ラトビア、スウェーデンに勝つ！

今のところ順当に進んでいるスイスのベルンとチューリッヒで開催されているIIHF 世界選手権（相変わらず選手層の薄いスロバキアは苦戦しながらなんとか勝っていますが）、ついに金星が出ました。GWS ですが、エリート国から一歩下がった位置にいるラトビアがスウェーデンに勝ちました！これでどこまで行けるか、ラトビア…？

リトアニア戦

日本はリトアニアに勝ち、4大会連続で3位を獲得しました。リトアニア戦はかなり荒れて、その荒れた部分のハイライトはここで見れます（ゴールは見れませんが）。

なかなかディビジョンＩ からは抜け出せないみたいです。早く世界選手権を再構成して、ディビジョン内のグループ分けを止めてほしいですね、現状だと昇降格するチームは大体決まってしまうので（去年札幌でのハンガリーの奇跡みたいな事もたまーに起きるのだが）。

2009 All Japan Championship details

Not all of them but here they are. 

Thu 12 Feb. Round 3
Tomakomai-Komazawa U 7 – 1 Vanguards (Higashifushimi)
Kansai U 3 – 0 Toyota Hokkaido Centuries (Higashifushimi)
Waseda U 3 – 1 Hachinohe Kodai1 High School (Shin-Yokohama)
Meiji U 6 – 1 Tomakomai City Hall (Shin-Yokohama)

Fri 13 Feb. Quarterfinals
Seibu Prince Rabbits 7 – 0 Tomakomai-Komazawa U (Higashifushimi)
Kansai U 0 – 2 HC Nikko Ice Bucks (Higashifushimi)
Oji Eagles 6 – 2 Waseda U (Shin-Yokohama)
Meiji U 2 – 4 Nippon Paper Cranes (Shin-Yokohama)

Sat 14 Feb. Semifinals
Seibu Prince Rabbits 5 – 4 HC Nikko Ice Bucks (Higashifushimi)
Oji Eagles 2 – 4 Nippon Paper Cranes (Higashifushimi)

Sun 15 Feb. Finals/Bronze game
Bronze: HC Nikko Ice Bucks 2 – 5 Oji Eagles (Higashifushimi)
Finals: Seibu Prince Rabbits 6 (1-0, 2-4, 3-1) 5 Nippon Paper Cranes (Higashifushimi)

Scoring:

Seibu 18:02 Ishioka
Cranes 27:45 Haratake
Seibu 30:33 Tanaka
Seibu 30:43 Prpic
Cranes 30:59 M. Ito
Cranes 32:42 Nishiwaki
Cranes 38:37 Iimura
Cranes 45:49 Mitani
Seibu 47:46 Suzuki
Seibu 52:03 Obara
Seibu 57:09 Prpic
—————-

Tournament MVP: Go Tanaka F (Seibu)

This year, all quarterfinalists who got to play the Asia League teams were university teams. On the way to the quarters, the uni teams beat a couple of senior amateur teams (Toyota and Tomakomai City Hall) and a high school team from Hachinohe! The high school team beat a Hokkaido senior amateur squad Tadano to get to the quarters, though the high schoolers were seeded above a couple of senior amateur teams. It all concluded with an exciting high scoring final that saw the teams trading leads, and Joel Prpic cashing in with the championship winner with less than 3 minutes remaining in regulation.

Here’s the full results (the JIHF tournament page) in Japanese:
http://www.jihf.or.jp/jihf/data/schedule.php?id=160

Japanese hockey wrap

The best-of-3 play-in round between 4th place Nippon Paper Cranes and High1 finished in a blowout for the Cranes, sweeping the series with 5-2 and 8-4 wins. Now the semifinals pits the rested Anyang Halla (the first non-Japanese team to top the regular season standings) against the battle worn Cranes, and soon to fold Seibu Prince Rabbits against the Oji Eagles. They both should be dandy series, and with the balanced schedule this past season, Halla’s record is for real and I’m looking for them progressing to the finals! (And for Seibu to have its last hurrah in addition to them winning the 2009 All Japan Championship in an exciting 6-5 final against the Cranes.) 

