(Photo from forum.skyscraperpage.com)

After a conversation yesterday with an insightful person, it just hit me deeper than ever that we’re living with a phenomenon that could be called as “the globalization of hockey”. Many journalists have talked about the globalization in football/soccer and that has been going on for decades and made a bigger quantum jump into the future already during the 1990’s.

Evidences of that phenomenon in hockey could be found in all trades among players and coaches cross over the European continent and from Europe over to North America, which has also opened up a wider coverage of hockey among the media sites, not only by the traditional media but also from a big share of new media sources that delivers live broadcasts from the games.

Is it here to stay? Will this globalization phenomenon in hockey increase?

Well, it would be easy to say a clear yes to these questions as an answer, but not even the wisest can see the end of everything and that statement makes me hold the horses a bit.

Although, I’d say instead: I have a feeling that it is here to stay and grow as well.

But is it something that I want? Do you want this progress?

I can only answer for myself honestly and I don’t want to put my words into your mouth. Think for yourself what is it that you want with the sport you love.

Yes, I want this involvement from everyone – everywhere; much because I have a true desire that hockey as a sport would expand over the whole world. Not remain as something small bits here and there of the world are up to, and being seen as Kendo fighting on ice by the others who are not involved in hockey at all.

Another clear personal experience as proof of this development as it goes hand in hand with my own progress as human, as I gained by the time wider perspectives as well, that I was watching the KHL rounds and I knew there was Liiga and SHL games going on at the same time.

To make you understand this a bit better, I’ll tell you that I have been a very keen Liiga and SHL fan since I was a youngster, but due the evolution of everything else including the hockey, I get to watch the KHL-game to the end and then switch over to the Liiga and SHL streams. Five years ago it would be the opposite, that I would switch stream soon as possible the Liiga or the SHL-games started.

It is not like that I have abandoned these Nordic leagues that have been such a great part of my life, it is more like that I have found something else and elsewhere that attracts me more. Well, I guess I have to confess as well: the KHL-games in this case as I’m talking about that league as an example, have better hockey in many aspects than Liiga and the SHL. That might be a valid reason for my current choice.

Generally speaking, if look beyond the horizon, I think it is valuable for everyone to do as the sentence mean: look beyond the horizon and discover the world outside the little boxes we are sometimes tucked in.

I hope though you understand somehow that you don’t have to share this view at all and that I’m not looking for a clear statement here that would be used as a universal answer of everything, but more like expressing a feeling and perspectives that has come by the years.

Lately, while I was landing in these insights I told you above:

I have been visiting the memory line down to the 1980’s when my father and me were playing hockey board games and we played those teams we only knew and we watched hockey live together as well. Not going too deep into this, but that’s the only thing we had in common, the hockey.

Anyway, I was looking at that decade, what we had and did together, and I just realize at the same time I have this feeling that the globalization of hockey is here to stay, that I can’t and I don’t want to go back as well, as I have honestly a stronger feeling as well that I have to follow this hockey evolution stream that connects us all over the whole entire world.

To the last: I don’t and I can’t foresee the future but one thing I feel so grateful about is that this hockey globalization together with all social media as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc. brought me many good friends by the time and that is worth a lot, if not even beyond measure.

Questions for the future and time to answer:

How would the hockey map look like within 20-30 years? What tournaments and leagues will exist then?