from William Douglas of The Color Of Hockey,

Carolina Hurricanes center Manny Malhotra is currently the only Indo-Canadian player in the National Hockey League. But a next generation of players could be on the way in the near future, fueled by an interest in hockey that’s grown so large within Canada’s South Asia community that CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada” airs broadcasts in Punjabi.

“This broadcast has really helped the Punjabi community to connect with the sport,” Harbs Bains, president of the Surrey (British Columbia) Minor Hockey Association, told The New York Times last April. “It allows someone whose first language is not English to connect with the sport and between generations.”

Hockey is even slowly gaining a foothold in cricket-crazed India. A member of the International Ice Hockey Federation since 1989, the country of more than 1.2 billion people has more than 900 hockey players. In March 2012, India captured its first international ice hockey victory, a 5-1 over Macau at the IIHF’s Challenge Cup of Asia tournament.

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