Ein October evening two years ago in Slany, 25 kilometers northwest of Prague. Ice hockey is played in the old hall in an industrial park, Czech third division, no delicacy. Not even 50 spectators came. At the end of the second third the fists fly, which happens every now and then in ice hockey. But this is different.
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Because the players of “China Golden Dragon” hit each other on the hat. It’s already 1:10 from the point of view of the Chinese, who are allowed to play as a visiting team in the league. In the end it says 1:16. And a few months later the experiment is over again. The golden dragon leaves the Czech Republic. His record: 42 games, 42 defeats, goal difference minus 330.
The Chinese and ice hockey – they don’t really fit together. They joined the World Association IIHF as early as 1963, but according to its information there are currently only 537 active players among the men. In Canada there are 76,899, and Canada has less than three percent of the population of China. Now the comparison between the motherland of sport and one whose national team only won one victory at the D-World Cup in 2019 against amateur teams like Croatia, Australia or Belgium may not be entirely fair.
World Federation is concerned
The only problem is: on February 13, 2022, they will play against each other at the Olympics in Beijing because the hosts are automatically qualified. Experts expect something historical, China is the most blatant outsider in the history of the tournament. Slovakia still holds the international record, against Bulgaria there was an 82: 0. In Beijing, the Canadian NHL stars – if they wanted – could probably score 100 goals. And even if it were “only” 15-0, as IIHF President Luc Tardif recently suspected, it would be “no good for anyone, neither for China nor for ice hockey”.
They are accordingly concerned at the IIHF. The Council, the powerful management body, has met in Zurich since Sunday and until Wednesday. There the question is also discussed whether it shouldn’t be better to throw the hosts out of the tournament. On the one hand, that would be a humiliation for the proud Chinese, and they also want to finally gain a foothold there and earn money, as other sports associations and leagues have long been doing.
On the other hand, it doesn’t help if the top nations present the Chinese in February. The other group opponents from the United States and Germany could also win double digits without breaking a sweat. And especially against the great political opponent from America, the Chinese do not want to embarrass themselves.
A few years ago it sounded very different when people talked about China in the ice hockey world. Everyone wanted to go there to get a piece of the cake. The NHL hosted show games there, the Russian-dominated KHL installed a team that played in Beijing and Shanghai. On the fringes of the 2018 World Cup in Denmark, the then IIHF President René Fasel dreamed of an A World Cup in China.
There is still a long way to go in terms of sport, but according to the then General Secretary Horst Lichtner, they are on the right track: “The Chinese have said that they want 300 million winter sports enthusiasts in the future. If we only have one percent of that in ice hockey, that’s three million ice hockey kids, that’s more than Canada has. “
“We need a plan B”
There is nothing left of the enthusiasm. The Chinese have been suing behind closed doors for a long time because the Chinese are not making any progress. IIHF President Tardif recently ventured out, spoke of “insufficient sporting standards”, if that does not change, “we need a plan B”. Norway could replace China. The decision does not necessarily have to be made this week. Tardif announced that the Chinese team will play a few more friendly games “which will be monitored by an IIHF official, and then a decision will be made”.
What is the observer then offered? Difficult. Probably a lot of players currently playing for the Chinese KHL team. But that’s not a success story either. In its first years it only attracted a few hundred spectators back home. Now it is still called “Kunlun Red Stars”, but has long been playing outside the gates of Moscow because of the travel restrictions during the corona pandemic.
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And from a sporting point of view, nothing will work there either, on Saturday there was a 0: 8 in Yekaterinburg, with only five wins from 23 games, the Red Stars were beaten last. The only halfway celebrity in the roster is Brandon Yip. The Canadian with Chinese roots, who used to be active in Mannheim and Düsseldorf, is also the only one with NHL experience, but is now 36 years old.
They had actually hoped for people like Yip. Players from top nations with Chinese ancestors. Naturalizations are part of everyday life in ice hockey, so the South Koreans built their squad for 2018, and German teams have also had “double flag players” for decades. However, the Chinese are not naturalizing very quickly.
Other ideas, such as the team in the Czech Republic or foreign development workers, have not made any progress either. During the pandemic, it was also not possible to send players abroad for courses. Now it’s too late anyway, there are not even 100 days until the games. IIHF, IOC and China seem to be faced with a dilemma: embarrassment through expulsion or embarrassment on the ice.
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