Ice Hockey: Exhibition is not just here for fast puck

Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks in Game 2 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs. Photo / Getty Images

The puck will stop here. Ice hockey may be a foreign sport to most of us but the upcoming international exhibition has captured the imagination of Kiwi punters, if ticket sales are any indication.

The three-game series is between a USA selection and a composite Canadian team and will be staged in the country's three biggest indoor arenas in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The match at Vector Arena on July 23 has virtually sold out, with the last batch of 500 tickets released for sale yesterday. The 4000-seat Dunedin Ice Stadium is 60 per cent sold already while the 8900 seat CBS Arena in Christchurch is over 50 per cent sold, with strong early sales stalled after some uncertainty in the wake of the February earthquake.

The term 'exhibition' suggests the razzle dazzle and hype of the Harlem Globetrotters, but organisers stress that most of the players will be drawn from the NHL, with former Stanley Cup winners.

"There is no such thing as a friendly between the USA and Canada," says International Ice Hockey Hall of Famer Kerry Goulet, who has been responsible for assembling the two teams. "We have put together a mix of established stars and up-and-coming talent to ensure the right mix of desire and hunger."

Superstars of the sport like Sidney Crosby (who scored the winner in the final of the Winter Olympics and earns an annual salary of US$8 million) will not be making the trip; players of his ilk would cost $100,000-$200,000 in insurance costs alone.

But Goulet is satisfied with the group of players he is putting together: "We are talking millions of dollars of talent, and the best hockey players ever seen in this part of the world."

The USA team will be captained by Aaron Miller, while the Canadian skipper is Derek Armstrong. Miller spent most of his career with the Colorado Avalanche and the Los Angeles Kings in a 700-game NHL career and also won a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

"We all can't wait to show Kiwis the fastest sport on the planet," says Miller. Players hurl down the ice at speeds of over 60km/h, while the fastest slapshot can see the puck whizz through the air at 160km/h.

Armstrong suited up for almost 500 games in the NHL, turning out for the Kings, New York Rangers and St Louis Blues among others. US Goaltender John Grahame is another big name, who represented the US at the 2006 Winter Olympics and also was part of a Stanley Cup winning team in 2004.

Along with Russia, the USA and Canada remain the powerhouses of the sport, and fought out a memorable final in the last Winter Olympics. Canada has over 577,000 registered players - nearly two per cent of the population - while there are almost half a million players in the USA. New Zealand has 1510 registered players.

The logistics behind bringing a full-sized, NHL ice rink to New Zealand has occupied the best part of three years of planning for the event promoters. While assembling a quality field of players and meeting the contractual demands of the agents and the NHL has been a challenge, it pales in comparison with the task of getting the $4.2 million rink to this country.

It has been sourced from a company in Amsterdam, and is currently being shipped to New Zealand. Set to arrive in three weeks, the component parts fill nine shipping containers.

Once assembled it will be 56m long by 26m wide and require 200,000 litres of water. It takes approximately 50 hours to assemble the skeleton structure, and then another 72 hours to freeze the water. The rink requires around 23cm of ice.

In 2012 event director Craig Douglas plans to take the rink to Australia, where he will stage an international ice hockey series across five cities. He hopes that Kiwi fans will leave the arena wanting to watch the local product the next week.

For more information go to http://www.internationalicehockey.co.nz