Im gonna write a long post about what i've learned from icehockey, aswell as being a goalie myself for 18 years and coming from the football city of Trondheim(Rosenborg).
Going to be a lot of reasons here so bare with me haha.
*Lets start at the very bottom of this.
People speak about climate here and that its supposed to be so cold.
To be honest the winters in Norway the last 7 years has been horrible.
The winter isnt what it used to be, nor is it in sweden.
So that means less kids gets to skate on ice outdoors and therefor will be less drawn to ice sports like Hockey.
For example Trondheim we've had so many outdoor Football fields that we turn into ice surfaces.
I grew up on the outdoor ice, from early october to may if we were lucky we would have winter and ice most of the place here and it was always packed with kids.
Now we barely have ice more than a week before the rain and the heat takes it away, so the city has stopped even trying to make ice surfaces.
*Then it leads us to where should the kids go now?
Well indoor rinks, which is a HUGE issue in norway, we barely have any.
Sure icehockey doesent seem big, but when you enter a rink and you see 80 + kids on ONE ice surface you will see that its growing alot.
But due to the lack of rinks around norway they simply has to say no to kids, yet try to fit as many as they can inside.
Alot of parents feels its a waste of time when its 80 + kids on the rink (This is what happens in Fredrikstads Stjernens rink)
And i understand them. it's just too many per rink to get a proper start.
* Now that again leads us to developing kids. When you got too many kids per ice surface you will not be able to follow through fully on those who actually has a potential.
It will be group training and they will be mixed in with the "Rest" and slow their growth to become better.
Sure kids drop out and as time goes on there will be less kids, but its still going to be too many per rink and too few Coaches.
* Coaching. Norway lacks some serious quality when it comes to coaches. ofcourse you have that dad coaching the team and such.
But when you see teams aged 16+ have just a dad as a coach that really has no training or experience himself then its going to hinder the growth of the players and their quality.
Coaches in Norway simply lacks training and information that is crucial for getting things out of the kids. Finland and sweden are perfect examples of countries that has experienced coaches, even if they are just "Dad" coaches they are pretty well trained and has alot of knowledge.
* Goalie Coaching is a word that none really even knew existed in norway up to the point of open camps in finland around 2010.
I personally grew up around nothing, not even oslo area had any camps or focus on coaching goalies.
I ended up having to go to finland and learn it all by myself.
When we actually Goalie coaching in norway it was usually just the A teams main goalie and backup doing some drills and didnt follow through.
We did in the end after alot of nagging from goalies(me aswell) get goalie trainers from Finland to come by and help us, even Sweden and the quality of the norwegian goalies are growing from each year, but we're still 10 years behind when it comes to player development here.
And lets not even start on how much it costs to be a goalie. This has been a huge factor of why parents refused their kids to be goalies, aswell as being shot at ofcourse!
Buying pads that costs 5000NOK (500£) then masks that costs 3000kr(300£), catcher 250£.. blocker 180£ chesty 350£..
And thats even before we import them and pay norwegian taxes!
Norwegian import is so expensive that we simply cant have hockey shops around.
The best shop we did have was Jordal Sport, that dude had EVERYTHING for goalies and players.
But he ended up having so many sales because when he bulked bought stuff he would end up having 70% of it left and went bankrupt in the end.
Personally i've been privately importing gear cheaply by taking orders then ordering them. But making a shop made for hockey just wont work here unless we get some serious growth.
* Norway is also so dominated by skiing, football and handball that Hockey falls very short, and is rarely prioritised by the goverment, and it shows by the amount of rinks we have here.
* Its very expensive to play hockey here. 1 div team for example has to pay around 1000£(Rosenborg hockey had 3000£ + travel a year for players that played in a league outside the city) a year to play on a team, and that comes before sticks that are closing into 300£ per and breaks in a week.
So without a financial stable family you are going to have a hard time getting somewhere, or if a team doesent help you out, which is very rare here.
* Financial status in hockey is horrible, big reason for this is the amount of amateurs that are in the management. Most of them are doing it probono or what you call it and does it after their main job.
