It was announced on Thursday that the New Zealand national U20 men's hockey team and the New Zealand national U18 women's team would be withdrawing from their respective 2021 IIHF World Hockey Championships due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the IIHF Division-III U20 World Championship in Mexico City, Mexico, scheduled for January 10-17, 2021, will only feature seven teams while the IIHF Division-II Group B U18 Women's World Championship in Kocaeli, Turkey, scheduled for January 28-31, 2021, will now only have four teams participating.
New Zealand's two national teams are the first to cancel events in 2021, and it speaks to the efforts the country made in reducing their coronavirus outbreak to zero. By keeping their players at home, New Zealand has removed any need to open its borders to international travel once again, and that's a major factor when reducing the spread the virus as this decision prevents these New Zealand players from returning with the virus once their tournaments end.
There were other factors that the New Zealand Ice Hockey Federation Management Committee highlighted in their statement, and they included limited travel options with international flights cancelled and the respective costs of booking flights on the few planes in the air, a lack of insurance for its players to protect them from COVID-19 in case they were to contract the virus, and quarantine time for players and the efforts needed to quarantine and clean all equipment after each use. In other words, it just didn't make sense.
NZIHF President Andy Mills did confirm in the statement "that no decision has been made as of yet regarding the remaining teams - U18 Men's, Senior Men's (Ice Blacks) and Senior Women's (Ice Fernz) - participating in their respective tournaments". The senior men's team is scheduled to compete in Reykjavik, Iceland in the 2021 Men's Ice Hockey Division-II Group B World Championships from April 18-24, 2021; the U18 men's team is scheduled to play in Kockelscheuer, Luxembourg at the 2021 U18 Division-III Group B World Championship from March 27-April 3, 2021; and, the senior women's team is slated to play in Zagreb, Croatia in the 2021 Women's Ice Hockey Division-II Group B World Championships from March 7-13, 2021.
While it would seem sacrilegious for Canada to even consider something like cancelling international hockey events, New Zealand's efforts to prevent any further coronavirus outbreaks has been outstanding which very well should be the model that the rest of the world follows when it comes to handling this virus. We saw Canada make the difficult decision to cancel the IIHF Women's World Championship in Nova Scotia this past year, and this might be something that the organizing committee wants to look into as countries may consider their participation in these upcoming tournaments.
Cancelling these teams' participation in international competitions may seem, in the short-term, like the wrong decision when it comes to growth and development of these players, but this is a bigger issue than 40 players missing out on some international travel and a few hockey games. In order to keep New Zealand's total cases at zero, sacrifices have to be made for the good of that country's population through some difficult decisions, but the end result will be that the country, in the long-term, will be better off for it.
Honestly, that seems like a fair trade-off it you ask me.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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