help celebrate the centenary of British ice hockey, Stewart Roberts,
the editor of The Ice Hockey Annual, describes some of the sport’s
major events and personalities of the last 100 years.
Ice hockey was first played in Britain during the dying years of the
19th century when it was a strictly amateur game, played mostly on
small indoor rinks.
The game’s greatest pioneer was Peter Patton, a multi-faceted man who
was the founder and first president in 1913 of the sport’s original
governing body, the British Ice Hockey Association (BIHA).
The public school educated Patton, who was born in London in 1876, was
a soldier by profession and rose to the rank of Major. He was one of
the pioneers not just of British ice hockey but also of world ice
hockey, being instrumental in the formation in 1908 of the world
governing body, now the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).
He was also president of Britain’s and Europe’s first league in
1903-04. The only British clubs at this time were Oxford and Cambridge
Universities, Princes (London), Manchester, and the Royal Engineers,
based at Chatham, Kent.
After the Great War, there were few places left which were suitable for
ice hockey – at one point in the 1920s there was just one rink, in
Manchester. This forced the players to cross the Channel where games
could be played outdoors as well as indoors.
The nationality rules were different in those days. The British
national team took full advantage of one which permitted Canadians to
play for this country as Canada was a British Dominion. In 1924, when
Britain won bronze in the first Winter Olympics behind Canada and the
USA, six of their ten players were Canadians serving in the British
Army. Only one was British-born.
While Britain were tasting success in the World and European
Championships on the Continent, from the late 1920s new rinks began to
open in England and Scotland, and by 1931-32 there were enough for an
English League to be formed. In the first season the teams finished in
the following order: Oxford University, Grosvenor House (Westminster)
Canadians, Princes (London), London Lions (Golders Green), Manchester,
Sussex (Hove) and Cambridge University.
The whole complexion of the game changed in the mid-1930s when a series
of large ice arenas opened in London at Wembley, Earls Court and
Harringay (north London). With the addition of smaller buildings in
Brighton, Richmond and Streatham a virtually professional league was
created in season 1935-36.
These clubs were able to pay higher wages than Depression-hit North
America and they brought over some top class players from Canada,
several of whom later returned to compete in the National Hockey League
(NHL), North America’s major professional league. During the years
before World War Two, a time when public entertainments were few, the
arena teams attracted crowds of up to 10,000. This unprecedented spell
is now known as the sport’s Golden Era.
Forgive us if we select just two names to illustrate this glamorous
period - Chick Zamick and Sonny Rost. Both Canadian, they achieved far
greater fame on this side of the Atlantic than they ever did at home.
The diminutive Zamick came here after World War Two to join the newly
formed Nottingham Panthers and became a legend on Lower Parliament
Street for his swift skating and high scoring.
Rost, a defenceman, was in the first wave of North American imports in
the mid-1930s when he was recruited for Wembley Lions’ inaugural
season. His bone-crunching feats on the blueline were a feature of
Lions’ teams until the 1960s. In addition, several of his male
descendants also took to the sport, notably his son John Rost, a player
and coach at Streatham, and his grandson Warren Rost of Slough Jets.
Rost, Zamick and many of their teammates, it is worth noting, would
have been paid at least as much as their opposite numbers in football,
and sometimes more.
The national team also hit a never-to-be-repeated high spot when in
1936 they won the Triple Crown of Olympic, World and European titles in
Bavaria. Their Canadian coach, Percy Nicklin of Richmond, and their
Irish manager, John (Bunny) Ahearne, had scouted widely in Canada to
find eligible British-born players.
One of the stars of the side was Streatham’s Gerry Davey, with seven
goals in six games. Davey, 21, was one of the few to stay in the squad
until the next Winter Olympics in 1948. His five goals in St Moritz,
Switzerland gave him a total of 44 in 45 games for GB, a record that
still stands today.
The team captain was Carl Erhardt who had also skippered the side when
they won the bronze medal a year earlier. Born in England and educated
in Germany and Switzerland, he was renowned as a gentlemanly defenceman
who set an example of fair play and common sense, encouraging his men
to play with style and class. His slim 1937 book Ice Hockey provides
useful insights into the sport.
He went on to coach GB at the 1948 Olympics and refereed at the 1950
World Championships in London. He served on the BIHA from the early
1930s and was a vice-president of the governing body from 1936 until
the late 1970s.
