The Super League has been coming for years now and with the guidance of Bob Mancini from USA Hockey & Markus Graf from Swiss Ice Hockey, SA Hockey has finally set the stage for the second ever national league, the last taking place in 2002 with a 5 team televised league.
The Super League will be starting small, a "tri-city" series between Pretoria Capitals, Gauteng Wildcats and Cape Town Kings. These three hockey clubs currently supply the South African National Team with the majority of their players that represent the country at IIHF World Championships. The goal is that this league inspires many of the ice hockey athletes in the country to take a more professional approach to the sport and over time include additional teams to the Super League as we saw with Rugby in South Africa.
The Super League for the 2015 season will take place in 4 series, each team will be traveling to either Cape Town or Gauteng and play a battery of games with the series commencing in Cape Town at the Grand West arena from Sunday 26th to Monday 27 July. This will be the Capitals traveling leg where they will be playing 3 games in 2 days against the hosts, The Kings, first game - Sunday morning, seconds game - Sunday evening and final game on Monday night where the rink is expected to host a capacity crowd.
Thereafter, the Cape Town Kings are touring Johannesburg where they will be playing 4 games in 4 days against both Capitals and Wildcats and the final traveling leg will be the Wildcats coming to Cape Town at the end of August for another 3 game showcase. The Capitals and Wildcats will be going head to head on a weekly basis since they are only 45 minutes away from each other, which will tie up the series.
The high-impact and stacked games will help the core of the SA National team to prepare for the upcoming World Champs taking place in Turkey early 2016 as they will be facing 6 countries in 7 days. South Africa has a great chance of winning gold in this Division 3 tournament and major focus will be placed on their overall play during the 2015 Super League Season.
As a style of play has been developed over the past 4 years as part of the inclusion of Bob Mancini (USA Hockey) as head coach of the South African Men's Team, this play also filtered through to the younger national teams, this league is vital to the development of the national team. A top league is vital for our development and at present the local leagues and top players are starved for high-tempo & good quality games, SA Hockey is confident that this will close the gap as best as possible.