In other Japanese hockey news, with the Seibu group officially pulling the plug on its hockey team, there will be a memorial alumni game to be held at the DyDo Drinco Arena in Higashifushimi, Tokyo, on 28 March. The match should feature Kokudo and Seibu Railway legends such as the Wakabayashi brothers, Herb and Mel.

And in Harbin 2009 Universiade news, Japan won 3-2 over China, with Eri Kiribuchi notching her first win turning aside 26 of 28 shots in a much better performance from the previous day’s game where she allowed 4 goals on 23 shots against Finland in a shutout loss. Without playing any official games this season, she seems to have secured the starter’s position on Team Japan, way to go Eri! The men were lucklustre in their 1-4 loss to Slovakia on their opening game of the tournament.

And finally, the newly formed Tohoku Free Blades is going to ice a team for the first time in the next few weeks. First an exhibition match (three 15 minute periods) against the Nikko IceBucks of the Asia League on the Bucks’ fan appreciation day on 11am 28 February at the Nikko Kirifuri Arena. This event will cost 1000 yen and it will be a good measure to see if the team can be competitive in the Asia League. The Blades will also be making an appearance (normal rules) against western Japan amateur powerhouse Surpass Kagawa at 8pm 6 March in Miki City, Kagawa Surpass Sports Center Arena. Let’s hope this helps Blades pass the muster to enter the Asia League, as the uncertain future of Seibu means that a new Japanese team in the league will be a much needed infusion.

Harbin Winter Universiade 2009 and Eri Kiribuchi

Eri Kiribuchi (long bio here), whose blog is right here (Japanese), is competing in the Winter Universiade 2009 which started in Harbin, China today. We’ll see if she starts in goal, to the best of my knowledge she still hasn’t started an official game for Bemidji State University in Minnesota, where she is competing with two other freshmen goalies to be the starter.

She’s a very interesting case for a Japanese hockey player, having left Japan with her family shortly after the 1998 Nagano Olympics, falling in love with hockey, specifically Czech hockey. The whole family moved to Prague to pursue the kids’ hockey dreams. After attending an athletics high school in the Czech Republic, Eri’s managed to secure herself a scholarship in an NCAA Division I school. Eri has been the most successful one, having managed this national team call up, but her brother Yuto has been no slouch either playing in the Czech Extraliga 2nd division club HK Lev Slaný. While Eri is playing in the highest level of women’s hockey in NCAA Division I, the rest of her family remains in Prague operating a B&B (Japanese). She’s fluent trilingual, has appeared in a cosmetics commercial in Europe :P , is a promising goalie for Japan’s future, so it is good to see that the national hockey program is looking overseas for promising talent. Good luck!

2009 All Japan Championship

The 76th edition of the All Japan Ice Hockey Championships are going on right now in Yokohama and Higashifushimi with the latter being the main venue. The quarterfinals featured 4 university teams against the seeded Asia League teams with Kansai U and Meiji U putting up the best results with 2 goal losses.

You’ll be able to find the results on this page
http://www.jihf.or.jp/jihf/data/schedule.php?id=160

Team pages should have some sort of updates as well

http://www.icebucks.jp/

http://www.ojipaper.co.jp/hockey/

http://www.np-g.com/cranes/

http://www1.princehotels.co.jp/icehockey/

You can run them through google translate and probably get somewhat of coherent results.
http://translate.google.co.jp/

バンクーバー五輪予選終了

３つの男子アイスホッケーの2010バンクーバー五輪予選のグループは、ホスト国のドイツ、ラトビアとノルウェーがそれぞれオリンピック出場権を獲得しました。日本は格上のスロベニア相手に５－４ SO勝ちと健闘しましたが、やはりドイツとオーストリアは強敵でした。

ラトビアのリガで行われた予選でのハンガリー戦のハイライト集です。

ハンガリー対イタリア

ハンガリー対ウクライナ（去年の札幌での世界選手権ディビジョンＩ のリベンジですね）

Team Japan for Vancouver 2010 Final Qualifying

Team Japan was announced on 15 January for the final round of qualifying for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Japan is in a very tough group against Austria, Slovenia, and hosts Germany. The games will take place 5-8 February in Hannover. The winner of the group will qualify for the Vancouver Olympics. Japan is essentially going into this round of qualifying with the exact same team that won the first round of qualifying in Poland last November. The team will hold camp in Italy from 27 Jan – 2 Feb before heading over to Hannover. You can see each player’s individual stats in the 2008-09 Asia League.