Rosenborg went bankrupt from this issue alone.
Also sponsors in Norway are so gooooood damn ruthless. Unless you are a team like VÃ¥lerenga or Stavanger you're gonna have a hell of a hard time keeping money coming in from sponsors as they dont accept not being on the best team.
Yet again here is where Rosenborg had a massive issue, since we're from a city that only football is accepted pretty much the sponsors expected the team to be at the football clubs level. if not they just said bye bye.
And then again Sponsors want TV time for obvious reasons, and TV + Hockey + Norway = does not go well together.
Barely any tv stations wants to pay for the rights to show hockey. Unless you pay 10£ a month for it online. And if you did your cameraman would be the 14 year old daughter of the media man (Not kidding..) and the camera would have crap quality and went off point constantly. Unless it was a Vålerenga match, because then TV2 would show up with their truck and camera crew. (VIF is making a Norwegian version of 24/7 that hopefully will add to good Publicity of the sport)
Online is a good thing, but not when it comes to advertising Hockey to the public.
The news barely wants to show anything when it comes to hockey unless its VÃ¥lerenga.
Our biggest news channel TV2 is a VÃ¥lerenga channel. they only show info on that team, then roughly just mention results of the other games.
And if they were to show highlights of other games it would simply to show a ruthless tackle that was made and how that person had to be transported to the hospital.
Things like that destroys the reputation of hockey.
Parents are afraid of letting their kids start playing because they think its a ruthless, dangerous game.
But facts are, Hockey has ALOT less injuries than Handball for example, especially when it comes to the severity of the injury.
* Education.
Norway has close to ZERO education when it comes to hockey. We have NTG which has been a good school for atheletes.
But what i learned from being in NTG is: Ok so if i dont get into a team that pays me well, then this education is pretty much useless.
Sure it educates you somewhat in becoming a good hockey players. Because its pretty much the only place where you can get scouts from norwegian teams to look at you.
But in norway you cant simply live on GET league(top league) salary. You need a job on the side.
And NTG wont give you that. its almost strictly only Hockey and ****ing around in Lillehammer/Asker.
We have gotten Wang and such now, dont really know much about it though.
But we know that the players that wants to get out of norway pretty much has to move to sweden/USA/Canada/Finland and play there while educatinh, thats how its started to be lately atleast.
And to the most important part of it all (If anyone is still reading the wall of text)
Location of hockey.
People might wonder why Norway isnt having more players around the world in leagues.
Well Hockey locations are pretty much only covering 1/4 of the country and its down south.
Trondheim has been the Northern team, the only team outside the south area. And its a 7 hour travel with bus, one way to play a game.
Hockey is so balled up down south and has made it so hard for teams up north to actually get a chance at developing kids.
Because when kids starts playing hockey on the pond in like say Mo i rana which is in the middle of norway (ish) they have nowhere to play. closest rink would be Trondheim which is so many hours away.
If the Cities around norway actually saw how good Hockey is for the country, and how much we need it we would have gotten ALOT better in hockey.
But when we're only using less than 1/4 of our country because we're limited in rinks, then we're going to have a hard time getting more good players.
Sad thing is, even if we get rinks all the way up north now. its still atleast 15 years before we will ever see a northern team in the top league thats STABLE.
Trondheim is a perfect example of this.
We've been struggeling alot with financial problems, from reasons mentioned further up.
But what people didnt understand when Rosenborg went bankrupt is that we simply cant hold on to Prospects here. Once they are 16 they move far away from the city and we're left with nothing.
So we had to import players. and they cost, they cost alot. Even if the team cant really afford a C-class player, we still need him to fill the roster.
Because we wont get a good player up here for a cheap penny when we're 7 hours away from the nearest team.
We also have to provide a job and an apartment for that player, and it costs so much money.
Cant even imagine how it will be for the teams further up.
Tromsø is in a good situation as they are very close to sweden and finland, aswell as stable Sponsors up there.
Just woke up and had to write this so sorry if i didnt make what i was trying to say clear.
Atleast hope it made some sense haha
