KEENAN’S TASK FORMIDABLE
Building top-notch hockey program takes more than money, enthusiasm, Dave King says
The Chinese men’s hockey program has grand ambitions for the 2022 Winter Olympics, but before the hockey world gets too excited over the emergence of this new world power, let’s go back 20 years for a cautionary tale.
In the mid-’90s, Japan boasted a lot of the same conditions that are currently found in China. The economy was booming. Interest in hockey was growing. The 1998 Winter Olympics were set for Nagano and with money pouring into the men’s national team, those Games were seen as the springboard that would launch the game in the Asian country.
And it never happened. Why? “Unfortunately the economic crisis (in Japan) started right after,” says IIHF president Rene Fasel. “We couldn’t get the momentum we expected. Gary (that would be NHL commissioner Bettman) mentioned that when we were talking about (the NHL’s involvement in) South Korea.” You’d expect as much. “(Japan) is no longer the power in Asia,” says Dave King, the longtime hockey man who coached the Japanese men’s team in Nagano. “Now it’s China. (The 2022 Olympics) is a new step and it’s a big one. If they want the game to grow, they have to use this opportunity.”
Except, as King will tell you, building a world-class program requires a little more than money and enthusiasm.
With the Beijing Olympics looming as a watershed moment for hockey in China, the country’s hockey stewards have begun pouring resources into the longneglected men’s national team.
Among others, the still formidable Mike Keenan has been hired to build a squad that will be competitive in Beijing and Keenan and his lieutenants have started the process of identifying potential
players for 2022. Camps were held in Toronto and Vancouver this summer for Chinese-heritage players. Those players, including Vancouver Giants prospect Tyler Ho, will be tracked over the next quadrennial with the aim of building a strong national team.
“It’s cool just thinking about being part of the Olympics and Team China and knowing how big that is,” said Ho, the 17-year-old from Burnaby.
Keenan also coaches Kunlun Red Star, the Beijing-based entry in the KHL, which sits second in their division and boasts former NHLers Wojtek Woltski, Alex Ponikarovsky, Andrei Kostitsyn, Kyle Chipchura, Vancouver’s Gilbert Brule and players like Zach Yuen, the 24-year-old Vancouverite and former Winnipeg Jets draft choice and 19-year-old Rudi Ying, the first Chinese national to play in the KHL.
Throw in Islanders draft pick Misha Song, the first Chinese national to be selected by an NHL team and goalie Zehao Sun, the national team goalie who’s working out with the Canucks during their current swing through China, and there would seem to be the nucleus of a decent team for the Olympics.
Then you remember China is currently ranked 37th in the world
between notable hockey powers Mexico and New Zealand. Then you begin to understand Keenan et al. will have to be miracle workers to coax anything out of the Chinese team.
“This is a new step for China and it’s a big one,” said King.
And the man knows of what he speaks.
King was hired by the Japanese shortly after he was fired by the Calgary Flames in ’95 to build a team for the ’98 Games in Nagano.
Like Keenan, he was granted considerable resources for his mission, but he also had a couple of advantages the Chinese don’t have.
For starters, there was a strong domestic league in Japan that dated back to the mid-’60s and was bankrolled by Yoshiaka Tsutsumi, one of the five richest men in the world.
King also enlisted JapaneseCanadian players like former WHLers Ryan Fujita, Steve Tsujira and Matt Kabayama, Ryan Kuwabara, Montreal’s second-round pick in 1990, and minor-league goalie Dusty Imoo.
And it still wasn’t nearly enough to make the Japanese team competitive.
“The Japanese were terrific at tactics and the team game, but the biggest obstacle was their hockey culture,” King said. “The first time I watched a Japanese practice, they were doing line rushes and the same guy was shooting. I asked why and they told me, ‘He’s the oldest player.’ ”
The physical game was another problem and King brought in University of Calgary football coach Tony Fasano to run an introductory course on the art of giving and receiving bodychecks.
“They had to overcome their fear of body contact,” King said.
As the host country, Japan was granted a place in the qualifying round in a pool with Belarus, Germany and France where, predictably, they finished dead last. But, in their placement game, the Japanese scored a 4-3 shootout win over Austria, a win that King remembers as vividly as any in his career.
“They just exploded off the bench (after the game-winning goal),” King said.
“Winning that game was like a gold medal. I know it’s an overused expression, but I can honestly say we had nothing left in the tank.”
Sadly, that game would also serve as a high-water mark for Japanese hockey.
Six years after Nagano, the country’s domestic league folded after 38 years of operation. The Asian Hockey League, which still has four Japanese teams, rose in its place.
The Japanese men’s team is currently ranked 23rd in the world, one spot ahead of Britain.
The game has survived in that country. But it never fulfilled the promise of Nagano, which raises the question, will China be any different?
As for the answer, check back after 2022 when the glow of the Olympics has dimmed and the Chinese program will have to get by on its own merits.
Right now, there are a number of reasons to believe that will be the case. But they also believed the same thing in Japan 20 years ago.