Tanner Pearson scored two breakaway goals to pace the LA Kings to a 5-2 pre-season win over Vancouver yesterday in the first-ever National Hockey League (NHL) game played in China. The game in Shanghai was the first of two Kings-Canucks exhibitions staged by the NHL, the latest foreign sports league to turn hopeful eyes toward China’s growing market in search of future fans and revenues. The second game is in Beijing tomorrow.
The NHL is hoping to make an impression in China and seven total goals combined with fine passing dazzled the 10,000 spectators though the game was slowed repeatedly by penalties. The Kings’ Adrian Kempe scored the NHL’s first goal in China eight minutes into the game with a slapshot from the left point.
Pearson wristed home his first several minutes later, and the Kings went up 3-0 in the second period when Alec Martinez first-timed a pass from the right point and into the net. Vancouver were never able to close the gap despite goals down the stretch by Sven Baertschi and Markus Granlund.
“I think it’s great for China to see the NHL up live and in person and see the speed of the game and how good the players are,” Canucks coach Travis Green said afterward. “But any time you bring hockey to a new country, it’s gonna take time.”
The US National Basketball Association remains the standard for tapping China’s market, earning millions of fans thanks in part to Chinese former Houston Rockets star centre Yao Ming. But a host of other leagues also are testing the waters. Major European soccer clubs tour each year, the US National Football League is eyeing a possible future game in the country, and Australian-rules football in May staged what it called the first regular-season match in China by a foreign sports league.
The NHL hopes to ride a wave of interest — stoked by China’s Communist government — in winter sports ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, widely considered the world’s second-best, last year accepted Beijing-based hockey team Kunlun Red Star as a full-fledged member.
The team, mixing Russian, Chinese, US and European players, promptly made the playoffs. The number of Chinese who play ice hockey regularly is believed to be miniscule, and the sport’s growth hurdles include heavy investments for equipment and building indoor rinks.
But a nascent sports culture is emerging as China’s middle-class prospers, and foreign leagues and their sports-equipment sponsors smell a potential gold mine. In 2015, Song Andong, then living in the US, became the first Chinese-born player drafted by the NHL when the New York Islanders selected him. China, meanwhile, is scouting North American players with Chinese links who may be unable to make the deep US and Canadian squads but could potentially bolster China’s national teams. China’s women are ranked eighth in the world but its men are just 37th, two rungs below Israel.