Hockey in the Blackhelm Confederacy

Hockey in the Blackhelm Confederacy is a small but growing sport, with its popularity spurred on primarily thanks to Aswickan cultural exchange programs. At present, there are indoor hockey rinks in most major cities, and several thousand Confederate citizens actively play the sport.

Aswickan exchange

As part of an ongoing exchange program, Aswick routinely sends secondhand hockey rinks and equipment to the Blackhelm Confederacy, forming the bulk of the rinks and equipment used by Confederate leagues. Often this involves a government subsidy to replace still good installations with new equipment, although beyond that there is no government involvement and it is purely a private charitable initiative.

The scheme was devised in the late 80s, when a semiprofessional hockey club in northern Aswick received donations from a wealthy benefactor to build a new stadium. This left the club with a lot of still functional equipment that was too good to throw away, but not good enough for other local clubs to want it. As there was no financial need to sell it off, the club decided to hire someone to find a suitable group to donate the equipment to. A group in Paradise City ended up being the recipient. Because this went so well, following this the Aswickan government began to offer partial subsidies for other clubs to replace their aging equipment if they could find a suitable recipient of the old items, many of which were sent to the Blackhelm Confederacy.