USS Baltimore team on left and Australian team on the right
Source: Trove
The Start
The first game of ice hockey in Australia was played on July 17th, 1906, when players from Melbourne played against Americans from the visiting USS Baltimore warship.
The Melbourne Glaciarium, which was the third largest ice arena in the world at the time, hosted the game, which saw fourteen men on the ice (including goalies) playing with field hockey sticks and a bandy ball.
Although the Australians were outmatched, they still put up a very good game and ended the match with a 1-1 draw, according to the Melbourne Punch newspaper article on July 19, 1906.
Sandi Logan
Australian ice hockey has evolved a lot since then but has always been dictated by the number of ice rinks in the country.
“You wanted to develop ice hockey in Australia, and you don't have a lot of natural ice, you're going to have ... a lot of restrictions around just how big you can grow the game,” said Sandi Logan who served as the national secretary for the Australian Ice Hockey Federation (AIHF) from 1979 to 1989.
Most rinks are privately owned with government funding being rare or unsubstantial. There are currently only 20 ice rinks in Australia. For comparison, Canada has 2,860 indoor ice rinks.
However, in Canberra there has been government commitment to building a new ice rink.
“They (government) announced a commitment of almost $20 million towards a new twin sheet, 3000 spectator seating, ice facility, sports facility, (which can house) hockey, broomball, figure skating, curling and speed skating,” said Logan
All this development is still in the planning stages, as Logan shares, they still haven’t broken ground on the project.
“We've been at this for six or seven years, and we still haven't turned sod. But ... for the first time ... a government in Australia has committed a substantial amount of money ... public funds to build an ice rink.”
The physical climate and sports mad culture of Australia makes ice hockey a natural sport to gravitate towards. Australians love physicality in sports as demonstrated through the popularity of rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules football.
Ice hockey requires a lot of speed and skill which ties with soccer, another popular sport in Australia.
As a former coach and current player, Logan believes that good, controlled aggression is needed to play the game properly.
“You got to control your aggression in the game, otherwise, you're going to be in the (penalty) box the whole time,” says Logan.
The availability of hockey equipment and the lack of Australian born coaches has affected the growth of ice hockey but has improved in the last 50 years.
In the past, there were limited hockey distributors and the equipment available were leftovers from CCM, Bauer, or Nike. With the growth of hockey distributors in Australia as well as the development of the Internet, current equipment can be bought online or locally.
Many coaches are expatriates from Canada, Czechia, America or Russia. They have the advantage of playing the game from a young age and being immersed in that world.
This is changing as social media and game streaming access allows Australian youth to embrace the hockey world.
“When I first came here, the late 70s, we used to bring 16-millimeter film in through the Canadian High Commission in Canberra or the Canadian consulate in Sydney,” said Logan.
“We'd get together with popcorn and a movie night, and ... watch the Stanley Cup highlights, and that'd be all ... nothing on TV, nothing in the newspaper.”
Balancing Act
While serving in his role as the national secretary of the AIHF from 1979-1989, Logan was still involved in the media as a journalist and had many contacts throughout the hockey world.
One of the first things he did was contact the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (now known as Hockey Canada) and ask to use their development program which is still used to this day.
His focus was promoting the sport among Australian youth.
“We're going to start with kids, because every year, you want to have hundreds of new kids playing the game so that in 20 years' time, you've actually got a concentration of hockey players,” said Logan.
“We implanted or established the genesis of the junior development program of reaching out at a young age and getting good buy in from young athletes to play hockey.”
Formation of the NIHL
The National Ice Hockey League (NIHL) was founded in July 1980 when four members of the Australian Ice Rink Operators Association (AIROA) established the league with a $400,000 commitment. It was sanctioned by the AIHF in which Logan was the national secretary and a player for the Sydney All-Stars.
Credit: Fandom
In the inaugural 1980 season, there were seven teams competing for the Goodall Cup which included the Adelaide Flyers, Dandenong Blackhawks, Footscray Pirates, Newcastle Northstars, Oakleigh Aces, Ringwood Rangers, and the Sydney All-Stars.
The Sydney All-Stars won the first NIHL championship defeating the Dandenong Blackhawks in the best-of-three final in early September.
The final 1981 season saw the NIHL expand to nine teams with the addition of Warringah Bombers and the Canterbury Eagles. Two teams were renamed as the Oakleigh Aces became the Oakleigh Golds, and the Adelaide Flyers changed to the Payneham Flyers.
Despite winning only two games in the previous season, the Payneham Flyers won the NIHL championship that year.
The NIHL was one of the few professional hockey leagues that flew players to games which was incredible considering the circumstances.
Courtesy: Legends of Australian Ice
Most the players in the NIHL were imports from Canada and around the world. The league was mostly for the love of the game as most players still had full-time jobs.
“Nobody was paid, I can tell you there was no money in the game, it was more an experience and an opportunity for the import players to travel and see a little bit of the world,” said Logan.
That still didn’t stop the NHL from reaching out with a cease-and-desist order that makes Logan laugh to this day.
“The fact that even the NHL noticed there was a national league playing down under amazed us,” he said.
