RESURRECTION
Britain returns to the top IIHF division next year — and it’s been a long climb back
Tony Hand, the Gretzkyesque scorer who made mincemeat of defences in Great Britain’s best hockey leagues for 34 seasons, came to a rare realization shortly after he arrived at the 1994 world championship in Bolzano, Italy. His team had next-to-no chance to win a game — or even to preserve its dignity.
“We weren’t prepared back then,” said Hand, who retired in 2015 with a career tally of more than 4,000 points, but had zero goals and zero assists that spring in Bolzano. “Teams were just skating through us. We were forechecking. Guys were just skating past us like we weren’t there.”
Hand and the rest of the British men’s national team didn’t hold a training camp or play an exhibition game together before they sputtered to an 0-5 record at that year’s worlds, the federation’s most recent appearance in the tournament’s elite division. The Brits lost 12-3 to Russia, fell 10-2 to Italy and dropped a surprisingly close 8-2 decision to the eventual champion, Canada. Physically, Hand says, they simply weren’t fit to share an ice sheet with giants of the sport.
No one would mistake Britain for a hockey powerhouse these days, but the team’s prospects of coming away with at least one victory will be much brighter when it returns to the top division next year. Late last month, Britain placed first in the second tier of the IIHF’s annual championship, cinching promotion when a desperate shot from the bottom of the left circle found its way into the goal with 15 seconds left in regulation in their final game.
The lower rungs of the world championship never attract much notice in Canada, where even the main competition is seen as secondary to the Stanley Cup playoffs. But Britain’s last-gasp win over Hungary in the Division I, Group A tournament finale in Budapest on April 28 elevated it to the top rung again, where in 12 months’ time, it will get long-awaited rematches with the Canadas and Russias of the world.
“I’ve never seen a Great Britain team work so hard,” said Hand, who is now the head coach of Britain’s national developmental program. “Every player on the ice gave everything they could. There were no passengers. I think Britain has to play that way, because obviously, you’re playing a lot of skilful teams. (But) people underestimate how good some of these players are.”
The early years of hockey history are specked with British successes at the highest levels. Led by recruits with English bloodlines who were born and raised in Canada, Great Britain won a bronze medal at the 1924 Winter Games in France and came away with Olympic gold at Germany in 1936. The Brits had finished third at the world championship a year prior and won silver in 1937 and 1938.
Britain’s hockey team hasn’t qualified for the Olympics since 1948. It was ranked 24th in the world going into this year’s world championship, behind Ukraine, Japan, Poland and Hungary. And even though dozens of NHL alumni were born in England or Scotland — from hall of famer Joe Hall to Steve Smith, Steve Thomas, Byron Dafoe and current Arizona Coyotes player Brendan Perlini — none of those players were raised there.
As recently as last year, Britain was stuck playing in the third division of the world championship, known as Division I, Group B, where it had languished since going winless in the Group A tournament in 2013.
But people around the team say the quality of play in Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League has increased dramatically in the past five years. Players have become stronger and more mobile; they battle harder for the puck and make quicker decisions when it winds up on their stick.
Peter Russell, the head coach of the national team, calls the EIHL “the best-kept secret in Europe,” and says its 20 or 30 best homegrown players — the group from which he selects his roster each year — are just as good as the imports who arrive from elsewhere on the continent or North America.
“We’ve got a really good league over here that a lot of people wouldn’t really rate,” said Brett Perlini, Brendan’s older brother, who led the EIHL’s Nottingham Panthers in scoring this season
before winning the MVP award at the world championship.
“Guys are hungry for it. They believe they can win. You put the work ethic in and next thing you know, we’re going up.”
In the final tournament game on April 28, the largest crowd of the week — 7,870 spectators — watched gleefully as Hungary scored 3:31 into the first period and again within the first two minutes of the third. But when British forward Robert Dowd cut the deficit to one on a wrister from the right faceoff dot with nine minutes to go, it was clear momentum had swung. Hand, following along on TV, saw
the Hungarians begin to play more passively. From the bench, Russell urged his players to dump pucks in deep and to try to wreak chaos around the opposing goal.
“When we got one, we knew we would get two, but we didn’t think it would take (until there were) 15 seconds to go,” Russell said. Such was the state of affairs when Robert Farmer retrieved a loose puck off a faceoff scramble in the offensive zone. He snapped a low shot in the direction of the net, hoping more to generate a rebound than to score. The puck nestled between the Hungarian goalie’s legs, before the netminder swept a skate backwards
and inadvertently knocked it over the line.
In the daze of the post-game celebration, after Britain had waited out the meaningless overtime and won in a shootout, a sweaty, beaming Farmer admitted to interviewers that his golden goal was more than a touch fortunate. “Rubbish,” he called it. Given a bit of time to reflect, and knowing precisely what it had delivered, his coach had a different take.
“People don’t think it was a great goal,” Russell said. “I think it was the best goal I’ve ever seen.”
I think Britain has to play that way, because obviously, you’re playing a lot of skilful teams. (But) people underestimate how good some of these players are.