"In the future, are you willing to represent China in the Beijing Winter Olympics?"
In the second season (2017) after the establishment of Beijing Kunlun Hongxing Hockey Club, this is a question that all Chinese players will be asked in interviews. In the summer of that offseason, Kunlun Hongxing recruited 6 Chinese players to join through operations - Ye Jinguang, Haiyun, Jian'an, Zhao Chuanli, Luo Jia, Duan Shineng (known as the "Six Gentlemen of Chinese Descent"), and counting Yuan Junjie and Ying Rudi, who joined the club at the beginning of the establishment of the team, there were 8 oriental faces in the team.
The question at the beginning became a matter of course, five years before the Beijing Winter Olympics, a period of great uncertainty and sensitive issues involving nationality conversion, ethnic sentiments, and so on. In the face of the media's tireless questions, the answers of all Chinese players showed a kind of standardization -
"Yes, if I could, I would like to represent China in the 2022 Winter Olympics, but there is still a long way to go and we'll see what happens next."
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To some extent, the choice of naturalization of Chinese ice hockey is a natural strategy.
Due to the particularity of ice hockey, the two teams with large differences in strength often present a one-sided situation, in addition to affecting the ornamentation, high-speed and high-intensity confrontation will even bring life danger to the players on the weak side, so the world ice hockey is divided into top group, A group A, class B group, B group B, C class A group, C B group and so on according to the ranking. In addition to the top 12 national teams, there are 6 teams in each other group. Every summer, the World Championships are held in each group, and the first place in each group can go up one notch, and the last place can go down to the lower group.
Generally speaking, Olympic ice hockey competitions are only played by 12 teams in the top group, and Chinese ice hockey, both men and women's teams, are far from this level.
Before the Winter Olympics, Chinese women's ice skaters were ranked 20th in the world in Group A, and in history, they finished fourth at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, which was also the team's best result. Subsequently, Chinese women's ice skaters finished seventh at both Salt Lake City and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and have been absent for two consecutive years, leaving the Winter Olympic stage for 12 years.
The Chinese men's ice team is in The Second Division A, ranked 32nd in the world, and the team has not yet reached the Winter Olympics. The highlight of Chinese men's ice also dates back to the 80s of the last century - in 1981, Chinese men's ice participated in the Group C World Championships held in Beijing, successfully promoted to Group B (equivalent to the current Class A), and created the world's highest ranking 15th; in the first Sapporo Asian Winter Games in 1986, Chinese men's ice won the gold medal.
Overall, there is more than one gap between the level of Ice Hockey in China and the world's top level. At the 2018 World Championships in Tilburg, the Netherlands, the Chinese men's ice team with an all-native squad finally finished fourth in Group A of the Second Division. At the 2019 World Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, the Chinese men's ice team ranked fifth, the group was successful, still staying in the position of Group B A, and the top group of the Olympic level was separated by two levels of A and B.
Such a situation is naturally a little embarrassing for the host, so as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics approach, the question of whether to naturalize players is increasingly mentioned.
In fact, in the hockey circle, naturalization is not a new thing, and the most convincing case for Chinese ice hockey comes from the South Korean next door. Before the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, host South Korea suffered a similar situation to the Chinese team, and they quickly relied on 6 naturalized players to reconstruct the core of the national team, and then the team gradually rose to the top group and entered the Olympic finals.
Obviously, this is a case that can be referred to and copied, and Kunlun Hongxing, a Chinese ice hockey club originally formed with the goal of preparing for the Winter Olympics, participated in the mainland ice hockey league step by step at this time, while continuing to expand its own "Chinese legion" - Jian Guohui, Wang Taylor, Fu Jiang, Wei Ruike, Liu Jie, Shen Jialei and other players with Chinese ancestry have come to vote.
However, due to the epidemic, the 2020 Ice Hockey World Championship was cancelled, and the 2021 World Championship was only held in the top group, and the Chinese team lost the opportunity to rush the group (of course, due to the unresolved naturalization issue at that time, the all-China class itself was also relegated as the first task). Kunlun Hongxing FC was also hit hard, with the pandemic preventing them from playing domestically and having to move their home stadium from Beijing, China to the outskirts of Moscow in the 2020/21 season.
Losing the Beijing home stadium, fading out of the domestic vision, and severing the connection with local fans will undoubtedly cause great harm to the development of the club. But the most pressing thing is that the sword of Damocles above his head is still there – whether the Chinese players in the team will have the opportunity to represent China in the Beijing Olympics.
This question is like an elephant in a room, everyone can see it, but all of them selectively shut up.