GK Haruna (35) Oji Eagles　　 　
GK Ishikawa (27) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
GK Kikuchi (33) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
DF J. Tonosaki (25) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
DF Miyauchi (36) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
DF Osawa (30) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
DF R. Kawai (24) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
DF Minami (23) Oji Eagles　　 　
DF Yamashita (21) Oji Eagles　　 　
DF Keller (33) Oji Eagles　　 　
FW Domeki (25) Oji Eagles　　 　
FW Kon (30) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
FW Kamino (29) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
FW Ogawa (26) Oji Eagles　　 　
FW G. Tanaka (25) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
FW Obara (27) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
FW Iimura (27) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
FW T. Suzuki (33) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　
FW Ta. Saito (27) Oji Eagles　　 　
FW Mitani (35) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
FW Te. Saito (25) Oji Eagles　　 　
FW Nishiwaki (26) Nippon Paper Cranes　　 　
FW S. Sato (25) Seibu Prince Rabbits　　 　

IIHF World Rankings:

Germany (10), Slovenia (15), Austria (16), Japan (22)

76th All Japan Championships

The 2009 edition of the All Japan Ice Hockey Championships will take place in Yokohama (preliminaries) and Tokyo (preliminaries and final tournament) in February 2009.

Date: 9 (Mon) ~ 15 (Sun) February 2009

Location: Yokohama (Shin-Yokohama Skate Center), Tokyo (DyDo Drinco Ice Arena, Higashifushimi)

It’s a knockoff tournament and the preliminaries will take place in both Yokohama and Tokyo from the 9th to the 12th.

2.13(Fri) Quarterfinals – The 4 Asia League teams enter the tournament here as seeded teams

2 games each at Higashifushimi and Shin-Yokohama

2.14(Sat) Semifinals

2 games at Higashifushimi, Tokyo

2.15(Sun) Finals/3rd place game

2 games at Higashifushimi, Tokyo

Since the tournament starts off with regional, university, and high school champion teams, it’s a great opportunity to see grassroots amateur Japanese hockey in Tokyo. The Shin-Yokohama venue is at the Shin-Yokohama station (it’s the Shin-Yokohama Skate Center, NOT the Yokohama Arena).

Kazumasa Sasaki and the Japan U20 Team

The JIHF announced their U20 team for the upcoming U20 Div II Group A tournament in Romania in mid-December against Korea, Serbia, Belgium, Lithuania, and hosts Romania.

All but one of the players on the Japanese U20 team are first year university players. The lone exception is Kazumasa Sasaki who is an Asia League Oji Eagles player on a (probably) one year assignment in Swedish Division I with Östersund Hockey, and he is proving himself to be a useful player scoring 6+4=10 from the blueline in 16 games at the tender age of 18.

Sasaki has yet to play a game for the strong Eagles side, but I expect him to be back with his Japanese team next season as this season in Sweden is probably all expenses paid training by Oji (similar situation to many Japanese players in the past, including Masahito Nishiwaki with the ECHL Dayton Bombers last season. Japanese players truly testing and developing their talents overseas at the pro level can sadly be counted on one hand… Yutaka Fukufuji and Kazuma Takahashi, both in the ECHL, and maybe CHL overager Takuma Kawai.) Only playing one season overseas almost seems like a waste of resources as the player just gets acclimatized to their new environment when they get called back to Japan, shame. But financial security of playing in Japan is just too comforting and secure to get more players to truly challenge themselves and develop overseas long term..