GB’s manager, ‘Bunny’ Ahearne, was another of the sport’s early movers
and shakers. Born in Ireland in 1901, he had a reputation as a shrewd
businessman after establishing a successful travel agency in London. He
was appointed secretary of the BIHA in 1934 and went on to become the
dominant figure in British and world ice hockey until the 1970s.
The sport continued to enjoy enormous success both domestically (a
Scottish National League was formed in season 1938-39) and
internationally until the early 1950s. By then television was becoming
a big attraction. With the economy beginning to favour North America,
the imported players wanted more money; consequently, the arenas found
other spectacles more profitable than ice hockey. One by one, the large
venues closed and in 1960 the dwindling national league (the English
and Scottish ones merged in season 1954-55) folded.
Despite only intermittent appearances, the national team managed to
hold on to their place in world’s top ten. A sixth place finish in the
1953 World Championships was followed by an eight-year gap. When they
returned in 1961, GB were boosted by several talented home-grown
players who had learned the game in the national league.
These included a number of future Hall of Famers [see later] -
netminders Willie Clark and Glynne Thomas, defencemen Billy Brennan,
Johnny Carlyle, Red Imrie and Roy Shepherd and forwards Jack Dryburgh,
Ian Forbes, Johnny Murray, Mike O’Brien and Jimmy Spence. In
Switzerland the squad finished eighth in Europe and tenth in the world.
When Cold War politics resulted in the refusal of three leading nations
to participate in the 1962 games in Colorado Springs, USA, Britain were
‘promoted’ to the championships’ elite division and placed sixth in
Europe and eighth in the world. But they would never again reach these
Back at home, an amateur Northern League was eventually established in
1966 with teams based in Ayr, Crossmyloof (Glasgow), Dundee, Kirkcaldy,
Murrayfield and Paisley in Scotland and Durham and Whitley Bay in
This league, which lasted until 1982, was staffed almost entirely by
home-grown players, a mixture of those with experience in the old
national league and some gifted youngsters who went on to play
internationally and enjoy Hall of Fame careers - Peter Johnson Gordon
Latto, brothers Les and Lawrie Lovell, Terry Matthews, Jackson McBride,
Joe McIntosh, Alfie Miller and Derek Reilly.
The absence of a strong national league was reflected in the fortunes
of the national squad. After finishing 14th and 16th respectively in
the 1965 and 1966 World Championships, the BIHA again withdrew the
team, this time for five years.
Outside the north-east, the ice rink situation in England was
disastrous. The only venues were in Altrincham, Solihull and Blackpool
where the Ice Drome was built as a theatre for ice shows with a
Nevertheless, with the addition of players based in London and
Brighton, a Southern League was put together in 1970. This lasted in
various formats until 1982 when there were at last enough teams to
re-form a national league.
Cue another transformation of the sport which now entered a period of
phenomenal growth and the start of the so-called Modern Era. The
reasons were two-fold: a successful campaign by the old Sports Council
to remedy the dearth of ice rinks, and the injection of previously
unheard-of sums of money into the national league by the brewers,
Whitbread, under their brand name of Heineken.
The negotiations with Whitbread were handled by the BIHA’s new
president, Frederick Meredith, who took over from ‘Bunny’ Ahearne when
he retired from the governing body after nearly 50 years in charge.
Meredith, a Berkshire-based management consultant, was born in Montreal
and came to Britain to attend Cambridge University where he was a
netminder and captain of the varsity ice hockey team.
Season 1983-84 was the first one of the new Heineken League which was
composed of 20 teams, nine in the Premier Division and 11 in Division
One. The sponsorship was worth £100,000 in the first year. When it
ended in 1992-93 after ten campaigns, it was calculated that the deal
as a whole had been worth a cool £5 million.
Some of the money was used to defray the teams’ travel expenses, but it
mostly went towards promoting the game and especially towards hiring
the prestigious Wembley Arena for the end-of-season Heineken
By the late 1980s, this courageous move had the fans packing the famous
old building with up to 9,000 watching each of the three games. With
the help of BBC TV, who regularly televised the finals live on the
popular Grandstand weekend sports show, the name of Wembley became
famous as ice hockey’s ‘spiritual home’.
With the sport now receiving unprecedented media coverage, the sponsor
encouraged the formation of a journalists’ group, known as the British
Ice Hockey Writers Association (BIHWA), which was designed to recognise
the best players.
