Interview with Eisbären’s Liam Kirk: “I’m still a Sheffield Steelers fan!”

Liam Kirk, on Wednesday evening your boyhood club Sheffield Steelers were drawn against Eisbären Berlin in the last 16 of the Champions Hockey League. How much are you looking forward to that tie?
I’m very excited. I grew up supporting the Steelers, and I’m still a fan. I was hoping we’d get them in the draw for the group stages and it didn’t work out. Seeing their success has been awesome, and now we get to go and play them home and away. All my friends and family will be there, so it’s really exciting. 

Click here to read the interview in German.

You’ve certainly made an impact since moving to Eisbären last summer. How have you settled into life in Berlin off the ice?
It’s been fun, but also a bit different for me. I grew up in a small town near Sheffield and in the last two years, I was playing in small cities in different countries like Finland and the Czech Republic. So this is my first time being in a capital, and it’s really exciting. There’s so much to do, so many things to see, and obviously a lot of history and the culture as well. 

Did you know Berlin at all before you moved here?
I studied history in school, so I came to Berlin on a school trip, actually. We went to the concentration camp memorial site at Sachsenhausen and the Checkpoint Charlie museum, so I’m familiar with the history of the city. It’s weird to think that I went to Checkpoint Charlie as a kid and now I live just around the corner from there. It’s funny how things come full circle.

Is there anything that’s surprised you about life in Berlin?
To be honest, I didn’t know too much about the party culture. We’ve driven past some places like KitKatClub, and you see people just leaving to go home on a Monday morning. That’s a little different for me.

You haven’t yet tried your luck at Berghain, then?
(laughs) No, no.

© imago/HMB-Media/IMAGO/Uwe Koch

Was being in a big city like Berlin one of the main reasons you chose to join Eisbären?
To be honest, the biggest reason was the hockey. Obviously I knew how successful the team has been. And I wanted to be somewhere that’s going to take my game to another level and be in a place that wants to win and push for championships every season. I’ve also known our strength coach Danny for years, because we’re from the same area back home. I came to visit him here last November. So that was a big part of it.

And how’s your German coming along?
I would like to learn German. I’m quite lazy with it, and obviously in Berlin everyone speaks pretty good English, so it’s a little easier for me to go around and not speak German. But I’m here for two years and I’d like to start learning German and just get more involved with the community and the culture. The plan is for my wife to come over and join me next year, so I think we might start doing lessons together then. We mainly speak English on the ice, though, because the coach is Canadian and a lot of the players are North American. 

Do you think, as a Brit, you have a different relationship to Germany than your American and Canadian team mates?
Maybe. I think with a lot of the North Americans that come over to Europe, they’ve never really experienced any European culture. And obviously being British, I have, because we’re in Europe and we were previously in the EU…

We won’t mention the B-word …
(laughs) I was actually too young to vote in the referendum in 2016. I think I would probably have voted to remain. 

EU citizen or not, there aren’t many Brits who make it as far as you have in professional ice hockey. Do you think people in the sport see you differently because you’re British?
I think part of me feels that way sometimes. I certainly do a lot of interviews because I’m British. But at the end of the day, wherever you’re from, in whatever aspect of life, if you’re good at something and you can prove that, then who’s to judge? Hopefully, I can help grow the game in some way and bring more eyes to the sport in England.

Why ice hockey, though? Don’t most British kids dream of being footballers?
I’m a Sheffield United fan and I played cricket a bit when I was younger. But hockey was always my first love. My parents are big hockey fans and my older brother played, and I always wanted to do everything he did. 

Has much changed in British ice hockey since then? Do you think the sport is getting bigger back home?
I think steps have been made and they’re starting to make more. When I was growing up, you could practise maybe one day a week and played maybe 15 to 20 games a season. If you compare that to kids in North America, they’re practising three, four times a week and playing 60 games a year. That hasn’t changed much, and I think the biggest factor is making sure kids get enough ice time, getting the funding for it and giving kids the chance to skate every day.

Does the success of the national team play a big role in that? Since 2019, Great Britain have played in the top division of the world championships in four of five years. This year in Prague, you also managed to beat Austria.
Like I say, I think steps are being made and that has stemmed from the success of the national team. Reaching the top flight, staying up and then coming straight back up when we did go down in 2023, all of that was definitely really important. We missed out on Olympic qualification this summer, which was obviously really disappointing. But we had a real close game against Denmark. If we’d got a couple of bounces in that game, then the whole tournament could have gone differently for us. It’s a shame, but it’s something we can build on.

Apart from the Olympics, the other thing which could grow the game in the UK would be a British NHL player. In 2021, you became the first player born and trained in England to be drafted when the Arizona Coyotes picked you up aged 21. 
That was a whirlwind of a time. Growing up, all I wanted to do was play for the Sheffield Steelers. That was my dream. Getting to the NHL seemed so far away. It was around 2017 when the scouts first came to watch me, and it was just such a surreal feeling. And then it just all happened really quickly. I was drafted on the Friday and by the Saturday, I was flying to Arizona to go to the development camp. It’s something that I’m proud of. In the end, it didn’t work out the way I wanted to, but I’m still young and I still have aspirations to get back there. 

Might it help to be at Eisbären, who have a cooperation with NHL side LA Kings?
I think Germany is probably the closest thing in Europe to North American style hockey. And obviously with Berlin having links to LA, there’s a chance that people will be watching most games. But to be honest, the main thing that drew me here was the set up, how it’s run as an organisation, the coaching, the quality of the guys on the team. I love winning, and in that sense, what better place to be than here?

Is the ice hockey culture in Germany different to the Czech Republic and Finland, where you were playing in the last couple of years?
It’s quite similar. The Czech fans are pretty passionate, and the fans here have been incredible as well. It’s awesome to see the travelling support that we get. Obviously, if you’re into a home game, it’s pretty crazy. But like I say, I do think that the DEL is the top European league. That shows in the success we’ve had in the Champions League. We’ve beaten two of the top Czech teams, and though we didn’t get a result in Switzerland, we still put up a good performance.

Speaking of the Champions League, we wanted to ask you about a slightly more difficult topic. In September, you played away at Polish side Unia Oswiecim and visited the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp nearby …
It was a very surreal feeling. Obviously, I learnt about it in school, but it’s just that when you hear the stories and you see all the items that were left behind, it’s quite haunting. I think it was good for us as a team to go and see that and to understand why it should be remembered, and why something like that should obviously never happen again.

During the game itself, the Polish fans held up a banner reading “German death camps: Welcome to the city of your biggest crime”. Did you realise what was going on when you were on the ice?
I saw it, and obviously, no one wants to see stuff like that. I can’t really comment too much on it, though. I think the most important thing was that we as a team went to the memorial site, paid our respects and learned more about it. 

Finally, back to ice hockey: what are your aims with the Eisbären this season?
We want to finish as high as possible in the standings, get into the play-offs and obviously come out as champions again. They had the ring ceremony a couple of weeks back and I attended, but obviously I didn’t get a ring because I wasn’t here last year. So now I want my own ring!