Hockey is emerging in the country. The number of players has grown to almost 600, who bring the...

Hockey is emerging in the country. The number of players has grown to almost 600, who bring the three busy rinks to their limit even if other ice sports are almost inexistent. It’s maybe not a huge number, but more than China, Croatia, and South Africa. And consider the small population. For each 512 inhabitants you have one registered hockey player in Iceland. The "hockey density" is not as good as in Canada (67) or Finland (85), but still better than in Slovakia (630), the U.S. (659), Norway (730) and many other top-division countries. Iceland is the seventh-most hockey-crazy country in the world if you want to go according to players-per-capita figures. And the enthusiastic hockey family in Iceland gets more and more a feeling of growth.

The IIHF takes a look at hockey's rapid growth in the small country of Iceland. Of course, I always think of the ludicrous plotline that saw Team Iceland take on the Mighty Ducks in D2 when I think of Icelandic hockey. I always thought it was funny, but I never even realized that there actually was no national teams in Iceland when that movie came out.

I also picture those players singing the national anthem in the article as singing some post-modern, hauntingly epic Sigur Ros type song.

over 1 year ago Bruce Peter 1 comment 0 recs |