Sorry to bother this thread with a slightly off topic explanation, but I will try to tell why I do not pay much attention to this thread, even if we sure do have a team in the championship, and also I love ice hockey just as much as The Stones ...
I don't bother much about the Ice Hockey World Championship, to be honest. I do know we have a team there, but very few people in Norway do care about the national team in Ice Hockey. They hardly practice together, and we have like a snowball in hell chance of winning a game. We might be fine in the first of the three periods, but everyone who know hockey do know that the second and especially the third period is when things happen, just like the last ten minutes of a soccer game. If you do not have the routine and the quality and the quantity of great players, you don not have any chance.
We used to have four - 4 - ice rinks in total in Norway when I was a kid. One of these were Askerhallen, it was built around 1969. I followed every game, still do, a great team, we are the current champions in Norway. Our 3rd ice rink will be finished this year, which is impressing, knowing we - Asker - are just 2% of the population, but we have more than 5% of the ice rinks.
Still, the national team is far far behind Canada, Sweden, Finland, all those great hockey nations. We might win the game by luck and great defensive play, but it is usually a pain to watch, David vs Goliat, unequal backgrounds.
Canada have got around half of the roughly 17,500 ice hockey rinks on the planet. Norway have approx 50 ice rinks - 0.3% of the total. Norway do have one player only in NHL - Zucca - Mats Zuccarello (he played for our team before he left for Modo Sweden and then NHL NY Rangers, Dallas, and now Minnesota). May be one day we might have 100 ice rinks, but I don't think so. Cross Country skiing is much more popular here, kids would rather have skis under their feet than skates.
So in short, I know exactly what Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie is up to mostly, but international hockey on TV is not that tempting. I look forward to our new rink opening later this year, and I look forward to be inside the rink, watching the team up close, just like watching the Stones from the pit! May the best team win!
PS. Guess where the arena.no comes from. Not just Stones. Askerhallen i.e. Asker Arena came first... The first iorr url address back in 1996 was arena.no/stones.
List of indoor ice rinks in NorwayGraphic: Ice hockey nations by the numbersAskerhallenBjornulf
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2021-05-27 14:58 by bv.