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The Indian national ice hockey team will make its debut on Canadian ice on October 9th, when they play the Brampton Beasts in the Powerade Arena in Montreal. This is the Indian team’s first match of a North American tour that kicks off next month.
The Brampton Beasts are affiliated with premier National Hockey League franchise Montreal Canadiens. The Beasts compete in the East Coast Hockey League, which is a second-tier hockey league. Speaking to IBNLive, Cary Kaplan, President and General Manager is hoping that this tour will help propagate the sport in India: “We want to shed light on hockey in India. When India has over 10 ice rinks built and the team is playing at a higher competitive level, we hope that people remember October 9 as the day Team India played the Brampton Beasts and as the day that ignited a passion for ice hockey in India as well.”
Awareness of the sport of ice hockey is quite obscure outside the Himalayan region of Ladakh, where it is very popular.The twenty-two man Indian squad mainly consists of members of the army and paramilitary outfit Indo-Tibetan Border Police. The bane of nascent Indian sports has not spared ice hockey, as scarcity of quality training and paucity of proper equipment have plagued the sport. The Indian national team have an international win-loss record of 17-1, with the lone victory being a 5-1 drubbing of Macau in 2012.
Indian coach Adam Sherlip is hopeful that the tour to Canada, which is an ice hockey powerhouse, will be educational and invigorating for the Indian team: "We're really thrilled to connect India's national team to one of Canada's largest east Indian communities and help develop the program in a great hub of hockey. The hope is that this game is a success so that we can continue to do games like these in the future."
Of the twenty-two member squad, Sherlip is planning to fill just 10-12 slots, with the remaining being filled through try-outs. He is also scouting for Canadian ice hockey players of Indian origin. The former coach of the Chinese team is impressed by his current wards and admires their passion for the sport: "They love the game no different than we do. They live for hockey. For their two to three-month winters the only thing they do is play hockey everyday. If they don't have equipment, they find ways to make it.”