In addition to choosing players of the month and annual All-Star teams,
BIHWA – now Ice Hockey Journalists UK – recreated British ice hockey’s
own Hall of Fame. The original Hall had been set up in 1948 by Canadian
Bob Giddens, the founder and editor of Britain’s and the world’s first
weekly ice hockey newspaper, Ice Hockey World.
The Hall continues to this day, with the criterion for induction being
simply for rendering ‘outstanding service to British ice hockey’. Most
of the personalities mentioned in this article are members of the Hall.
A full list can be found on the journalists’ website at www.ihjuk.co.uk
Meanwhile, new rinks were springing up all over the country. Starting
with Peterborough in 1981, by the end of the ‘Heineken Era’ in 1993
when the Guildford Spectrum began trading, a total of 30 new buildings
were in business. Importantly, half of them were in the south of
England, in the most densely populated part of the country around the
newly opened M25 motorway.
As the league expanded into a third division to cope with all the new
clubs, more companies became eager to sponsor British ice hockey. In
season 1985-86 President Meredith signed a three-year, £50,000 contract
with Norwich Union Insurance to back the Autumn Cup, and the Scottish
Ice Hockey Association went one better with Imperial Tobacco agreeing
to put their brand name of Regal on the Scottish Cup for the same sum
over two years.
The most successful team of the 1980s was Tom Stewart’s Dundee Rockets.
In 1983, they were the first British team to participate in the
European Cup (now the Continental Cup).
Two years later Stewart, who ran a successful scaffolding business in
the city, made the signing of the decade, and one of the most
spectacular of all-time, with Garry Unger. The 37-year-old Canadian was
known as the NHL’s Iron Man for making a record 914 consecutive
appearances in the Show.
The high-scoring forward also made an unusual contribution to the
sport. In 1981-82 a precocious Edinburgh youngster, Tony Hand, had made
his debut for Murrayfield Racers at the age of 14. Four years later he
had risen to fourth in Heineken League scoring behind three prolific
Canadian marksmen. (The Heineken League restricted overseas players to
three per team.)
Unger was so impressed by Hand that he arranged for him to be drafted
by his last NHL team, Edmonton Oilers, home of the famed Wayne Gretzky.
After watching Hand in practices and a couple of exhibition games in
Edmonton, Oilers’ coach Glen Sather was also taken with Hand - he
likened his skills to the Great One’s - and offered him a contract. But
Tony, who had just turned 19, was a home town boy and, homesick, he
returned to the Racers.
Season 1987-88 was a notable one for the sport’s administration. The
BIHA employed its first full-time referee, Dutchman Nico Toemen, and a
controversial new secretary, David Pickles, replaced the well-liked but
now overworked Mrs Pat Marsh who had been secretary to Bunny Ahearne
for many years. Mrs Marsh was inducted into Britain’s Hall of Fame and
honoured by the world governing body with a special award for her
services to the sport.
In the spring of 1989, Britain’s senior men’s team returned to the
World Championships for the first time in eight years, this time under
Whitley Warriors’ English coach and ex-GB forward, Terry Matthews.
After their lengthy absence, GB had to enter the bottom group, Pool D,
but they failed to win the expected promotion and were ranked a lowly
27th in the world.
Nevertheless, the enormous media interest in ice hockey ensured that
more than 20 newspaper, radio and telephone hotline correspondents
travelled to Belgium to report on the team’s fortunes.
The BIHA, meanwhile, announced that its registered players had increased by 150 per cent in the last five years.
A year later, Britain began the long climb back to some sort of
international respectability by gaining promotion to Pool C. GB’s coach
for these games, held in Cardiff, was the respected Canadian Alex
Dampier, who was then with Nottingham Panthers. ‘Damps’ is credited
with nurturing the young Tony Hand when both were at Murrayfield.
Three game-changing events took place during the 1991-92 campaign.
First in the October came the new £30 million, 8,500-seat Sheffield
Arena, the largest building in Britain with a permanent ice pad. By the
end of the season, extra seating had to be installed to cope with all
the fans keen to watch the new sport, and the Steelers drew the biggest
crowds since the post-war years.
In March 1992, tobacco company Gallaher Ltd announced a three-year deal
to sponsor the Autumn Cup which was renamed the Benson and Hedges Cup.
A month later, the GB team won their second World Championship
promotion in three years, this time into Pool B and the top 20 of the
world’s hockey nations.
