BEIJING They’re not just an underdog. They’re the fleas on the underdog.
So woefully did the Chinese men’s hockey team project as an Olympics entity that, just last September, the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, Luc Tardif, suggested a “Plan B” should be considered to avert a Humiliation On Ice. Norway was brutalized as that Plan B.
“Watching a team being beaten 15-0 is not good for anyone, not for China or for ice hockey.”
So wretched an outfit — ranked No. 34 in the world — that, in November, the squad was put through a test series with a Russian team of professionals, to assess competitive strength, whether they had a hope in hell of not looking like laughingstocks on the spectacle stage of the Winter Games.
So desperate to fill out the roster that, starting some five years ago, scouts were dispatched to scour all corners of the planet for players who could claim even the most remotely ancestral Chinese link and were willing to naturalize.
So frantic to quick-build a patina of hockey culture that millions upon millions of dollars was spent on hockey infrastructure and player development. A chunk of that change went toward luring marquee ambassadors of the sport. Mike Keenan was hired to coach, though Iron Mike managed to get himself fired after just 36 games behind the bench. Wayne Gretzky — no grander touch of hockey magic imaginable than The Great One — made several appearances in China and tried to establish a hockey school here.
But in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency, Gretzky couldn’t lie. “Realistically, the best thing they want to do is be respectable.”
On Thursday evening, in its first game of Olympic tournament, the first Games game ever contested by a Chinese squad, Team China was blown out 8-0. By a bunch of mostly college-level Americans. And one can only cringe at what might have happened had Team USA come to Beijing with a roster of NHL stars.
Hockey mandarins here long ago gave up on the idea of recruiting ethnic Chinese players as guns-for-hire, BB guns. Instead, they’ve brought together an oddball assortment of journeymen, never-made-its and career minor-leaguers. A lineup stacked with North Americans and a heavily Canadian flavour. How they actually managed to transform the motley crew of “Heritage and Imported” players into Chinese Olympians is a mystery, never quite disclosed. It’s not clear if exemptions were made by the IOC to accommodate Team China, which is among the dozen nations in the Olympic tournament only because host nations automatically gain entry into every Games sport.
China has strict rules on citizenship, which is required to represent a nation at the Games, proof of ethnic heritage or long-term residence required and new citizens must renounce other nationalities because China doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.
“When I’m here in China, I’m representing the Chinese,” said Jeremy Smith, starting goaltender, after he came off the ice, somewhat shell-shocked from facing 53 shots, although it should be noted that he held the US to just one goal in the first period, before the Yanks exploded.
“I truly feel Chinese.”
He’s from Dearborn, Mich. and he eleven played for the US at the world junior championships. Selected by the Nashville Predators in the second round of the 2007 NHL draft. That went nowhere. He signed as a free agent by the Colorado Avalanche and played 10 games with them across the 2016-17 season. But mostly he’s been a minor-league guy who’d admitted, not that long ago, that he saw a move to China as a way to rejuvenate his career.
Which is not what the 32-year-old says now.
“I’m not here to grow my career in any direction. I’m just here to do what I do best and that’s to play goalie, to build the sport, to inspire younger generations. If even one goalie puts the pads on in China, I think we’ve won.”
In the official Olympic bio section for Team China, the name Jeremy Smith is not to be found. No birth name is found. It’s as though they’ve all been reinvented as Chinese and you’d have to dig deeper to discover their “previous names”. Thus, Jeremy Smith is Jieruimi Shimisi. The captain, Brandon Yip – who really is a Chinese-Canadian, from Maple Ridge, BC, 174 NHL games over five seasons – is Ye Jinguang. And Jake Chelios — Chris Chelios’ son — is Jieke Kailiaosi. Denis Osipov, born in Moscow, is Dannisi Aoxibofu.
“They asked me if I wanted to adopt a Chinese name,” Smith explained. “I said absolutely.”
Well, the request was not quite so benign. The Chinese government demanded that all imported players be rechristened with Chinese language names.
Jieruimi Shimisi is emblazoned in Chinese characters on Smith’s facemask, the work of a Beijing artist.
Every player on the roster is listed as a member of the Kunlun Red Star club, a proxy — incubator — for the Chinese national team, which competes in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League. And not very well. They were in the last place before the Olympic break.
Kunlun Red Star, which began operations in 2016-17 is owned by Billy Ngok, billionaire founder of China Environmental Energy Holdings and presumably a hockey fan with money to burn.
Hockey is very much viewed as a curiosity by the Chinese, although there was a palpable affection for the team in the air at the National Indoor Stadium, some 800-or-so fans in COVID-restricted attendance, longing to cheer, if the team had given them anything to cheer about. Quite a few animated Chinese reporters too, up in the press tribune.
“It’s truly an honor to wear this jersey, to be an Olympian and to represent China,” said Smith, and we have no reason to question his sincerity. “I have chills thinking about it. There’s so much love. I feel like I’ve been welcomed by the team, by the country. I feel like they’ve adopted me as one of their own.
“Who knows what can happen in the future, not just for us but for hockey in this amazing country.”
The distant future, maybe. In the near future, they’re going to get their asses kicked.
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