:watermark(https://f.pmo.ee//logos/5327/cf39aec33e583b7d1f325d7eab54a133.png,-2p,-2p,0,18,none)/nginx/o/2023/04/16/15261649t1hea21.jpg "What’s new in hockey? Matulis speaks: Latvians, remember Latvia!")
Latvia is one of the few countries in the world where the most important event of the hockey season is the world championship. Russia and Belarus, though similar, are missing the second championship because of the war. In Europe, WC is also quite prestigious in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Switzerland, but for two very strong hockey countries, Canadians and Americans, the world championship is like a third-class tournament. A family trip to Europe in your spare time isn’t the worst end of the season. You will manage to win or play well – good! Mistake? Others will go next year. Good luck to them!
How did we get to the point where the World Cup is the ultimate value? Its roots are definitely in the USSR. While the world hockey championship is important for both the party and the country. If the amateurs of the Soviet Union won them every year, it proved the superiority of the socialist lifestyle over capitalism. Unless “friends” from fraternal Czechoslovakia occasionally gain laurels.
When the country of Latvia was restored, hockey remained in the Soviet sphere for at least four more years, in the so-called Interstate Hockey League. With the dream of Latvia to return to Group A of the world championship sooner or later! Failure to get there in 1994 (pre-Switzerland) and 1995 (Slovakia) was almost seen as national disasters. We weren’t in big trouble yet. What did not work in the training of players in the SHL already succeeded in the first season, when we are no longer associated with Soviet hockey. legality? Maybe.
Source: Tv Net