Australian hockey fans thrilled to watch NHL players at Olympics

MILAN -- The jerseys stood out, even among all the national team and NHL jerseys at Santagiulia Arena at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, the first Olympics to include NHL players in 12 years.

Three guys wore green jerseys with yellow kangaroos. Turns out, they were hockey players from Australia, and two of them had their names on the Cup on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

That would be the Goodall Cup, which is almost as old as the Stanley Cup and is now awarded to the champions of the semipro Australian Ice Hockey League.

Alastair Punler and brothers Lynden and Yannic Lodge play for Perth of the AIHL and are about to start training camp for the upcoming season. Punler and Lynden Lodge won the Goodall Cup with CBR (now Canberra) in 2022.

“We’ve been waiting for NHL players to come back to the Olympics for a while,” said Lynden Lodge, a 28-year-old defenseman. “Just seeing Canada, I think, would be unbelievable. But just seeing all the guys you see on the TV in the NHL, just seeing them with their countries, it’s different, right? It’s special.”

This is an example of how far the NHL’s reach extends worldwide, how NHL players make the Olympic tournament a huge draw, how thrilling it is to see NHL players live, and how much room there is to grow the game around the globe.

Hockey has been played in Australia for more than a century. The Goodall Cup dates to the early 1900s and is the oldest hockey trophy in use outside North America. The original Goodall Cup is on display in the World of Hockey Zone at the Hall of Fame, just down the steps from the original Stanley Cup in the Great Hall.

Australia actually competed in Olympic hockey once, in Squaw Valley, California, in 1960. The Aussies went 0-2 in the first round, losing to Czechoslovakia 18-1 and the United States 12-1. Then they went 0-4 and were outscored 57-8 in the consolation round. But they were there.

Lynden Lodge currently plays for the Australian national team, which will compete in the IIHF World Championship Division II Group A in the United Arab Emirates from April 20-26. Punler and Yannic Lodge each played for the U18 and U20 national team in the past.

Can they imagine a day when Australia returns to the Olympics in men’s hockey?

They laughed. Hard. According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, there are 5,270 players and 20 indoor rinks in the country. Australia is ranked 34th in the world, between Iceland and Belgium.

“I would love to imagine that day,” Lynden said. “But we won’t be a part of it, or at least I won’t be a part of it, because we’re not that good.”

OK. That might be unrealistic for the foreseeable future.

But Australia has its first player in the NHL, St. Louis Blues forward Nathan Walker. The NHL traveled to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time when the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings played back-to-back sold-out preseason games at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, home of the Australian Open tennis tournament, in the NHL Global Series Melbourne in 2023.

Each Saturday morning this season, 9GO! broadcasts a live NHL game free-to-air in Australia with commentary tailored for an Australian audience. ESPN broadcasts and streams NHL games in the country.

“It’s actually quite awesome, because the games are at a perfect time, at around 8 a.m. [in Perth],” said Yannic Lodge, a 25-year-old forward. “Even when do you do work from home, you’ve got one screen on the hockey.”

The Aussies loved watching the NHL players perform in Team Sweden’s 5-1 win against Team Latvia in the quarterfinals Tuesday.

“You just think of some of their NHL careers,” Lynden said. “For me, Erik Karlsson. I’m a ‘D,’ so he’s just so slick out there. … He just looks unbelievable.”

“Yeah,” said Punler, a 30-year-old defenseman. “He was one of their better players last night."

The Aussies would love to see the NHL play Down Under again, so kids can see the stars and be inspired to follow in their footsteps.

“I think in Australia, people don’t realize that, A, there’s hockey there, and B, it’s actually a sport that Australians quite enjoy,” Lynden Lodge said. “It’s a high-paced, physical game. We have Aussie rules [football], so it’s a bit similar to that, and it’s really an experience.

“You go to a rink when normally it’s 40 degrees [Celsius], so people drink beers and then just start yelling. Maybe they don’t know the rules at the start, but by the end of it, they’re pretty locked in.

“And so you’ll find that people will come to a game and will keep coming to games and get memberships. It’s really just an awareness thing in the first place, and then once you have people come, it’s probably more likely that they’ll keep coming.”