A few nights a week at the far end of the Central Rama IX shopping mall, a sound can be heard echoing throughout the 7th floor that, to anyone who knows it, would seem out of place in a tropical country like Thailand and more suitable in the temperate climates of Canada or Finland.
Hertz take on the Sukhumvit Spitfires in an SHL game at Central Rama IX. Photos: Tadamasa Nagayama Murray
Upon closer inspection, it's as if your senses transport you to any number of small-town ice hockey rinks in Canada. The smell of the rubber floors with just a hint of stale hockey gear wafts into your nose, the cool air from the ice raises goose bumps on your arms and the jarring crash of hockey pucks the players on the ice are firing off the end boards fills your ears.
However, this is not a mirage. Ice hockey has been played in Bangkok for over 25 years and has been growing recently, thanks in large part to one man, who is known to most in Bangkok's hockey scene as The Godfather.
Scott Murray, also known as Scotty Hockey, has been integral to the growth and continuation of ice hockey in Bangkok since he moved here from Canada in the early 90s.
In 1992, Murray, 31 at the time, was backpacking in Southeast Asia and found himself getting caught up in the events of Black May, one of Bangkok's most infamous protests against the dictatorship of Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon that saw over 200,000 demonstrators fill Sanam Luang and the surrounding streets
Being the son of two journalists, and the grandson of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's first general manager, Gladstone Murray, the decision to get involved and start covering the protests was second nature to him. Murray ended up becoming an unofficial stringer for an American writer who would take his information and turn it into news articles for The New York Times.
This unique experience of being thrown into Thai culture, and having a front-row view of the protests that led to 52 deaths and 3,500 arrests during the military crackdown was a crucial part of his decision to stay in Bangkok and try to become a journalist.
"I was literally on Ratchadamnoen when the army opened fire on the demonstrators," says Murray. "It was fascinating, appalling, riveting all at the same time. For foreign correspondents, they do this all the time, but for a regular Joe you are brought in to a society a lot quicker when you are part of something like that."
Two years later, after working for a while at the Bangkok Post, Murray found himself running a business magazine in the city. During that time a friend who worked at Metro, a magazine that covered all the exciting things going on in Bangkok in the 90s, contacted Murray and asked him to write a story for them on the people playing hockey at one of the city's old rinks.
"So I saw these guys, and I knocked off a story, but I figured if I'm going to be here I might as well get involved," says Murray. "So I came in and eventually I just started organising it all, and I put the first travel team together in March of 95. So that was the first time the Flying Farangs became an entity."
Since then, Murray has had a hand in almost everything hockey-related in Bangkok. This includes the national team, the annual tournaments, organising the Flying Farangs, and running and playing in multiple leagues over the years.
In the first few years of the Flying Farangs' existence, they didn't have a league to play in, so they could only practice a couple of times a week and enter a few regional tournaments each year. In about 1998, an organisation called the Bangkok Hockey League (BHL) was started by a local man, and it finally gave the Flying Farangs a place to play regularly.
The only problem was it ended up pitting the Thai teams against the expat teams, so "the Farangs never lost a game", says Murray.
Scott 'The Godfather' Murray. Photos: Tadamasa Nagayama
Soon enough, the BHL ran its course when the league organiser left the country. At that time, Murray and his friend Scott Whitcomb set their sights on starting a competitive league that would bring Thais and expats together instead of pitting them against one another. They called that league the Thai World Hockey League (TWHL).
"[In the BHL,] the teams were all separated. It was the expats going against the Thais, and there were lots of fights. So Scotty and I said, 'Let's try to start a league and bring everyone together and split them up'," says Whitcomb. "So for me [the TWHL] was something special, because we all came together and we would have beers together after games. It was a really good experience."
Whitcomb eventually stepped down from running the TWHL and started focusing on organising the two annual tournaments, City of Angels and Land of Smiles. The latter is now the largest hockey tournament in Asia.
Murray took over running the league with the help of two others and changed the name to the Siam Hockey League (SHL). However, the same idea of bringing everyone together and creating equally competitive teams remained in the new league.
Currently, the SHL has a mix of expat and Thai players, both young and old. It has also proved to provide valuable experience for the players on the Thailand National team, a team that Murray has an interesting history with as well.
Before their first-ever appearance at the Asian Winter Games in 2004, a tournament that would later become infamous in Thailand hockey due to a 52-1 loss to Kazakhstan, the team asked Murray if he would coach them.
"I was too close to many of these kids -- I fought with them, they'd been my teammates. I didn't think it was going to work," says Murray, who instead helped track down a different coach to take the team to Japan.
Murray got word that Aaron Story, the grandson of Canadian NHL great Howie Meeker, was in the country. Murray was able to track him down and found out that after some trouble with the law, Story was in jail in Phuket. Murray took advantage of the relaxed security at the prison and got one of the players from the team to hand Story a phone through the cell bars so they could work out the details of the coaching gig.
Story accepted the job, Murray bailed him out of prison and he flew to Chiang Mai to take the team through an extensive three-month training programme before the games.
Although the results of that tournament weren't a storybook ending for Thailand, it could still be considered a successful trip for their first-ever international competition. Since that initial brush with international play, the Thailand team has grown by leaps and bounds in both the skill of players and their training techniques and conditioning.
Currently, the team is on the verge of taking the next step in international play by qualifying for the IIHF World Championship Division III tournament. The work that new Finnish coach Juhani Ijas has done is the main reason for the team's recent improvement.
After coaching in Abu Dhabi and his home country, Ijas started with the Thailand national team almost two years ago. One of the main reasons this job appealed to him was the amount of skilled young players Thailand had, to his initial surprise.
"I had no idea how it was going to be, so I was pretty impressed in Japan," says Ijas. "I see potential there; we have a lot of guys who are even under 20 who are good players, and as a coach that motivates me to see if we can develop and build something."
National Team defencemen Ken Kindborn has seen, firsthand, the positives that Ijas' coaching has brought to the national programme over the last couple of years.
"He brought a lot of stability and an attitude like we are going to work and learn things, not just play," says Kindborn, who was born in Thailand but moved to his father's home country of Sweden at a young age. "[Juhani] likes to talk and give feedback, and he demands something from every player."
According to Murray, Kindborn represents a "new breed" of Thai hockey players, born here but growing up in hockey hotbeds. Murray believes that once some of these players -- like recently drafted Washington Capitals prospect and Vancouver Giant defenceman Alex Kannok -- start having success, it will translate to increased popularity in Thailand, and could be huge for the growth of the sport.
Kannok, who moved to Canada when he was five, doesn't take his potential impact on Thai hockey lightly. Being able to influence the game he loves in his home country motivates him to go as far as he can with the sport.
"It's pretty huge for me when I get people from Thailand contacting me," says Kannok. "Knowing I can represent them and [help] grow the game brings me so much joy. I want to share what hockey has done for me with them, and it's given me something to love and chase, so I'm grateful for that."
