China look to accelerate ice hockey with NHL help
China wants to get its ice hockey programme up to par before hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The NHL is using that as a starting point for a long- term vision to turn the country into an ice hockey nation.
The league is making the country of almost 1.4 billion people a top priority internationally. The Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks will play exhibition games in Shanghai and Beijing in September, and the games and the Olympics are only the beginning of what the NHL hopes is a bigger investment.
“The way we’re looking at it is it’s really not about 2022. It’s about 2032 and ’ 42 and so on and really building the game,” NHL executive vicepresident of media and international strategy David Proper said. “It’s doing a disservice to the building of hockey in China to just target a five- year range and not be looking past that.”
At a news conference announcing the exhibition games, commissioner Gary Bettman called them “the beginning of what we believe will be a very long- term relationship.”
The upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next year has created conflict for the league, which has expressed reluctance to stop its season to play 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time in a place that isn’t a hockey market. The NHL may yet decide to go to Korea because of players’ interest but also in part because of the lure of Beijing.
The NHL looks at the NBA, which has had a foothold in China for decades, as a blueprint for the future. But before there’s a hockey version of Yao Ming, Chinese fans need to learn more about the sport.
Andong Song, the first Chinese player drafted by an NHL team, said most people in his homeland didn’t know much about ice hockey even when the New York Islanders took him in the sixth round in June of 2015.
Song was part of China’s presentation to the International Olympic Committee alongside Yao and said getting the 2022 Games got people buzzing about ice hockey and other winter sports.
From the initial meetings with Chinese government officials, the league and NHL Players’ Association saw untapped potential.
“The exciting thing i s you’re starting from a baseline of zero, so any effect that we have is going to be a positive effect,” NHL chief revenue officer and executive vice- president of global partnerships Keith Wachtel said. “The question is just how much, and that’s going to be about the dedication of resources that we have.”
While the exact financial investment the league is making in China was not revealed, it’s substantial.
Proper said the league will put on at least 15 clinics in China this year in addition to what teams might also be doing.
The Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders, Toronto Maple Leafs and Washington Capitals have already conducted camps for young Chinese players.
As China aims for 2022, Proper considers it a “perfect storm” of a motivated government and private sector combined with a league that wants to spread out far beyond North America and Europe.
“When somebody comes to you and says, ‘ We are committed to 300 million people playing winter sports and hockey is one of the primary winter sports we want to focus on,’ you have to make that country a priority and you really have to kind of figure out how to help them as best they can to achieve their goals,” Proper said.