Hockey's over for another year ... in the north
ern hemisphere! Luckily there's sport-crazy Australia and the Australian Ice Hockey League to bridge the gap till '07-'08. "Hockey in Australia!" you object. "That's worse than hockey in Florida! Nobody who calls hockey ice hockey should be playing it!" Except that they've been at it for a hundred years. Ice Hockey Australia, formerly the Australian Ice Hockey Federation, celebrates its centenary in 2008. The AIHL season is at its mid-point, so now's a good time to check up on the Brisbane Blue Tongues, one of a select group of hockey teams worldwide named for a lizard. (The Tucson Gila Monsters played two seasons in the '90s in the old West Coast Hockey League.)
There are two kinds of teams in the AIHL: those that use Australian players exclusively, and those that begin the season with a short bench and hope to pick up some imports as the leagues in the northern hemisphere wrap up. The Blue Tongues are one of the latter group. Consequently they started the season with four straight losses. To make matters worse they were one of three clubs to be penalized points for icing imports before their transfer paperwork was done, which put them temporarily in negative numbers in the standings. The player in question was Finnish goalie Jani Pekkarinen, a former Lahti Pelican. Since April the Blue Tongues have moved up to the middle of the table with the help of scorers Matt Amado and Martin Paquet.
The Blue Tongues don't appear to have any affiliation with Blue Tongue Brewery, which is too bad, because the Australian beermaker has a better logo, and because it would put the Blue Tongues into another select group, teams named after beers, like the Halifax Mooseheads and Moncton Alpines.
More as they score.
Douglas