East Auckland’s Botany Swarm are focused on constant improvement as the 2025 New Zealand Ice Hockey League (NZIHL) season gets under way.

The Swarm play their home games at the Paradice Ice Skating facility on Ti Rakau Drive.

As the season unfolds they’ll take on the West Auckland Admirals; the Canterbury Red Devils; the Phoenix Thunder, based in Dunedin; and Queentown’s SkyCity Stampede.

There’s also a development team named the Auckland Mako, which features players aged 23 and under and only plays for part of the season.

The Stampede are the reigning champions, having beaten the Admirals 2-0 in the best-of-three series to claim their record ninth Birgel Cup.

The Admirals had beaten the Swarm in the semi-final series to advance to the finals.

Heading into 2025 season the four-time champions Swarm have a new head coach in Kevin Simon, who was an assistant coach with the team last season.

“Over the past two years the team has been improving,” he told the Times.

“Last year we lost in the semi-finals and the year before that we were in the finals, so we’re pretty close.

“I think a lot of it is attention to detail, better consistency, and making sure we have a calm, cool, approach in the games.

“And getting everybody to play consistently and with relentless hard work, high skill, and using our speed.”

Ice hockey is known as the fastest team sport in the world.

There are usually six players – including a goaltender – on the ice for each team during the games, which run for three 20-minute periods.

Teams in the NZIHL play each other four times during the regular season, twice at home and twice away.

They earn three points for an outright win, two points for an overtime win, one point for an overtime loss and no points for an outright loss.

Simon says the Swarm’s goals and focus are around how they want to play, their style, and things such as playing smart.

“We want to be really relentless in how we approach our play, and we want to focus on team defence, set expectations and goals, and then we let things like championships take care of themselves.

“Our focus is on what do we need to do to be the best team we can be and if we’re doing that I’m confident we’ll do very well.

“We want to win every game we play, but we have a focus on getting better every single time.

“Our aim is to make sure we hit the end of the season playing our absolute best hockey.

“The primary focus is playing the absolute best that we can.”

Swarm captain Michael Attwell is also a member of New Zealand’s national ice hockey team, the Ice Blacks.

The 33-year-old forward says his role as captain is to get the players “switched on and ready for the first puck to drop”.

“I think the main thing with us is we’ve had a really good squad for two or three years now, a really good core group.

“We’ve had a couple of guys drop out but also got a few new players in, and I think we’re growing really well and getting better and better.

“As Kevin said, we’ve done pretty well the last couple of years, but I think we can take it one step more this year.”

He says the team needs to improve on their mental strength and cut down on penalties.

“We suffered a bit last year with letting the games get to our heads and losing our cool a little bit.

“We’ve got a really good young team and we’ve been a super hard-working, fast and gritty team.

“So we’ll carry that over and a couple of more things this year and hopefully get better.”

Both Simon and Attwell encourage east Auckland locals to get along to Paradice Ice Skating to check out the Swarm’s home games.

“You can watch ice hockey on TV and on YouTube, but watching them in person is so different,” Simon says.

“You don’t realise the speed of the game and how fast these players are going, and the intensity and sounds of the game.

“Being there in person is a completely different experience. It’s easy to pop out and see a game and we’d love to have fans there.”

Attwell adds: “Come down and give it a crack. It’s exciting to watch on TV but it’s even more exciting live.”

The Swarm won a pre-season game against the Mako on March 23 by a score of 10-2.

They followed that up with a 6-2 win over the SkyCity Stampede in Queenstown on March 28, and a 1-4 defeat to the Stampede the next day.

They play the Phoenix Thunder in Botany at 5.15pm on April 5 and at 4.45pm on April 6.