At the end of July 2021, with the approval of the General Administration of Sports, the men's and women's ice hockey national teams will participate in the 2021/22 KHL and WHL leagues under the name of Beijing and Shenzhen Kunlun Hongxing Club, which is only half a year away from the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and its meaning is self-evident. Although there was news during the period that the qualification of Chinese men's ice direct to the Olympic Games was once tested, fortunately, on December 8, the Executive Committee of the International Ice Federation finally confirmed the qualification of Chinese men's ice, and all the dust settled.
Finally, the naturalization of hockey is set, and in a short time, a huge machine is running at full power — or rather, everything has been in place for the past few years, just waiting for the whistle.
In the 2021/22 season, the Kunlun Hongxing club roster finally reached the "ideal mode". In the first five seasons, it appeared more as a professional hockey club, except for some Chinese players, other players were mercenaries from North America and Europe, and almost no local Chinese players appeared.
In the 2021/22 season, the 36-year-old Chinese captain Ye Jinguang returned to the team, and outstanding local players such as Ying Rudi, Yan Ruinan, Yan Juncheng, Zhang Zesen, Zhong Wei, Guo Guoning, Xiang Xudong, Zhang Pengfei, Chen Zimeng, and Han Pengfei also entered the Kunlun Hongxing team roster. The lineup of Chinese men's ice in this Winter Olympics is also all derived from this.
Ye Jinguang, who has played in the NHL for 4 full seasons, has a Chinese mother and a chinese and Irish father
It is worth noting that in addition to Chinese and local players, there are also pure foreign naturalized players like Kelios (defender), Sprawl (defender), Osipov (defender), Jeremy Smith (goalkeeper) and other pure foreign naturalized players who represent The Chinese men's ice players this time. These players have all played for Kunlun Hongxing for about three seasons, are very familiar with and adapt to the habits of their teammates and the team's playing style, and they will also build a naturalized Great Wall of Chinese men's ice in the backline at the Winter Olympics.
In Chinese sports, naturalization seems to be a no-go approach. As a pioneer in the use of naturalized players, the Situation of the Chinese Men's Football Team is very embarrassing. On the first day of the first lunar month, the Chinese men's football team just experienced a tragic defeat in Hanoi, Vietnam. Before the start of the second half, head coach Li Xiaopeng replaced the naturalized players Alain and Luo Guofu with zhang yuning and Wei Shihao, two local forwards. Li Xiaopeng's face on the side of the field was hidden under the mask, and there was no trace of emotional fluctuations; the two players who were replaced did not express too much emotion, but that moment meant a lot.
Li Tie and Li Xiaopeng's use of naturalized players to "self-prove", the bankruptcy of the Chinese men's football team after the Qatar World Cup, and the performance of the first batch of naturalized players have made countless people outside the circle full of questions about the short-term investment project of "naturalization".
But for Chinese ice hockey, the meaning of "naturalization" is completely different. On the third day of the first month of the first month, after 12 years, the Chinese women's ice hockey team once again appeared in the Winter Olympics, losing 1-3 to the Czech Republic in the first game; on the fourth day of the first month, the Chinese women's ice hockey scored two goals in a row in the first minute before the final game, 3-1 against Denmark, and then drew 1-1 with Japan (followed by a penalty shootout to defeat the opponent), and the last 1-2 loss to Sweden, and in these four games, all the goals of the Chinese team came from naturalized foreign aid.
Miller, one of the two unrelated naturalized Chinese women's ice skaters (the other being Rebecca), scored Japan's only regular-time goal
Lin Qiqi, Chinese Canadian naturalized, Chinese team scoring champion (the scoring technical statistics of ice hockey are goals + assists)
Yu Baiwei, a 33-year-old veteran, is the only non-naturalized player to score (one assist) in the group stage
It can be seen that naturalization is a quick-acting drug to enhance strength and achievement in the short term. However, this does not mean that there is no disadvantage and completely subvert the original strength level of the team. Although the world's No. 20 Chinese women's ice team has 13 naturalized players and can even beat Japan by a weak victory, due to the lack of experience in international competitions, the group was unfortunately eliminated. For the Chinese men's ice team with 15 naturalized players, it is a more realistic goal to play a style, let more viewers know about ice hockey, and open the goal account of the Chinese men's winter ice Olympics.
Although the NHL, the North American professional hockey league, announced that its players would not participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics, the A group of Chinese men's ice skaters is still difficult, and the same group is The world's first Canada, the world's fourth-place United States and the world's fifth-place Germany. According to the official website of the International Ice Federation, there are more than 600,000 registered ice hockey players in Canada, more than 560,000 in the United States, and 21,000 ice hockey players in Germany, which has a population of 83 million, while china's figure is 13,388, if you do not count the 10,365 teenagers who have recently been trained, the number of adult players is only about 3,000.
