Winter Olympics: hockey officials run rule over Chinese team Kunlun Red Star as Beijing Games near
- Kunlun Red Star, a team based in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, has become a de facto squad for China
- The Chinese men’s national team is under heavy scrutiny by the International Ice Hockey Federation ahead of Beijing 2022
The players hoping to represent China in men’s hockey at the Winter Olympics in February lost to a Russian club in overtime on Monday, in a game used by international officials to assess the Chinese team’s competitive strength.
Kunlun Red Star, wearing red shirts with Chinese flag patches on the shoulder, fought back from four goals down to force overtime, before losing 5-4 to Amur Khabarovsk 5-4.
“It was a very strong sign of the upside,” Ivano Zanatta, the Kunlun coach, said. “There’s definitely signs of character, resilience and there’s more upside, no question.”
Kunlun have been playing in the Kontinental Hockey League, becoming a proxy for the China team and a base for naturalised players who grew up in the United States and Canada. The team has won seven of 28 games in the league this season.
Amur led 4-0 with five minutes to go in the second period in a near-empty arena in the Moscow suburbs before the comeback started.