High energy costs in Finland put hockey training on ice
Snowflakes dance in massive spotlights on a public hockey rink in the city of Oulu, countered by the echoing sound of pucks bouncing in a valuable training session for a local youth team.
Less than 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the Arctic Circle, the young players train outside in the freezing cold and not in their own arena, which they can no longer afford to run.
Ice hockey is Finland’s top sport, the reigning world champion. About 30,000 children are registered for ice hockey teams, and many others play casually with friends or at school.
But with rising energy prices this winter – a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine – many local teams are now struggling.
After rising costs made opening a home arena too expensive, one of Oulu’s local teams – Ahmat, which means The Wolverines in Finnish – has had to hold training sessions on public outdoor fields this season.
“The rise in prices has been so terrible that the company has not been able to open the arena at these prices,” Ahmat’s head coach Marko Paananen told AFP.
Many other arenas face the same fate in the Nordic countries if prices remain high.
According to Statistics Finland, the average price of electricity in the third quarter was 40-60 percent higher than last year.
– number of players eliminated –
Outdoor rink areas like Oulu’s Pateniemi – a soccer field frozen into ice hockey fields in the winter – are popular places for friends and family to skate.
The most important thing for young Ahmat players is to get training time on the ice during the most important training season of winter.
Ahmati has about four hundred players, most of them young, and is considered a small club, but has several former players who became world champions and Olympic medalists.
Parents and coaches are worried about the consequences if the situation continues.
“Even though it’s not that warm in our home arena, it’s another thing to be at the mercy of the weather out here,” said Katja Koistinen, the mother of one of the players.
Without their own rink, Ahmat has to settle for outdoor courts and sharing ice time with other teams.
“If you have practices here and there, you don’t know how many guys are going to show up,” 19-year-old coach Herman Hietajarvi told AFP.
Some other teams have allowed them to train in their arenas, but this means uncertain training hours and long distances.
“The number of players is dropping a lot at the moment,” head coach Paananen said.
– We cannot bring in new players when our own rink is not open.
– Difficult season –
When the import of electricity from Russia stopped as a result of the war in Ukraine, Finland launched an energy saving campaign in October for the first time since the oil crisis of the 1970s.
“This season will be quite difficult, and especially during the new year the costs may increase in many places,” Jukka Toivakka from the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation said.
The most important training time is in the cold winter months – most young players do not train in the summer – and the association urges arenas to be energy efficient and municipalities to keep costs reasonable.
“We have appealed to municipalities and ice rink owners not to sacrifice youth sports to this momentary effect of the energy price increase.”
ehu/po/rox/rl