“We just ignored it. What was the NHL going to do to us? How were we a threat down in little Australia?”
After the closure of NIHL in 1982, teams went back to playing each other on a state level with the best teams from each state facing each other for the Goodall Cup, named after John Edwin Goodall, who donated the trophy back in 1909.
Founding of the AIHL
During 1999, some rinks closed, and multiple teams disbanded from the Super League, a Sydney based level of competition.
With only a few teams left in the Super League, three teams decided to play games amongst themselves and formed the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) in 2000. Those teams were the Sydney (formerly Macquarie) Bears, the Canberra Senators and the Adelaide Avalanche.
For the first two seasons, the three would play weekend round-robin games with the top two teams competing in a one game final for the AIHL championship.
In 2002, the league expanded to six teams and the Goodall Cup became the trophy for the AIHL finals. The Sydney Bears were the first team to win the Goodall Cup and AIHL finals in 2002.
The league changed the championship format in 2003 allowing the top four teams to play one game semifinals on Saturday and the winners would play for the AIHL championship and Goodall Cup on Sunday.
This championship format has remained the same ever since, except for 2009 when the Goodall Cup was designated as a state cup to celebrate its century of existence.
The H Newman Reid trophy was presented to AIHL champions Adelaide Adrenaline instead and later became an award for the best regular season team as the Goodall Cup returned in 2010.
Credit: AIHL
Wayne Hellyer has played a key role in the Sydney Bears' history, since the formerly named Macquarie Bears were incorporated in 1982. He is currently a life member and advisor with the Bears as well as the director of the AIHL.
In his role as director, Hellyer plays a major role in helping the board of directors oversee the ten teams across the AIHL. He also schedules the games and sits on multiple committees.
“More or less people rely on my judgment, because of the many years' experience I have in the sport,” said Hellyer.
Hellyer sees the impact that the AIHL has on youth hockey interest.
“Everyone's been warming to what we deliver, especially from the national level. Kids come and see that and go ‘Wow, this is different, this is new’ and they come and try.”
The AIHL is looking to expand to 12 teams in the upcoming years, but plan to do so cautiously.
Teams interested in joining the league play exhibition games against AIHL teams to determine their skill level.
“They might think that their hockey system is good but when they play us ... (they see) how we conduct a league, how we run the league ... (and see) this is different than just their local pond hockey,” said Hellyer.
Teams are also analyzed to see if they can meet the financial commitments of being part of the AIHL.
There is a minimum of four overseas transfers allowed to each team, with most of the imports coming from Canada or the U.S.
Due to an agreement, the only charge is the international transfer card fee paid to the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).
However, there are players in the AIHL from all over the world including France and Italy.
Not all rinks in the AIHL are created equally, as most rinks have netting instead of Plexiglas. The reason for this is that public skating helps generate most of the income and rinks generally aren’t designed for hockey.
The dimensions of the ice rinks generally follow IIHF rules and are 60 by 30 meters. This means that most ice rinks are bigger than NHL rinks, though the arena in Canberra is similar size to an NHL rink.
Games in the AIHL reflect the rules of the international style of play mixed with the physicality of the North American game.
“We have to kind of mold ourselves between a European style and a North American style,” said Hellyer.
Global series in Melbourne 2023
In late September 2023, the Los Angeles Kings and the Arizona Coyotes visited Australia for the first time to play two preseason matches as part of the NHL Global Series. Over 13,000 fans attended Rod Laver Arena for both matches.
This was brand new experience for the NHL as it had to build an ice hockey rink on top of a tennis surface for the Australian Open after shipping the equipment through the Panama Canal.
The AIHL was present at those games and was excited on how the game has grown in popularity.
“I think ... every NHL franchise jersey was spotted ... in the stands, so it shows you that there's good awareness down under of the product called the NHL,” said Sandi Logan, national secretary for the AIHF from 1979 to 1989.
The NHL plans on having another game in Australia in 2025 and possibly 2027.
Credit: NHL
Nathan Walker
Although the NHL was only in Australia for a few days, Australians still have someone to cheer for in the league.
Nathan Walker is currently the only Australian player in the NHL and is currently playing for the St. Louis Blues.
Drafted back in 2014 in the third round by the Washington Capitals, Walker debuted on Oct. 7, 2017, and scored his first NHL goal with his family in attendance.
In his Stanley Cup Playoff debut in Game 6 of the second round against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Walker recorded an assist, making him the first Australian to both play and record a point in an NHL playoff game.
Walker is very recognizable among Australian hockey youth and has connected with the AIHL to help host skating clinics.
“When he's here, we have him at functions and games, and he's an advocate of us, because he did play our league,” said Wayne Hellyer, director of the AIHL.
Nathan Walker
Credit: (Larry MacDougal/CP)
Flynn Hilton
Flynn Hilton is an Australian ice hockey player currently practicing hockey around various men’s leagues in Calgary. He has dreams of one day reaching the AIHL and playing for the Melbourne Mustangs or Brisbane Lighting, his hometown team.
Hilton finds Nathan Walker to be a big inspiration as he is the only Australian to make it to the big league and gives him hope about his hockey future, despite learning to skate at 18.
