Last summer, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) announced that not one but two Chinese teams would join its ranks, based out of Shenzhen, but playing the majority of its games in North America, while also hosting games in China. The investment from the Kunlun Group, which also runs a men’s team in Russia’s KHL as well as other teams, meant that CWHL players were paid for the first time in their history. 

Coached by legendary women’s hockey coach Digit Murphy, Kunlun Red Star lost in overtime in the season-ending Clarkson Cup final, while the Vanke Rays also performed well in their debut season, narrowly missing out on the playoffs. Each team iced six foreign imports – known as player ambassadors – throughout the season with the rest of the roster spots filled by Chinese players. Those two sets of Chinese skaters have now joined forces to represent their country at the World Championship (Division 1, Group B) in Asiago, Italy, in what marks the first real test of China’s ice hockey revolution in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2022. Ahead of the team’s first game, China Sports Insider spoke to Coach Murphy to get her thoughts.

China Sports Insider: You’ve been coaching in China for about a year now, both with Kunlun Red Star in the CWHL, as well as overseeing the national team squad. How has the progress of the Chinese players been?

Digit Murphy: It’s been amazing. Every day our players get better. Our model has been to use player ambassadors. For many of the players it’s been the first time that they’ve played this style of hockey, and when you play this style of hockey, you make a lot of mistakes, because you take a lot of chances. What we’re going to try and do is minimize those mistakes and find opportunities to score more goals. If you look at China’s performance historically, they haven’t scored a lot of goals, so that was one of the core foundations that we wanted to work on with these players. We’ve used a lot of the Canadian/American development model, so let’s see if it works!

CSI: The Chinese players have been learning all season from their six international teammates, but are now on their own for the first time. What will be their biggest challenge in making that adjustment?

DM: The Chinese players have been playing with the North Americans in a really, really high-end league and initially the idea was that they would all travel together and the Chinese players would get additional games outside of the CWHL schedule. That didn’t happen, so now they’re coming together late in the season. But they are more informed and they’ve been playing similar systems whether with Vanke or with Kunlun. We’re expecting a lot from our players, but it’s a work in progress. I’ve talked a lot about this initiative being a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s not going to happen overnight. Kunlun has been really to good to us, but it’s still been remarkable to see what we have achieved with our six imports and the rest being Chinese against teams full of Canadians. Now it’s a mindset shift thinking about Hockey China. The Chinese players who played minutes for Kunlun and Vanke are going to have to be the leaders on this team. The players that we have beyond our first line are pretty young and pretty inexperienced. Our goaltending was pretty good throughout the year and it’s got better and better – Sherry (Wang Yuqing) pulled off a monumental victory at the [home of the Montreal Canadiens] Bell Centre for KRS – and there were a lot of firsts, a lot of history. But, again, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and to expect remarkable achievements overnight is a challenge.

CSI: The other teams at the World Championship group look extremely well matched, at least on paper. What are your goals and expectations for this tournament?

DM: Watching the other teams, they look very similar to us. It’s really going to come down to who’s going to bring the energy, who’s going to bring the most focus, and who’s going to make the least mistakes. Our players are ready, our players are focused, our players are dialed in. So my expectation is that we take the games one at a time, one shift at a time, and one goal at a time, and that can make magic.

CSI: What will be your measure of progress this week?

DM: The measure of progress is the number of goals scored. If we score goals, then we’ve made progress. When you look at China in the past, if you’re disciplined and tenacious and you only have to do one thing, you can be really good at it. But, as we all know, hockey is a game of transition, so if you’re only playing defense, you’re not playing offense. Offense is really hard to play because you have to make decisions and you have to take risks. So our measure of success is: “Are they learning what we’re teaching and can they execute?” I know that for myself and my staff, we measure that in terms of goals scored.

The interview has been edited lightly for clarity.

World Championship schedule in Asiago, Italy (all times local):

SUN, APR 8
1	13:30	Asiago	Korea		vs.		Kazakhstan
2	17:00	Asiago	Poland		vs.		China
3	20:30	Asiago	Italy		vs.		Latvia
MON, APR 9
4	13:30	Asiago	Latvia		vs.		Poland
5	17:00	Asiago	China		vs.		Korea
6	20:30	Asiago	Kazakhstan		vs.		Italy
WED, APR 11
7	13:30	Asiago	Latvia		vs.		China
8	17:00	Asiago	Kazakhstan		vs.		Poland
9	20:30	Asiago	Korea		vs.		Italy
THU, APR 12
10	13:30	Asiago	China		vs.		Kazakhstan
11	17:00	Asiago	Latvia		vs.		Korea
12	20:30	Asiago	Italy		vs.		Poland
SAT, APR 14
13	13:30	Asiago	Poland		vs.		Korea
14	17:00	Asiago	Kazakhstan		vs.		Latvia
15	20:30	Asiago	China		vs.		Italy

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