Sawt Falasteen - Debacle on ice: The strange journey of China's Olympic hockey team

Before the puck is even dropped at centre ice in Beijing next week, the mixed squad of Chinese and foreign-born players will have already experienced Olympic-level ups and downs in one of the strangest team journeys to a Games.

The latest twist came last month when the National Hockey League (NHL) said its players would skip Beijing on pandemic concerns, sparing China potential humiliation on home ice -- the hosts are grouped with Canada, the United States and 2018 silver medallists Germany.

That's a loss for the Olympics but a boon for the Chinese team on their debut at the Games, said Li Longmou, a hockey commentator who will call matches for state broadcaster CCTV.

"It's good for the Chinese team because they may get better results," Li said.

- 'Will they finally win?' -

Winter sports are in their infancy in China and hockey has been starved of state investment compared to football and basketball, said Li.

When Beijing was awarded the Games in 2015, Chinese sports officials realised they faced embarrassment in one of the marquee events.

So a professional team was created to compete in the Kontinental Hockey League, Russia's top professional competition and widely considered the world's second-best after the NHL, to serve as a sort of training camp for the national players.

China bolstered the team, called Kunlun Red Star, with Canadian and American players of Chinese descent, some of whom had played sparingly in the NHL or other pro leagues.

Several are expected to suit up in Beijing via undisclosed citizenship arrangements reached with China.

But things haven't gone so well with Kunlun Red Star.

The team have never posted a winning record since debuting in 2016, finishing each season at or near the bottom of the league.

With the KHL season pausing for the Olympics, Red Star's record is a woeful 9-39.

"Will Red Star finally get a win?" the league's own website asked in a despairing headline.

- 'Not good for hockey' -

The dismal showing nearly put China's Olympic dreams on ice.

Governing body the International Ice Hockey Federation said in late September that China, ranked 32 in the world, were so bad that they might be barred from Beijing despite the automatic berth typically extended to hosts.

"Watching a team being beaten 15-0 is not good for anyone, not for China or for ice hockey," IIHF president Luc Tardif told AFP in an interview at the time.

The squad was given until October to prove its mettle, but didn't exactly dazzle, managing two wins, nine losses and ending the month with an 8-0 drubbing at the hands of another losing team.

Still, the IIHF announced soon after that China could take the ice in Beijing.

More good news came in December with the announcement that Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin and other NHL luminaries would be absent.

"That dramatically changes things" said Mark Dreyer, a Beijing-based China sports analyst.

China will still struggle to win a game "but the scores are not going to be nearly as bad as people were predicting", he said.

The team and individual players did not reply to AFP requests for comment.

China has stated that it hopes the Beijing Games will fuel growth in all winter sports in the country, and Li said a decent performance in the rink could do much for hockey.

"For some (Chinese), how much they like a sport is determined by the performance of the national team at the Winter Olympics."

A better Chinese performance could mean "more media attention and more sports fans may start to like ice hockey", Li said.

- 'Right direction' -

Still, hockey faces hurdles in China in the longer term.

Li estimates there are only about 5,000 youths playing regularly in the huge country.

Dreyer said the NHL is "missing a massive opportunity" to promote hockey in China's untapped market, having invested far less than other foreign sports leagues.

Without the luxury of an automatic berth in the future, it's hard to say when China might next qualify for the Olympics.

But Dreyer says noticeably larger numbers of Chinese are taking up the sport, at least in the capital.

"The growth of ice hockey in China is definitely moving in the right direction," he said.

"There's a lot of good organic growth."

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R.AbuNasser--SF-PST