Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Tidbit Tuesday: Ice Hockey in Kazakhstan

If you have been following this blog (or know me personally), you know that I enjoy Ice Hockey and the Philadelphia Flyers in particularly (in fact, I am wearing my Flyers shirt right now).  Unfortunately, the Flyers don't ever play in Almaty, Kazakhstan.  So I thought I'd try and figure out what the hockey situation is there.  This is what I found out:

Kazakhstan is a full member if the International Ice Hockey Federation which means it has its own ice hockey association (icehockey.kz)  and participates annually in the IIHF championship competitions.  Kazakhstan's national men's team is currently ranked 17th and the women's team is currently ranked 8th.  The team logo is pictured to the right and is basically the national seal over crossed hockey sticks.

There are currently ten clubs listed in the Kazakhstan Ice Hockey Federation:



HC Arlan (Kokshytau)
HC Barys (Astana)
HC Beybarys (Atyrau)
HC Miner (Ore)
HC Ertic-Pavlodar (Pavlodare)
HC Kazakhmys  (Satpayev)
HC Kazzinc-Torpedo (U-Ka)
HC Sary-Arka (Karaganda)
HC Almaty (Almaty)
HC Arystan (Temirtau)



The Beybarys won the Kazakhstan championship this year, beating out the Astana Club HC Barys who also appear to be the only Kazakh team in the Kontinental Hockey League.  Oh, and some of these cities might be spelled wrong due to google translator...sorry.

HC Almaty is a new team (this year was their first season).  It seams that Hockey isn't an easy sell to the sophisticated Almaty audience and that previous clubs have had to close for financial reasons.  I'll certainly attend a few matches while I am there.

There will be more Kazakhstan Hockey posts to come, so if I didn't provide enough depth here, stay tuned :)

2 comments:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHeMTQjKNc

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    1. Спасибо IbragimKZ!!!! Thanks for posting this youtube link to the HC almaty and Beybarys game. I had to work and wasn't able to make the final game.

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