Oh dear.

As much as we’re a UK based website, and we’re glad that we get some sort of hockey fix outside of following the NHL, we can’t help but think that hockey in Britain is a complete joke. Never mind the fact that the low standard of play doesn‘t even compare to the ECHL, or for that matter pretty much any ice hockey league outside of Britain (not that this is our biggest complaint, we can deal with it), but the sport is treated like crap. It’s bastardised with elements of football (soccer) brought to games by the fans, and it’s tackied up to extremes with pathetic excuses of team logos, horrible jerseys, mostly irrelevant team names (because UK sports team owners suck at naming their sports teams), adverts plastered all over the jerseys, and completely dumb sounds being played during game stoppages.

And as if all of that wasn’t enough to make the game feel silly and tacky over here, this article, on the official website of the highest professional hockey league in the UK, takes the cake and eats it all up. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how horribly and unprofessionally it was written. Allcaps and excessive exclamation marks make me cringe.

For those who don’t quite get what the article is actually talking about with football and rugby games being cancelled, I’ll go into a little bit of detail here: basically, the UK had some of the worst snowfall we’ve seen in years. To be honest, it was only a couple of inches at the most, yet the whole country came to a complete standstill, with schools being closed, people buying at least 12 loafs of bread as part of their panic shops, and as the article above mentions, football and rugby games being cancelled. Makes us look quite wimpy compared to the likes of Canada and Russia – much like our hockey teams, oddly enough…

They were trying to advertise a GMB Nottingham Panthers game (Note how a sponsor now comes before the town name for some teams – that alone is beyond ridiculous. I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t write this about British ice hockey in general), and in my eyes they failed miserably. Sure, they have one of the largest fanbases in the UK as far as hockey goes, but the fact that the majority of people in this country don’t really know or care about hockey, added to the horrible writing of that article and the fact, like most teams, that they probably didn’t bother to properly advertise the game in any way, relying solely on word of mouth from fans, makes this quite an Epic Fail.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is Epic Fail number two.