Britain’s venture into Pool B was a complete success with Dampier’s
1993 squad earning promotion for a third straight time, this time in
the Dutch city of Eindhoven. Bolstered by ten Anglo-Canadians, Britain
had a perfect series, winning all their seven games, with three
shutouts, shooting them up the world rankings to 12th place. It would
not be stretching things too far to say that this was GB’s finest
international moment since 1936.
Englishman Stephen Cooper of Cardiff Devils was voted the tournament’s
Best Defenceman and British-Canadian Tim Cranston (previously with
Durham Wasps) scored three game-winning goals. Scot Tony Hand,
Stephen’s brother, Ian Cooper and another English pair, Anthony and
Stephen Johnson, were the pick of the home-grown skaters.
But sadly the aftermath of all this success was calamity – Whitbread’s
decision to end their financial backing and the resultant loss of their
steadying hand behind the scenes; Britain’s swift relegation from the
World A Pool; and rows among the top clubs over wage-capping and
players’ nationality. All combined to give the governing body some
David Frame, previously with Cardiff Devils, was appointed the BIHA’s
first chief executive in March 1994 and he struggled manfully to cope
with all these difficulties.
Then there was the rise of the arena clubs. Three opened in 13 months -
Manchester (July 1995), Newcastle (November 1995) and Ayr-Prestwick
(August 1996) - bringing fresh problems as they, too, attracted
thousands of new fans almost overnight.
Manchester Storm, heavily promoted by former Sheffield Steelers’ public
relations man, Dave Biggar, raised the crowd record in their first
season to an all-time high of 16,344 - for a game in the second
Even this figure was exceeded a year later on 23 February 1997 when the
Storm hosted the Steelers in front of a staggering 17,245 fans with
over 1,500 unable to obtain tickets. The game was shown live on Sky
(Being able to put these sort of attendance figures on his CV later
helped the ambitious Biggar to acquire a good position with the Madison
Square Garden Co. in New York.)
Eventually, the arena teams announced that they were setting up their
own league, the Ice Hockey Superleague, independent of the governing
body, to begin play in season 1996-97.
The original clubs and owners were: Basingstoke Bison (Malcolm
Chamberlain of Civic Leisure) – a larger rink was planned for the
Hampshire town; Bracknell Bees (John Nike), Cardiff Devils (David Temme
of Brent Walker), Durham Wasps (Sir John Hall, chairman of Newcastle
Utd FC), Guildford Flames (John Hepburn of merchant bankers, Morgan
Stanley), Manchester Storm (John Lord of Ogden Entertainment Services)
and Sheffield Steelers (businessmen Steve Crowther and George Dodds).
Nottingham Panthers (under long-time owner Charles Walker) and Bill
Barr’s Scottish Eagles, which called Ayr’s Centrum home, joined the
Original Seven later, but Guildford Flames dropped out before the first
puck was dropped, leaving eight for the league’s inaugural campaign.
The fully professional circuit - administrators as well as players -
signed the best hockeyists money could buy, regardless of their
nationality, eventually spending some £20 million, which put Heineken’s
investment in the shade. It was British ice hockey’s first pro league
since the 1950s.
Superleague’s top banana, financially speaking, was Philip Anschutz, an
American billionaire who controlled the Anschutz Entertainment Group
(AEG), owners of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and their arena and many
other sports teams and buildings in North America. One of the world’s
wealthiest men, he ran London Knights from the converted London Arena
in Docklands. But like all the league’s owners, he lost several million
in the process.
The ambitious but mismanaged league lasted just seven seasons,
coinciding with one of the strongest economic climates this country has
ever enjoyed. Only three teams lasted the distance: Sheffield,
Nottingham and the unfashionable Bracknell Bees. The Panthers survived
through acquiring a wealthy new owner, Neil Black, and a large modern
arena. The Steelers barely hung on after bankrupting more than one
owner, and having one imprisoned for fraud.
The only other team to reach the finishing line were Belfast Giants,
who joined in 2000 on the completion of the Odyssey Arena in the
Northern Ireland capital.
The league’s troubles also helped to bring down the 64-year-old
governing body. The basically amateur organisation had never been
designed to cope with professional hockey. President Meredith handed
control to David Frame.
