Ottawa team answers Greek invitational call

The Greek Hockey League celebrates its 25-year anniversary by sending 17 skaters to play in an Athens tournament. Chris Yzerman reports.

Chris Yzerman
The Ottawa Citizen - Monday, April 10, 2000

As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, Ottawa's Greek Hockey League will embark this week on something of a Herculean task.

A 17-member team will represent the league in the first Hellenic International Invitational Hockey Tournament at Athens, Greece, where it will try to raise the profile of the sport in a country where hockey rates low.

Hellenic Team Canada will compete against the Boston-based Hellenic Team USA and the Greek national team in a week-long event, starting Saturday.

"We're kind of excited," Hellenic Team Canada coach Nickolas Florakas says. "We think we're doing something that could add to hockey around the world. We view this as something much bigger than (a tournament)."

The Greek Undersecretary of State for Sports cut funding for its national team in 1993. Forced to suspend operations until 1995, the program resumed with once-a-week practices. It competes in international play in Pool D against competition from such non-hockey powers as South Africa.

While nearby Italy boasts its own professional league, developmental programs are virtually non-existent in Greece, which has just two known official-sized rinks in the country.

"Hockey's not one of the high-level sports between soccer and basketball (to the Greek government)" Hellenic Team Canada captain Jim Sourges says. "This tournament is indicative of how hockey has become a popular sport world-wide. We are hopeful that, within five years, Greece will have a strong grassroots minor hockey program based in Athens, and possibly a professional league similar to that in neighbouring Italy.

"There's no reason, with all they fund, that a hockey program couldn't go there."

The history of hockey in Greece is brief. Returning expatriates introduced the sport around 1984, and the first official game wasn't played until 1985.

By 1989, five teams competed for the country's first national championship, which marked the first time a game was played on an official-sized rink.

A junior national team was formed in 1991, the national team a year later.

The country's greatest success came in the 1992 the world championships, where Greece captured a bronze medal in Pool C.

The idea for a tournament was born when Greek national team captain Jimmy Kalyvas took part in the GHL's annual all-star game last season.

"We discussed briefly, at that time, having our team play a couple of exhibition games (against Greece)," Sourges says. "They also discussed having teams from other cities come to play a tournament."

After officials from the Greek national program called, before this season, Sourges and a small panel of players selected a club to make the 7,760-kilometre journey. About $30,000 was raised, through fundraising events and sponsorships in the past year, for the team and its coaches to make the trip.

Sourges, a 32-year-old graduate of the Nepean Minor Hockey Association and Central Junior Hockey League's Nepean Raiders, played defence for Princeton University of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He'll lead a team that ranges in age from 17 to 38.

"We're hoping it's going to become an annual event," says Florakas, whose son, Emmanuel, will also take part in the tournament. "In talking with the (Greek) hockey federation, they were already looking at future years.

"We would like to host it in Canada. (They could) see it in a different environment, see where hockey is king."

The GHL is unique in itself. After beginning as a single team, it has blossomed into an eight-team circuit, complete with general managers, a September draft, official transactions and roster moves and a Web site (www.ohaa.org) that provides a list of statistics and all-time scoring leaders.

About 80 per cent of the league's players are of Greek origin.

Despite large Greek communities in cities such as Montreal and Toronto, it's one-of-a-kind in Canada.

"(It's) the only non-Greece-based (league in Canada), as far as we know," Sourges says. "There certainly are teams and games, but there is no organized league."

Besides GHL duties, Hellenic Team Canada members compete together in a men's league at Minto Arena.

Last night at the Civic Centre, they competed against a team of GHL all-stars in preparation for their upcoming journey.

"We would like to host a tournament in a couple of years," Sourges says. "It's the kind of situation where what we're shooting towards is to have (Greek players) go back once they finish playing (in Canada) and get a league started there."

To which Florakas adds, "Greeks travel. You have more Greeks outside of (the country). There is an awareness of hockey and how great a game it is."