More intuitive data comes from the report card of KHL Kunlun Hongxing this season, as the first professional ice hockey league outside North America, KHL has sent 121 players to 10 of the national teams in this Winter Olympic Games, accounting for 40% of the total players, making it the most contributing professional hockey league. In other words, the competitive level of men's ice hockey in this Winter Olympic Games will basically remain at the KHL level familiar to Chinese men's ice hockey.
This season, Kunlun Hongxing, who played in the KHL as an all-national team lineup, has accumulated 25 points in 9 wins and 39 losses in 48 games that have ended, ranking at the bottom of the league, averaging 2.1 goals per game and conceding 4.1 goals. Chinese players occupy the team's scoring list, With Fu General (33 points), Wang Taylor (28 points) and Ye Jinguang (27 points) ranking in the top three, while only Ying Rudi and Xiang Xudong scored 1 point each.
Zheng Enlai, the brother of the naturalized track and field star Zheng Ninali, their mother is the Chinese track and field athlete Duan Lizeng, and his name "Enlai" comes from his grandmother Zheng Fengrong's experience as a new Chinese track and field name to be received by Premier Zhou Enlai
"For this group of Chinese players, playing in the Beijing Winter Olympics is their lifelong dream." Chinese men's ice coach Ivano Sannetta said in an interview with the International Ice Federation, "I told them that we are going to try to get the respect of the whole hockey world. Don't think of it as a show, we're here to earn dignity. So we've been training around physical confrontation and tactical levels to try to be the best. ”
Optimistically, the Chinese men's ice team was the first team to prepare for the Olympic Group A, and the whole team went through 48 KHL League real knives and guns. Among the main players in the front line, Ye Jinguang, Luo Jia and Jian'an have joined the team since 2017, and Taylor Wang, Fu Jiang and Verrick have also worked together for nearly 3 seasons; Sprawl, Kelios, Osipov and Jeremy Smith in the back line are also very familiar with each other. At least the goal of scoring the first goal of the Winter Olympics is not out of reach.
The three opponents of Group A, Canada and the United States are in the same vein, the same North American genre, the style of play is unrestrained, the impact is extremely strong, in the case of high-speed, high-pressure and high confrontation, the players often have outstanding personal play; the German team that was a blockbuster at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, although the final defeat to Russia, but they showed the unique team and discipline of european teams, this time back to the Winter Olympic stage, the team is full of Olympic, World Championships experienced players, will continue to impact the last unfinished task.
Ying Rudi, Yuan Junjie
Unlike the women's ice hockey format, the top three groups of men's skaters and the best second place will advance to the quarterfinals first, and the remaining eight teams will be cross-eliminated, resulting in another four teams that have advanced. The best chance of china's men's ice hockey is perhaps that latvia and Denmark, which are slightly weaker in the top group, will be a contest of equal strength in the second stage, at least in the eyes of head coach Zanetta.
Compared with the achievements of Chinese men's ice skating, the International Ice Federation pays more attention to whether ice hockey can achieve great development in China through the Winter Olympics. This development is not to maintain the "Winter Olympic fever" for several weeks, but through systematic promotion, indoor and outdoor ice field construction, domestic ice hockey league organization, echelon construction of all age groups, youth interest cultivation, step by step improvement and realization.
Realistically speaking, this may be just a luxury for the time being. The special requirements of ice hockey on the field, as well as the requirements for the economic level of the participants, are doomed to make it impossible to become a popular grassroots sport like football and basketball. In today's era of information dissemination, there are few reports about Chinese men's ice skating participating in the past two World Championships.
But there is always hope.
"If there is a Chinese athlete, 20 years later, he will stand on the highest stage of ice hockey. Asked why he practiced hockey, he replied: 'In 2022, I watched the Chinese team play', that's the success of our generation.' Ye Jinguang, the captain of the Chinese male ice team, wrote on Weibo.
That goes back to the question at the beginning, "Would you like to represent China in the Beijing Winter Olympics in the future?" ”
Many of those who have answered this question no longer know where they are. From 2016 to 2022, countless people alternated, the world changed, and the vicissitudes of the sea. Some of these people continue to work hard in a small league in the world, some have long since retired and changed careers, some have earned a few years of fast money, some have cherished this experience, and some people are still humbly chasing their dreams.
But there is no doubt that they are all part of the historical process of Chinese hockey.
On February 10, The Chinese men's ice team will step onto the stage of the Winter Olympics for the first time, and the efforts of countless people have been poured behind this condensed team. It was like a huge, slow-moving ship that, after a long and tortuous journey, finally reached the harbor on time.
Don't look at what it will bring us, its appearance is a victory in itself.