As their finances continued to flounder, in December 1998 the BIHA’s
entire ruling council resigned and in July 1999 a new governing
authority, Ice Hockey UK, was launched under the guidance of the Sports
Below the Superleague, in 1996-97 the remaining clubs formed first a
Premier League, then a British National League which lasted until
season 2005-06. This often came into conflict with the top league,
creating more nightmares for the hard-pressed governing body.
The GB team now began playing some important games under the leadership
of Peter Woods, a highly qualified coach, who took over in 1996. Woods,
from Winnipeg, had family in Portsmouth and coached Superleague side,
Basingstoke Bison. He was also the league’s Director of Sport.
One of his first tasks was guiding GB through a long series of
qualifying matches for the 1998 Winter Olympics. These culminated in a
3-3 tie with Switzerland at Sheffield Arena when a win would have taken
the dual national-dominated GB through to the next round. Woods, who
had a passion for the Old Country, was devastated.
Among the – mostly dual national - stars of GB during the Woods’ era
were forwards Paul Adey, Rick Brebant, Kevin Conway, David Longstaff,
Steve Moria and Hand, defenders Matt Coté, Darren Durdle, Shannon Hope,
Doug McEwen and Rick Strachan, and goalie Bill Morrison.
In November 1999, Britain’s 18th place finish in that year’s World
Championships made them eligible to compete for a place in the World A
Pool. Playing in front of BBC TV cameras, GB drew their three games in
Sheffield Arena, which required them to take part in a play-off decider
against Norway in Eindhoven. Another bitter disappointment awaited
Woods, his team and their hundreds of fans as GB lost 2-1.
It should be mentioned here that most of Britain’s fans belong to the
GB Supporters Club which has been organising trips to the World
Championships since the early 1990s. According to the IIHF, it is the
world’s only club for the followers of a national team.
A couple of months later in Gdansk, Poland, Britain attempted to
qualify for the 2002 Winter Olympics. This time they finished third of
the four nations with only a win over Romania. It turned out to be GB’s
last Olympic qualifying tournament for eight years as they withdrew
from the next event due to lack of funds.
The dwindling resources available to GB led in 2000 to Woods’
resignation. It also led, inevitably, to Britain’s slide down the world
rankings to a record low of 31st in 2006, though this was mostly due to
their being deducted ranking points by the IIHF for their inability to
compete in the Olympic Qualifying competition.
Woods’ successor was another Canadian, Chris McSorley. Brought to this
country by the Anschutz Group, owners of London Arena and the Knights,
to coach the Superleague team, McSorley made his name as a colourful
character who pleased British fans by promoting the rougher side of the
sport. (One of his brothers, Marty, was famous in the NHL for acting as
Wayne Gretzky’s ‘minder’.)
His appointment to the national team, therefore, was a surprise as
physical hockey is frowned on in the international game. Moreover, he
was to receive only minimal financial compensation and Ice Hockey UK
now insisted that home-grown talent should be given preference over
But McSorley showed great enthusiasm for his new role. He had been
impressed with the Brits he had seen like David Clarke, Stevie Lyle,
Ashley Tait, Michael Tasker, Jonathan Weaver (and, of course, Hand and
To try and promote the team in this country (historically, GB had
played nearly all its games overseas), he took his men on a national
tour in the run-up to the 2002 World Championships, playing six games
against a mixture of local clubs and foreign nations. But with crowds
dropping as low as 400 in Coventry, the project failed to cover its
costs and has not been repeated since.
McSorley was in charge of the squad for four seasons, during which time
he moved from London to Geneva to coach another of Anschutz’s clubs in
the Swiss A league. But the hard-driving Canadian found working with
Brits a lot different from coaching professional North Americans. This
plus the strain of his full-time job with a leading European side and,
of course, the age-old problem of finance led to his amicable parting
from the team. During his reign, GB slipped from 18th to 25th in the
It wasn’t until 2010 that GB moved back above 25th, and by this time
they were being mentored by Paul Thompson, only the team’s second
English coach of the Modern Era. Thompson, who had won several trophies
with his club side, Coventry Blaze, was another keen advocate of using
During his spell in the GB hot-seat, Robert Dowd, Ben O’Connor, Phil
Hill, Robert Lachowicz and netminder Stephen Murphy established
themselves as squad regulars.
Robert Dowd in action against Kazakhstan in the final Olympic Qualifying tournament.
