Latvia and Germany: Great omen or international hockey anomaly?
The silver and bronze medal winners in the World Championship turned in some inspiring performances, but the challenge now is whether they'll be able to sustain their success
I was speaking last week with a friend who lives in Germany and asked him whether he was excited that his country’s national team was in the semifinal of the World Championship. “There’s a World Championship in hockey?” was his confused response. “And Germany has a team playing in it?” All right, so there’s a little work to do there.
But, man oh man, is it ever great to see the likes of Germany and Latvia making us all bury the lead when it came to the 2023 World Hockey Championship. Sure, Canada won the tournament for the record 28th time, the second time in the past three years and the fourth in the past eight tournaments. So, good for those plucky underdogs. One observer noted that in the 2023 tournament, “Canada found a way.” Must have something to do with the millions of dollars it pours into developing the sport, the hundreds of thousands of players to whom it has access, the thousands of indoor rinks and the culture it has created around the game.
Canada was not the story of the 2023 World Championship. Germany and Latvia were. In defeating the United States – and while we’re on the subject, what is the deal with the Americans in this tournament? (And what the hell is going on in Sweden these days?) – in overtime in the bronze medal game, the Latvians touched off a celebration so wild that 50,000 people greeted the team at the Freedom Monument in Riga and the government announced that Monday would be an official holiday. For a bronze medal.
This is why we play the games.
Germany, meanwhile, rebounded from losing its first three games of the tournament to run the table and win its first World Championship medal since unification and only its fourth ever, to go along with its three Olympic medals. So you look and you see that Germany was 56 agonizing seconds away from winning the Olympic gold medal in 2018 in PyeongChang before losing in overtime. And now this. So the optimist in you sees what transpired over the past couple of weeks in Riga and Tampere and you’re hopeful that it leads to bigger and better things and more competitive teams in Latvia and Germany.
The only thing is, and I hate to throw water on all of this, but I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out what these surprising finishes in international hockey mean for the growth of the sport globally. I’ve been fooled way too many times by inspiring one-offs that end up going nowhere. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Switzerland. Perhaps these great performances will lead to a boom in hockey registrations in Germany and Latvia and inspire a generation of young players to emulate their heroes, which will attract better athletes to the sport and improve the grassroots programs, the way the 1980 USA Miracle on Ice did for hockey in that country. Sadly, probably not, though.
Whether Latvia and/or Germany become major players in international hockey will ultimately have a lot less to do with these exciting and inspiring performances than whether or not their national hockey federations and sport governing bodies provide the required investment in the game. If they do, perhaps things like this will not be one-offs that are soon forgotten. But unless those countries are prepared to pump resources into their hockey programs, all we can realistically expect from them is to pleasantly surprise us once in a while.
According to the International Ice Hockey Federation website, Latvia has a population of 1.8 million people and just 24 indoor rinks. The 84.3 million people in Germany share 124 indoor rinks. Canada, and its 38.2 million population, has a total of 2,860 indoor rinks. Do the math. The investment in these other countries starts with infrastructure and continues with high-level coaching and development. And those things cost a lot of money, especially in hockey. This isn’t just a game for rich kids in Canada. This is a worldwide problem.
But let’s get back to the good part of all this. We’ve come a long way from the times Germany had to rely on South African-born Olaf Kolzig to be its goalie in international competition. This past season, seven German-born skaters and two goalies played in the NHL and a few of them were pretty good. Moritz Seider was the NHL’s rookie of the year in 2021-22 and might have the best hair in the NHL today. Leon Draisaitl is among the best players in the world and Tim Stutlze is looking more and more like an NHL stud-zle with each passing season. Latvia had three skaters and two goalies in the NHL in 2022-23, including Vancouver Canucks prospect and World Championship MVP Arturs Silovs, a major reason why the people of Latvia are currently partying in the streets.
Let’s hope this all leads to meaningful growth of the game globally, because that is good for everyone. But if not, let’s celebrate the fact that these two countries provided us with some wonderful hockey and memorable moments.
Wondering how close Germany could have come to gold if Draisatl and Stutzle were available. Would have been a helluva powerplay with Seider.
Awesome stuff Ken. I enjoy how you cover topics that are written about much anywhere else