News comes thick and fast from Beijing as the Chinese Ice Hockey Association's plan for 2022 is running on full stream. The Kunlun Red Star 2022 Olympic Training Camp started on 12 March and is set to finish today with the second exhibition game against Belarus men's under-25 team.

It's quite interesting that from 30 players on the roster, 17 are with Canadian
citizenship and two with American citizenship. The most popular name is the one
of former NHL forward Brandon Yip, who played this season in the KHL for Kunlun
Red Star. 32-year-old Yip was born in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, and played
174 games in the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators and Phoenix Coyotes in between 2009 and 2014.

The camp is led by Jussi Tapola, the new head coach of China men's national team and Kunlun Red Star. Tapola was the assistant coach for the Finland's Olympic team in PyeongChang 2018 and was announced on his new assignment just two days after the Lions had lost the quarter-final against Canada 1-0. Alexander Barkov, the head coach of China's U20 national team and KRS Junior in
the MHL is working with the players on the camp as well.

"There are steps in this direction too - to find players who are of Chinese origin and who want to play for their historic country. But we have to concentrate on the development of the game in China and bring up the level of the local players. The optimal scenario in my opinion will be to have an Olympic roster with equal numbers of young talents from our current U20 and U18
teams, naturalized players and veteran Chinese players," Barkov told IIHF.com. The former Russian national team player led China's U20 team to second place in
the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey U20 World Championships Division III in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

"For us the most important thing at the moment is the content of the game that we show on the ice. The boys are getting better and we have to keep working on the chosen road to the Olympics. We already can see results - more and more Chinese players make their way in one of the strongest junior leagues in the world - MHL. We are giving chances to the young players to develop and in four years these players, now at the age between 17 and 20, will be in their prime.

"There are promising players that we are working at all aspects of the game and
the process of being an athlete on a high level. For the first time they participated in a season with 64 games, with so many training sessions and on such a professional level. We hope that these players will be the backbone of a
capable Olympic team," said Barkov.

The Novosibirsk-born former forward played at three World Championships and had
a long and successful career in the Finish Liiga with the Tappara Tampere. His son Aleksander was born there and won a bronze medal with Finland at the 2014 Olympics at the age of 18. Barkov Jr is the Florida Panthers' leading scorer with 73 points (26+47), which puts him in the NHL's top-20. He is ranked number
one in the league with five shorthanded goals. "Now Sasha is at such a high level that I don't have to tell him anything, but we keep in touch and sometimes I give him small advices," explained Barkov Sr.

The Kunlun Red Star junior team, which has its base in Latvia, had a good start
of the season with seventh place in January, but in the end finished 13th in the Western Conference of the MHL. The turning point was the break that the team had during the U20 tournament. The coaching staff with the Chinese players
went to Bulgaria and the others were left home with three weeks off. There was an idea of bringing the whole team to Sofia, so the rest of the players can participate in the trainings too, but it didn't work out. After the long break KRS Junior won only two of the next 14 games.

"In our team the ratio Chinese - foreign players right now is almost 50-50. It's a process. If we decided to use only local players than the defeats would be much higher and there wouldn't be the desired motivational level. On this stage it's important for the Chinese players to learn from their teammates, have between them some very good Russians, to gain experience, to train with them and to get results with them in games against stronger opposition," Barkov
said.

"Qianyi Huang and Jing Wang have active roles on the team. Qianyi Huang, whom we call Gretzky, can develop into a very good centre. Jing Wang is just 16, but
shows great maturity and is progressing almost every day. Next year there will be new Chinese players who will learn from them and will try to follow their example," explained Barkov. Jing Wang is among the eight players from China's U20 team who are on the entry list for the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division II Group B, which starts in Zagreb tomorrow. China is the
team promoted to this level and will play against host Croatia, Spain, Serbia, the Netherlands and Iceland. All games can be watched live and for free in the live stream.

The head coach of the U18 team is Steve Kasper, who is in charge of the China's
U18 program in Toronto. On 2nd January he was appointed as assistant coach of the Kunlun Red Star KHL team. During 13 seasons in the NHL (1980-93), Kasper played 821 game scoring 468 (177+291) points and adding 94 games in the playoffs with 48 points (20+28). Kasper was the head coach of the Boston Bruins
(1995-97) and director of professional scouting with the Toronto Maple Leafs (2012-15).

For the tournament in Zagreb he can count on few players that were developing their skills in North America this season, four of them from Beijing ShouGang Eagles in the USPHL Elite.

IVAN TCHECHANKOV

http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/news/news-singleview/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=12467
--- SBBSecho 3.03-Win32
* Origin: TequilaMockingbird Online - Toms River, NJ (1:266/404)