch some or all of TSN and RDS’s the country – and an Olympic bronze medal find Sportradar experts travelling to the host wall-to-wall coverage of the 2015 IIHF in Vancouver 2010. The symposium is organized by the Inter- cities and providing all relevant participants World Junior Championship in Toronto national Ice Hockey Federation, Czech Ice with valuable insight and understanding of the and Montreal – a 14% increase compared Jalonen left the national team to coach KHL Hockey Association, World Championship global markets on ice hockey and the dan- to the last time it was played in Canada. club SKA St. Petersburg where he was re- Organizing Committee, and the International gers posed by fixers. Russia’s semi-final victory over Sweden on leased in April 2014 after losing in the confer- Ice Hockey Centre of Excellence. Sunday was the most watched non-Cana- ence semi-finals. “Very few sports excite and engage fans like dian World Juniors semi-final game ever, The Symposium includes many interesting ice hockey does. And we want to keep it that with an average audience of 1.46 million “As a coach, the Young Lions and the World seminars related to the 16-20 age category, way,” said IIHF President René Fasel. “The in- viewers on TSN and RDS. Juniors on home ice are an inspiring com- presented by leading figures from Czech and tegrity of our World Championships and our bination. It was an easy decision to say yes, international ice hockey. sport are central to that.” when asked to take up the position,” Jalonen said. I Welcome I Bulletin I IIHF I Competition I Results I Gallery I Interview I i I 4 IceTimes March 2015 / Vol. 19, No. 1 FYR MACEDONIA GREAT BRITAIN FYR Macedonia’s national team stepped out Pete Russell has been named head coach on the ice for its first pair of international exhi- of Great Britain’s senior national team. The bition games. The two matches between the 40-year-old, who recently won gold at the country’s men’s national team against neigh- U20 World Championship Division II Group A, bouring Bulgaria’s U20 national team, played replaces Doug Christiansen. at the new Hockey Arena Boris Trajkovski in the capital city of Skopje on 20th and 21st He will be assisted by Tommy Watkins and December, saw the two evenly matched sides Richard Hartmann and the trio’s first tourna- record a shootout victory each. ment in charge will be April’s 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group The international debut follows recent at- B in Eindhoven, Netherlands. tempts to push forward the development of SWITZERLAND JAPAN the game in the southernmost former Yu- Russell is Great Britain’s most successful ju- The Swiss Ice Hockey Federation on 12 Janu- The Japanese Ice Hockey Federation elected goslav state which became independent in nior coach and has won four golds, one silver ary submitted an application to host the 2020 a new Council at an extra-ordinary assembly 1993. In mid-November this year, the Skopje and two bronze medals in 11 tournaments in IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship and and Takujiro Horiguchi was selected as new Ice Festival saw local team Metalurg finish charge of GB U20s and GB U18s. withdraws for 2019, which means that Slo- President at the first Council meeting. top against cross-border opponents Spartak vakia remains the only applicant for the 2019 Subotica of Serbia, Bulgaria’s Chervena Zvez- The Ayr-born former netminder, who is coach IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship. The 69-year-old, who has chaired the Ibaraki da Sofia and Iraklis Thessaloniki in Greece of the Swindon-based Okanagan Hockey Prefecture Ice Hockey Federation, will suc- during a weekend of hockey festivities played Academy, had a successful time in charge The Swiss announced that the 11,200-seat ceed Seiji Kaneko.