Six potential scenarios for Chinese ice hockey ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympics
Latest news on whether NHL players will return to Olympics
Pfizer competes with Chinese vaccines at Tokyo and Beijing Games
Boycott Watch
Other stories in the build-up to Beijing 2022
Can the Car Crash Be Avoided?
Thanks to all of you who got in touch after last week’s story about the current state of Chinese ice hockey and the car crash that appears to lie in wait at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. I heard from multiple players, coaches, industry execs and journalists, who all reached out to offer some thoughts. It also resulted in at least one follow-up story, with The Economist – of all people – highlighting the situation.
World governing body IIHF threatening to expel China from Olympic ice hockey tournament.
IIHF prepared to bend eligibility rules for China to avoid global embarrassment.
New Canadian coach hired with just nine months to go.
Political infighting hindering recruitment process for players.
In news that has not previously been reported, China Sports Insider can exclusively reveal that the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has threatened to kick the Chinese team out of its own Olympic ice hockey tournament on home soil in Beijing if China doesn’t get its act together quickly, according to multiple sources. Furthermore, the situation is so dire that the IIHF has offered to waive its own eligibility requirements to allow China to bolster its own team through foreign-born recruits.
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.
As part of a recent panel event at the Bookworm Festival in Beijing, I interviewed Zach Yuen, the first player of Chinese descent to be drafted by an NHL team (Winnipeg Jets, 2011) and current defenceman with the China-based Kunlun Red Star in the KHL. Though born and raised in Vancouver, Yuen could now qualify to play for China under IIHF rules and is one of a leading group of ethnically-Chinese foreigners who could represent China at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
A large contingent of NHL executives made the trip out to China this week to announce the league’s first initiatives in the country: preseason games between the LA Kings and the Vancouver Canucks in Shanghai (Sept 21) and Beijing (Sept 23), kicking off an eight-year slate of games, which could be upgraded to regular season match-ups as early as 2018. Let’s take a look at some of the factors that might help the NHL in China, as well as the obstacles that lie ahead.
Why hockey will make it in China
1) The timing is right. With less than five years to go to the 2022 Olympics, the government is making a serious push to develop winter sports, and it’s no accident that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been featured in very lengthy segments on the national nightly news touring Olympic venues on more than one occasion this year. As I told the Globe and Mail after the announcement was made, there are actually a lot of indications that the government is moving away from soccer at the moment, and making winter sports its No. 1 priority within the sports industry.
China’s winter sports push continues with arrival of professional ice hockey franchise in the capital.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in Beijing this weekend and is set to sign around 30 new deals with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but the most interesting of all from a sporting perspective will be fresh details about Beijing’s new franchise in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), Russia’s answer to the NHL.