‘Thommo’, as he is universally known, proved to be GB’s most successful
coach since Alex Dampier, driving the team from 29th to 21st in the
world during his five years in the hot seat. He resigned after the 2011
World Championships only with the greatest reluctance, having failed to
persuade the governing body to find the resources he believed were
essential if GB were to continue their climb up the slippery
Britain’s most renowned player, Tony Hand, who was awarded the MBE in
2004 for his services to the sport, realised a cherished ambition when
he was appointed as Thompson’s successor. The all-time leading points
scorer for GB and in British club hockey, Tony recently retired from
playing to concentrate on coaching his team Manchester Phoenix in the
sport’s second tier English Premier League.
Under Hand’s guidance, GB did themselves great credit by reaching the
final round of Olympic Qualifying in November 2012 for the first time.
Back with domestic hockey, the game has stabilised somewhat since the
folding of the Superleague in 2003 and the short-lived British National
League three years later.
The top two leagues are now the Elite League (EIHL) and the English
Premier League (EPIHL). But as is the way with many team sports these
days, there is no promotion or relegation between these leagues.
Indeed, each is run separately from the other and neither is under the
direct control of Ice Hockey UK.
The Elite League is an independent body, a trimmed-down version of the Superleague but with more manageable budgets.
The EPIHL is under the umbrella of the 34-year-old English Ice Hockey
Association, a sprawling body which controls all ice hockey south of
the border - senior and junior, men and women - outside the Elite
League. The EIHA has been chaired throughout its existence by a
colourful American, Ken Taggart, an ex-USAF sergeant who still resides
in the States.
A self-styled ‘development league’, the EPIHL has a limit of four
players (three on the ice at any one time) who have not been trained in
Below the EPIHL are four regionalised amateur leagues, containing
almost 40 teams. There is a nine-strong Women’s League, and the
numerous junior sides are organised down to under-12 level. A similar
though smaller setup exists in Scotland.
Most of this huge growth has come about since the 1980s. As noted
earlier, the opening of the Peterborough ice rink in 1981 heralded the
largest programme of rink construction in our history. When Widnes on
Merseyside opened late last year it brought to 44 the total number of
ice surfaces used by the sport.
But with a population of around 60 million to serve, these venues are
under constant pressure. Ice hockey, a minority sport, has to fight for
its place in the pecking order. Consequently, this welcome move has not
been reflected in a commensurate increase in players talented enough to
play in the top league or to be selected for their country. The Elite
League is almost as heavily dominated by overseas players as its
predecessor was in the 1950s.
Peter Russell was appointed head coach of Great Britain for the 2015
World Championships. Scotsman Russell, a former netminder, spent
several years coaching GB’s junior teams as well as heading an ice
hockey academy in Swindon.
Russell brought in some much needed new blood, but Britain’s major
obstacle continues to be a serious lack of funding, especially compared
to their constantly improving international opponents. Though they made
a serious challenge for promotion in April this year, GB are currently
24th in the world rankings.
We must mention here GB’s longest serving players, David Longstaff, 40,
who quit the international scene in 2013 with 101 caps for his country,
and Ashley Tait, who last played in 2014 after a record 102 games.
‘Lobby’ Longstaff has just returned to his home town club, Whitley
Warriors, as their player-coach. Tait, 39, has signed for a remarkable
26th season in domestic hockey, back with the Elite League’s Coventry
Blaze for a third year.
The 1980s rinks’ boom also enabled the creation of national junior
squads - under-20s and under-18s – but they have struggled to make much
headway in the World Junior Championships. Neither is among the world’s
leading 20 nations.
A British women’s team first took part in the European Championships in
the early 1990s and by 1999 felt strong enough to enter their first
World Championships. Britain hosted Division IB of the championships in
Stewart gratefully acknowledges the historical research conducted by
Martin C Harris, David Gordon and Gordon Wade of Ice Hockey Journalists
UK which he used in compiling this article. Photos are courtesy of the
Harris Archives, Diane Davey, Ice Hockey Journalists UK and The Ice
May 2013 (updated June 2015)
Ice Hockey UK - www.icehockeyuk.co.uk
English Ice Hockey Association - www.eiha.co.uk
Elite Ice Hockey League - www.eliteleague.co.uk
GB Supporters Club – www.thefifthline.co.uk
Ice Hockey Journalists UK - www.ihjuk.co.uk
International Ice Hockey Federation – www.iihf.com
The Ice Hockey Annual - www.icehockeyannual.co.uk