The Portugal News had the opportunity of catching up with the Team Manager of HC Porto Club, Cristina Lopes, (who’s also the Ice Hockey Coordinator for FDI-Portugal) with her husband Head Coach and former AHL player, Jim Aldred, (who’s also the National Teams’ Head Coach) as well as the Federação de Desportos de Inverno de Portugal (FDIP) President, Pedro Flavio Martins all about the exciting developments of the sport in Portugal.

Despite ice rink construction delays, Jim and Cristina have not let that hold them back and they have continued to push forward in developing ice hockey for the youth of Portugal. According to Jim, “The future of ice hockey are the children in this country. But, Portugal does need to have professionals to show the young kids what to do, but the focus on young development is what builds any country’s national program.”

Cristina went on to explain, “We want the seniors to be out there, showing the country that ice hockey exists in Portugal and that it’s not a sport played in only cold countries where unfortunately many believe that. We can have ice rinks just like hot places like Florida for example.

“In the next few months, we are going to be holding officiating and coaching certification sessions so if there’s anyone out there that would like to coach or referee, please keep an eye on our social media pages as we’ll be announcing dates in the next few months. We are also in need of more players, sponsors and volunteers so we would really love to hear from you.”


The Latest Updates

Jim told The Portugal News “From the hockey perspective nothing stopped since we last chatted a few years ago, we just do what we have to do. FDI-Portugal has a small ice rink which is going on its 4th season, which operates from November to April at Penhas da Saude close to Serra da Estrela.”

Adding, “Here we can teach the kids ice skating and the basics and you can play 3 on 3 but you can only go so far with that. The kids get bored and want to play on the big ice rinks and against international teams. That is our biggest downfall right now, we don’t have competitive games for the kids with teams from abroad, they play against other teams from here but that gets boring after a while as they all know each other.”


Cristina then shared “We have four hockey clubs under our Federation, the Luso-Lynx from the Lisbon area, the Vikings from Castelo Branco, Ice Clube Covilhã, and the latest is HC Porto. This past year, we started a 3 on 3 league for the seniors and for the youngsters. Unfortunately, we still have 6 months out of the year where there is no ice for them to be able to practice nor play on, unless we take them to Spain. But that is very costly as you can imagine.”


Let’s talk ice rinks

One of the most exciting developments is set to open in 2025 and solidify Portugal as a hockey nation. The brand new Olympic sized ice rink in Porto (Trofa) will be located only 20 minutes away from Porto airport.

Pedro told The Portugal News “For Porto to be the backdrop to this is a huge milestone. I am sure the rest of the country will be travelling to Porto for this as it is the first Olympic-sized ice rink in Portugal. The one in Serra da Estrela is much smaller but just for you to have an idea, from November to April, we have more than 10,000 people who just go there to skate recreationally during the holidays and weekends. The ice rink in Trofa is thanks to a private investor but the Federation is working together with the investor to develop ice hockey along with other winter sports. It will be amazing to have infrastructure like this to develop winter sports in the Porto region.”


The Federation is also working on having an Olympic-sized ice rink in the South, closer to Lisbon, which is a project that started back in 2017. “In the past, we had a project but that plot was not possible to build on due to lots of restrictions so we have decided to find another one. We are now finding other possibilities with other municipalities outside the Lisbon region and we have other possibilities and hope to be able to share great news on this soon”, shared Pedro.

“Being able to attain an ice rink in the greater Lisbon area will be the best of both worlds, comparable to winning the lottery. As you can imagine, not many people on a regular basis will be travelling from Lisbon (or from further South) to Porto. Once we’re able to attain one in the surrounding area of Lisbon, you are going to have other clubs develop and grow in Lisbon and proper competitions between both regions will commence soon after”, affirmed Cristina.


Iberian Ice Hockey League

Cristina and Jim also shared that for the first time, the professional team of HC Porto played last season in the first division of the Spanish LNHH League (Liga Nacional de Hoquei de Hielo). On September 12th, FDI-Portugal together with the Spanish Federation (Fed Hielo), the Liga Iberica was introduced. This project had been in the works between the 2 Federations along with the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) since last year. Up until last season, the LNHH rules stated that only Spanish teams would be able to compete in the playoffs. Meaning that all other non-Spanish teams were only able to participate during the regular season. Now with the new Iberian League, the rules state that HC Porto (or any other team) has the opportunity to walk away with a trophy where we know HC Porto will try their best to achieve this goal.


28 September 2024 was the first game this season for HC Porto where things did not go quite as planned. Unfortunately due to delayed flights, the last members of the team arrived at the hotel at 3:30 Saturday morning without their hockey bags with their equipment. Their sticks and the bag of jerseys for the team were also missing in action. Team Majadahonda showed their true sportsmanship cards by agreeing to lend HC Porto their away jerseys and extra neck guards in order for the game to be played (if this did not occur, HC Porto would’ve defaulted, paid a penalty and automatically lost the game). Final result was HC Porto 1 – Majadahonda 5. However, their equipment arrived later on Saturday and on Sunday, HC Porto came up on top with a 2-1 final score.

You can visit @PortugalIceHockey on Facebook or their Instagram @portugalicehockey. For more information about Portugal’s Winter Sports, please visit https://fdiportugal.pt/ or find them on Facebook @fdiportugal.

To read about the start of Cristina & Jim’s exciting ice hockey journey in Portugal please visit https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2022-09-05/portugal-on-ice/70039

Author

Following undertaking her university degree in English with American Literature in the UK, Cristina da Costa Brookes moved back to Portugal to pursue a career in Journalism, where she has worked at The Portugal News for 3 years. Cristina’s passion lies with Arts & Culture as well as sharing all important community-related news.

Cristina da Costa Brookes