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NANJING Apr. 20-23
2007 |
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About
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1st Nanjing Invitational Expat Hockey Tournament Shanghai - Beijing - Dalian - Kunming
Beijing's 4 - Ray, JP, Yoko & Shawn - We do have 60 players in Beijing, but only 5 could travel. "Column" flew back early and missed this photo. Beijing Five Invade Nanjing Beijing touring domestically is pretty
pathetic. For Kunming 2005, we had 2 players go. For Nanjing '07, we had 5.
Percentage wise it is a great increase, but we do have 60 players in Beijing!
In days of old, we toured Harbin and Tai Yuan with full teams. Hopefully we
will soon have players that want to tour again. Dalian and Shanghai had full
sides, and thanks to them, both Kunming and Beijing were able to have teams of
11 skaters.
TEAM BEIJING BJ - Ray Plummer
ALL THE PLAYERS!!! Why did Shanghai organize a tournament in
Nanjing? Much like Beijing's tournament in Mongolia, when Beijing couldn't
rent ice dependably, Shanghai's ice has melted and they have nowhere to play.
The closest ice they can rent is in Nanjing - a 4-hour bus ride away. Nanjing’s Olympic Complex (AoTi Zhong Xin)
is amazing. 20km from the city center, it is a city within itself of football
stadiums, swimming pools, baseball diamonds and of course - a hockey rink (at
pillar #50). Unfortunately there is NOTHING near it. Our hotel, the Zixin
International Apartment Hotel, (Tel:(025) 6667-6188) was conveniently across
the street, but had glass walled bathrooms so you could watch your roommate
shower or take a dump - just like in prison - perhaps it was influenced by
Japanese interior designers. As they say... "Only in China!" After
seeing the breakfast - most agreed to continue to fast! No CNN or English
channels, but there were 100+ Chinese channels of Peking Opera and
anti-Japanese movies. Hey... we were in Nanjing! Beijing did agree that if we
return to Nanjing to play hockey, we will stay there, but we will all get
private rooms! Game
1 - Beijing Vs. Kunming 4-2??? 11:30pm Two Beijing players flew to Nanjing in the
morning and toured the ancient city, but the other three landed at 10:00pm.
They stuffed themselves into a Chinese taxi with gear and sticks (one of the
players was Big Ray!!!) and rushed to the rink for the 11:30pm puck-drop! With
minutes to spare, all were on the ice for warm0-ups, and this is when Beijing
discovered that the players given to us were given to us for a reason...
Dalian gave us a "forward" that we nick-named Tripod - and then
Dalian picked up some players from Shanghai to "fill their roster!" Our strategy was to load our 1st
line, and the 2nd line was centered by Drunk Guy with two goalies
playing on his wings. The 1st line produced, and the 2nd
well... let's just say that it gave our goalie in net an opportunity to show
how good he is. Our 5 defense rotated through and were pretty solid in usually
getting the puck out. Both Yoko and JP scored twice! After Beijing’s victory over Kunming, most
of us showered and all hopped on the bus to hit the bars of Nanjing.
Unfortunately, our bus driver did not know where the bars were. At 2:10am -
with the help of a few taxi drivers, we pulled up to the new "1912"
the bar district. We looked into Baby Face and Blue Marlin, but decided on
Scarlet. By 2am it was comfortably full, making it sensible to purchase beers
five at a time! "Robot Man" from Shanghai was seen on stage busting
his groove amongst the plethora of Chinese students and nouveaux rich Chinese.
It was shocking to see that most of the locals had multiple bottles of Chivas
Regal on their tables and the poor foreigners were drinking Tsingdao and
Heineken by the bottle! Play hard / Party hard - Beijing cabbed it back to our
hotel by 6am! (But when you don't get to the bar until 2, it's really not that
bad!) Game
2 - Beijing vs. Shanghai 0-4 10:00am OWCH - Beijing crawled onto the ice severely
hung over and skating, passing, shooting and especially stick-handling were
beyond most of us. Yoko, Ray & JP played almost like Tripod. The
timekeeper said it was easily the slowest and worst game she had ever seen.
Not only did Shanghai scrape the bottom of the player pool for us, but several
of them didn't drink - and most of them went home BEFORE sunrise! Poor form
Shanghai - not in the spirit of the tour! I write no more about this game. Game
3 - Beijing vs. Dalian Ice Dragons 4-1 Beijing was still lethargic in this game -
but that can be excused by the fact that we lunched on hot-pot and one player
stated he wanted to "wipe his butt with a snow-cone" to cure his
"ring of fire". Post hot-pot we joined Shanghai, Kunming and Dalian
at Blue Marlin's roof-top terrace for beers until 6pm. Beijing tried to
upgrade our team by leaving Column asleep on the bar, but he woke up while we
were still waiting for taxis and made it to the rink with us! Good even game that was tied 1-1 going into
the third, and then Beijing came alive in the last 5 minutes, and scored two
quick goals putting the game out of reach. Ray sniped his second of the game,
then JP rifled the best goal of the tournament from the bottom of the circle
into the top corner far side - "Pick Top!" - and then Yoko potted an
empty netter! Beijing redeemed themselves and advanced to the championship
game and being able to go out to the bars with their heads held high. Game
4 - Beijing vs. Shanghai 1-2 Beijing showed Shanghai that even with just
one good forward shift, they could give Shanghai a run for their money. Both
goaltenders played fantastic, keeping the game a one goal game. Shanghai
scored in the 2nd, Beijing tied midway through the 3rd, and with 90 seconds to
go, Shanghai capitalized on a 2 on 1 break and scored the winner. In the
closing seconds, Beijing had a dilemma, if we pull the goalie, who do we put
out?!? With a 3rd defenseman on the ice, Beijing pressured but Yoko’s
closing shot was snatched out of the air by Shanghai's goalie and the game
ended. Many thanks to David Johansson for organizing such a fun 4 team tournament. We all got to know one another better and cannot wait for the next edition of the China Expat Cup - or whatever we will start calling it!
Thank you to James Schwartz (James Schwartz Photography - St. Louis) & Yoko for providing these photos! |
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Copyright 2007, Beijing International Ice Hockey For questions email peking_puck@yahoo.com |
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