page_title: Sport in the United Kingdom
section_title: Ice hockey
hierarchical_section_title: Sport in the United Kingdom / By sport / Team sports / Ice hockey
caption_attribution_description: English: The biggest rivalry in British ice hockey between the Nottingham Panthers and the Sheffield Steelers. Taken at the game on the 13th October 2018.
context_page_description: Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture. The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including association football, badminton, billiards, bowls, boxing, cricket, croquet, curling, darts, golf, fives, hockey, netball, rugby, tennis, table tennis, snooker, squash, and water polo. The standardisation of various sports, such as in rowing, dancesports and motorsports occurred in the United Kingdom.
  This has meant that in the infancy of many sports, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922 some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland though some continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis.
  In a small number of sports, these teams are supplemented by high-profile events featuring a combined team representing one or more nations.
  For information on sports in a British home nation you may wish, therefore, to consider reading the Sport in England, Sport in Scotland, Sport in Wales or Sport in Northern Ireland articles, or the Sport in Ireland article where appropriate.
context_section_description: Ice hockey, a sport that originated in Canada (former British colony), is the only team sport to have a United Kingdom-wide league with at least one team from every nation. It has a long history in the United Kingdom and it is reasonably well supported, with the larger teams attracting thousands of fans to every game. Ice hockey is now being considered the United Kingdom's biggest indoor sport and fastest-growing winter sport. The main league is the eleven-team professional Elite Ice Hockey League containing three Scottish, six English, one Northern Irish and one Welsh club. The league has featured many former NHL players, predominantly during the two NHL lock out seasons of 2004 and 2013. At the moment the Great Britain men's national ice hockey team is in the top division of the Ice Hockey World Championships. The team is ranked 22nd in the world in the IIHF World Ranking system.
  Media support for ice hockey has improved on a national level, although the majority of news is still found on the internet. With a weekly highlights programme Sky Sports covered the Elite league from the 2006/07 season. Sky has also showen a small number of live games, but this has not happened since the 2011/12 season. Following this Premier Sports picked up the mantle for a number of seasons. On 31 August 2017, Premier Sports launched their sister channel FreeSports which showed eleven live EIHL games in the 2018/19 season including the PredictorBet Playoff Final and a regular highlights show.
  The Elite Ice Hockey League is reasonably well recognised around the ice hockey world, highlighted by the 2010 visit of the Boston Bruins of the NHL who took on the Belfast Giants at the Giants Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland, winning 5-1 over the Elite League All-Stars. The league currently ranks 12th in Europe.
caption: The biggest rivalry in British ice hockey between the Nottingham Panthers and the Sheffield Steelers
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