Finland Head Coach Jukka Jalonen - IIHF

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INTERNATIONAL ICE HOCKEY FEDERATION
President’s Report
A season of unity and progress
2011 campaign among most productive in IIHF history
T
hey say that a post-Olympic season can be
somewhat of a “hangover”. Let me inform all IIHF
members, stakeholders, partners and friends that it has
been anything but. The 2010-2011 season has been
one of the most successful and productive in the history
of the IIHF.
Even before the first puck was dropped, the global
hockey community gathered at the Molson Canadian
World Hockey Summit in Toronto, Canada. It was not
only a four-day meeting, but the beginning of an era
of better understanding between ice hockey’s major
organizations.
It is not very often the hockey world gets together like
this. The last time an international summit was held
was 16 years earlier in Boston. Now in Toronto, following
the unprecedented success of Vancouver 2010, it
was an excellent opportunity for the IIHF, NHL, NHLPA,
Hockey Canada, USA Hockey and the Canadian Hockey
League to put together this four-day event to discuss
the most pressing issues our game faces today.
The summit featured some excellent presentations and
insightful key-note speeches. The best and most committed
hockey people in the world were there. Afterwards,
I was convinced that only good things will come
out of this. For certain results we will have to wait a little
longer, but on other issues we saw immediate impact.
Hayley Wickenheiser had barely ended her speech before
the IIHF, during the very same topic session, announced
a two-million Swiss Franc contribution to the
development of the women’s game. And at the Semi-
Annual Congress one month later a four-year women’s
hockey development plan was presented to our constituency.
The employment of Tanya Foley, the IIHF first Women’s
Development Program Manager, and the ensuing
Women’s Ambassador and Mentor Program involving
13 countries were direct results of the summit. A caveat:
Development takes time. Don’t count on any revolutionary
shifts in power come Sochi 2014. This is a long-term
plan that goes beyond the next Olympics. But we should
see much better equality in the women’s game for 2018
and definitely 2022.
A post-Olympic year is also traditionally the period
when some changes are made. The Semi-Annual Con-
gress in Portoroz, Slovenia approved a format change
for the top division of the IIHF World Championship,
as of 2012. The IIHF’s first format change in a decade
will eliminate the qualifying (second) round as the traditional
four groups of four will now become two groups
of eight.
Apart from an increase in games (from 56 to 64), the
biggest change is that the entire preliminary round
schedule will be known to fans and organizers beforehand,
which should of course be good for ticket sales.
It will be very exciting to see how this will work out for
Finland 2012 and Sweden 2013.
The 35th IIHF World U20 Championship in Buffalo and
Niagara took this remarkable event to yet another level.
USA Hockey and the host organizers sold 329,687 tickets
for the 31 games, making the 2011 U20s the bestattended
IIHF event in United States history.
Not only did the 2011 World Juniors solidly surpass the
previous best U20 event in the U.S. (the 2005 event in
Grand Forks with a total attendance of 193,256) but it
also drew more spectators than the men’s tournament
at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, which attracted
268,139 fans for 35 games.
But the question is, which is more amazing? The record
in the arenas or the one produced before the TV sets in
Canada? An incredible 14.2 million Canadians watched
some or all of the gold medal game between Canada
and Russia. In a country of 33 million, that represents
nearly half the population. Viewership peaked at 9.3
million late in the third period. The game was the most
watched show on Canadian television since the 2010
Olympics in Vancouver ten months earlier.
The event in Buffalo also underlined the IIHF’s uncompromising
position on its policy that there is “no such
thing as a clean hit to the head”. Five players received
supplementary suspensions of ten games in total. As
much as the IIHF would like to avoid suspending players,
especially at the youth level, the international hockey
community is united when it comes to this infraction.
And the IIHF is extremely confident with its position.
There are no “ifs” or “buts”, no east-west, north-south
or “blindside”. If the most vital part of your body is targeted,
you are out of the game. Hits to the head must
be taken out and this is a necessary education process
that we are going through.