During the last week end the Canadian Nationals where played in Vancouver, in the brand new Olympic Oval, where the speed skating will be held during the Vancouver Olympics in February 2010.
The Event was organised by the British Columbia Floorball Federation with four Men´s teams taking part (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec). The tournament clearly showed that Floorball is developing in Canada, with very interesting matches played during the group rounds.
British Columbia won the Men´s title
Ontario won the group with a better goal difference after a 1-1- draw against the home team BC. Ontario took a clear victory over Quebec in the semi-final, despite that Quebec was the reigning champion and BC defeated Alberta after a very good game, where Alberta played really well for two periods.
In the final BC took an early lead with 2 – 0 and pretty much controlled the game, which became unnecessarily brutal, with a lot of body contacts. BC used their opportunities far better and leads the game by 4-1 after two periods. In the third period Ontario stepped up and controlled the game, scoring two late goals in the period, but despite of a lot of chances not being able to tie the score. BC won the title.
The Quebec team arrived with a very small number of players, so the BC based Canadian four U19 players played for the Quebec team; Malcom McKinney, Linden Stanwood, Rayhaan Charania and Robbie Wilkinson. Canada will have their first ever appearance on the U19 WFC in Turku, Finland in a few weeks and the four young players got a lot of experience of playing with bigger opponents.
The Nationals also featured a women series where Ontario and BC meet each other four times and Ontario came out as the winner with 3-1 in matches, but the BC team made a great progress during the week-end.
IFF Development workshop during the event
In connection to the Event IFF organised together with BCFF a Floorball development workshop for local floorballers, P/E teachers and sporting goods sellers. The Workshop was divided into two parts, a theoretical part digging into coaching issues, refereeing and how to recruit new players and generally developing Floorball in Canada.
The second part of the workshop also included a number of practical sessions on the field as well as a coaching clinic and analysing of games. During the tournament, which was mainly refereed by the US based international IFF referees Vince Faso and Calle Karlsson and then the Toronto based ice hockey referee Sotaro Yamaguschi, a number of coaching sessions were held, in order to increase the level of refereeing in Canada.
Especially in BC and Ontario Floorball is presently being spread thorough the schools and recreational programs, so during the event there was a number of interested P/E teachers attending in order to get to know the sport better. In connection to the event IFF also met with the BC Sports Council, discussing the development of Floorball in BC and the recognition process for Floorball in the province.
