The discussed madness of the World Hockey Championship in Riga is illustrated by the fact that its best scorer is the Brit. As a boy, Liam Kirk was the target of jokes from friends about hockey, now he has an interesting engagement.
Riga (from our rapporteur) – Kirk started for Great Britain at the last championship in Slovakia. However, he contributed minimally to the sensational retention, he did not even have a point in the statistics.
“I was only nineteen and I tried to fit into the team, I did not have such a position as today,” Kirk told the daily Aktuálně.cz. “I’m a completely different player now. I’ve adjusted my style a bit, I’m playing a lot faster. I grew up playing hockey as a person.”
The numbers agree with him. He received “only” assistance against the Czech Republic, but otherwise he fires like a savage. He scored five goals in six clans, scoring two of them to Belarus. Thanks to this, Britain celebrated its first basic time victory at the World Cup in 59 years.
Kirk is logically one of the busiest Brits, playing an average of 17 minutes per game, about five more than two years ago.
“He plays great,” said Matthew Myers. “He’s improved tremendously in the last two or three years. We all support him. I hope big things await him. Actually, I’m sure people from some hockey countries will call his agent for a contract.”
Already happened. According to the daily Expressen, Mora from the second Swedish league is interested in Kirk, currently the best scorer of the championship.
“He’s one of the few players we watch,” said club coach and former Pittsburgh or Atlanta goalkeeper Johan Hedberg.
Kirk has already played in Sweden, where he tasted the third league last season. And he proved that he had no problem with her. He then did even better in the British top competition, where he was one of the main stars.
But normally he wouldn’t show up at home. It was offered to play another season in the Canadian junior OHL, where he had previously won with a decent points throw, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the competition did not start at all.
As a result, Kirk got a little out of the sight of Arizona, who drafted him in the seventh round three years ago. “This year has been a bit strange, but we’re still in touch. They’re giving me feedback,” the attacker explains.
He was the first player born and raised in England to pass the NHL draft. However, he is still a long way from the famous competition. After all, no one from the then seventh round has played it yet. Neither back from Hradec Radim Šalda and Pardubice goalkeeper Milan Klouček.
Hockey as a target for jokes
But just a chance for the NHL is a success for Kirk. He grew up in a country where people imagine the ground one under the word “hockey”.
Of course, football is the number one sport. Kirk tried it too. But in a huge competition, he often just heated the bench. Eventually he lost interest and, following the example of his older brother, completely switched to hockey. The icy one. Which attracted attention.
“Other children thought hockey was a strange sport that no one in England played,” Kirk recalled before the draft. “A couple of my friends kept kidding me that if they had skates, they could go to the stadium and join the British national team.”
Now the United Kingdom is showing that its representation is certainly not a mix of random passers-by. In some places, it floods even the biggest favorites.
Kirk himself is again close to an interesting engagement in Europe. And he can still dream of the best league on the planet, which he did as a child.
“Every growing hockey player thinks about a career in the NHL. But in Britain they kind of tell you to learn and prepare for real work. I want to prove that if you believe in something, you can do it. And it doesn’t matter where you come from. , “said the British star.
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