So there you are, hurtling across the ice on skates, swerving around the defense you stick-handle towards the goal and fire one towards the net. Sure sounds like hockey to me, but it ain’t. I’m talking about a game of bandy.
Remember, “hockey” was once “ice hockey” and “field hockey” used to be plain “hockey”. This game of bandy is the missing link between the two, and was originally called “hockey on the ice”.
The easiest way to explain bandy is to simply say it’s soccer frozen over. The playing area is about the size of a soccer field (or football pitch, for true fans) but solid ice, and each team has 11 players on skates. Rather than a flat puck, they push a small ball with their curved sticks. The goalies don’t have any stick at all, and the net is 11 feet across and 7 feet tall. As I said, it’s pretty much soccer on ice.
Both bandy and (ice) hockey really became formalized about 1880, and as hockey spread across North America, bandy was growing in northern Europe. The bandy world championship, held since 1957, has pretty much been a match between Sweden and Russia. It does explain how both countries had such aptitude for hockey when it arrived there.
- Source: Bandy – Wikipedia
