One Flew Over the Hockey Nest

It is here, under the ceiling of Kyiv’s Sports Palace, that a phenomenon called Kyiv Sokil was born in the late 1970s. It comprised not only an inimitable ice hockey team but also the special atmosphere of big hockey that reigned here until the end of the eighties.

All that still reminds us of those times is perhaps the now outdated hockey equipment for which Kyiv should thank the junior championship of Europe held here twelve years ago. Since then hockey has been pushed aside for many years to skating rinks, where teams first played God knows who for in International Hockey League championship matches, and then, after Russia instituted a championship of its own, our hockey’s limits narrowed to playing against Belarus and Baltic squads, by no means the elite of continental hockey.

The standards and traditions of Kyiv hockey, laid in the glorious eighties, allow a few big-city teams to recruit young players, but the current domestic players are either those not yet invited abroad or those never to be invited anywhere. What this original fusion of youth and experience allows the Ukrainians to achieve at most is to lead in competitions against the Lithuanians and Belarusians. We will only achieve more when hockey wins back mass enthusiasm, when the games of our teams are watched by crammed grandstands at large stadiums and numerous television viewers. Only then will the funds invested in hockey have at least some chance of returning, instead of being pure patronage, as is the case now.

Thanks to the sponsors, including the far from stingy Kyiv city authorities, ice-hockey has returned to the Sports Palace, its customary arena. There was free admission for all to the two pair off between Berkut (Golden Eagle) and Sokil (Falcon), Kyiv’s leading clubs.

It is hardly worth dwelling on the details of our hockey leaders’ encounters. Speaking figuratively, the teams are vie to tap the potential of the Sokil of the eighties. Still in the foreground are players who have long passed their prime, while youth just has not had time to reach maturity and joyfully accept an invitation to go to anywhere the pay is higher than at home. Suffice it to recall that on the eve of the decisive matches against Berkut Sokil leading players Savenko and Mlynchenko dropped everything and went to St. Petersburg for employment. The substitutes, superveterans Yuldashev and Stepanyshchev, were barely able to help fight such a mediocre but stable team as Kulykov’s Berkut. The very first game, in which the golden eagles easily trounced the falcons 4 to 2, dispelled all doubts about who will win the Eastern European Hockey League (EEHL) championship: Berkut will be on top again.

However, it is easier to win again an EEHL tournament than to win back the enthusiasm of audiences which would give their favorite team their love, free time, and, later, money. The attempt made by the Sokil-Berkut match organizers to remind people that the Sports Palace hosts not only exhibitions, presentations, and Protestant prayers, is highly commendable, but still failed to rise to expectations. First about free admission to hockey matches. Even such a well-heeled soccer club as Dynamo does not hold free domestic championship matches and not only because of a few thousand hryvnias paid for nominally priced tickets. The acquisition of tickets disciplines the spectator and makes him a full fledged participant in the spectacle. Otherwise, the arena will be filled by those who have come on a lark, marring the inimitable atmosphere of competition. As the free hockey matches went on, police officers would unceremoniously push the spectators into the only open entrance, thus forcing them to reach their seats in a roundabout way. Was this ever possible in the eighties, when the venerable second-sector spectators would walk without haste to their cozy seats “in accordance with the tickets bought,” while the noisy and excited fifth sector would fill the corridors with heavy cigarette smoke during the breaks?

The impression is that big-time Ukrainian hockey feels like a poor relation whom the Palace of Sports, its traditional nest, has to care about too much and derives too little profit from. And the audiences themselves, who could cheer for either of the teams because the rivalry between the Kyiv clubs is in its infancy, did not cry at the top of their voice, as they did during the matches against Moscow Spartak, which our Sokil would beat in a home game at least once a year. What really irritated me was the announcer who called out the names of those who scored the goals in a professional boxing manner, as a result of which the spectators, who did not know all the players, could not make out the name the announcer murmured. Conversely, the frequently repeated reminders that the match and the teams are being supported by the city administration and trade unions made me shake my head not to forget where I am.

It turned out that the Sports Palace walls and ice alone were not enough to revive if not the boom of fans then at least a mass interest. Big-time hockey consists of many components which seemed to exist independently and which we have lost involuntarily. All this can be restored if there is the will to do so. I was reflecting on this, leaving the hall in a throng of spectators as before. Everything was almost the way it was in the good old times. I wished I could say to everyone around me: see you again here during the match! But when? Do the people dealing with our hockey really wish to get the ball rolling or will this accidental free hockey stick in our memory as a charitable concert in which everything is upside down? Shall we ever see hockey ticket lines?

I will not address these questions to the Kyiv City Administration and the trade unions. Thank them even for what little they have done for hockey. Or have only begun to do so? I prefer the latter question.