Oji Eagles and Nippon Paper Cranes played a pair of free admission preseason games in Tomakomai, Hokkaido over the weekend. Results were 3-2 and 4-1 for an Oji sweep.
Tohoku Free Blades were officially admitted into the league on 5 September. Well, this was just a rubber stamping process since the club is starting out its life on stable grounds.
Blades will host their first ever official (preseason) game on 12 September against the Nikko Ice Bucks. Faceoff at 13:00 in Hachinohe, Aomori. All tickets are general admission and 1000 yen each.
Ex-Seibu Prince Rabbit D Ryuichi Kawai and (probably) his younger brother and ex-Gatineau Olympique Takuma Kawai are going to be on the ice for the University of Lethbridge team’s tryouts, even though they’re both not enrolled with the university. Apparently the training camp has guys trying to crack AHL and ECHL clubs, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare. The brothers are staying and training with ex-Seibu Ryan Fujita whose home is about a 40 minute drive from Lethbridge, Alberta.
The immortal Ichiro earned his 2000th Major League hit in style with a double against the A’s. Always a showman who marks special occasions with crafty hits or big bombs more often than his usual slap and dash.
The new entry into the Asia League for the upcoming 2009-10 season, the Tohoku Free Blades, have finally signed enough players to form a complete roster. The new players should significantly improve the team and hopefully not make them a yearlong doormat in their expansion season (since the China Sharks don’t have Wade Flaherty anymore, there’s hope).
New players:
F Akiyumi Okuyama 31GP 1G+1A=2P (Oji)
F Masahito Suzuki 34GP 4+11=15 (Oji)
F Bin Ishioka 36GP 8+10=18 (Seibu) – Bin’s move to China turned out to be just an unconfirmed rumour
D Kazumoto Imajo (Chuo University captain – was supposed to join the now defunct Seibu Prince Rabbits)
Waseda University captain and Japanese national team player Shuhei Kuji has been invited to the New York Islanders Prospects Camp. This is a big deal, as players with NHL experience such as Josh Bailey and top draft picks like John Tavares (can’t get any more top prospect than this) will also be participating. No doubt this will provide valuable experience for Kuji to play against superior competition and hopefully make some strides in his game, and maybe even get drafted in the future (though the chances of this is very slim).
Incidentally, Kuji was the only non-Toyo University player selected on to the 2009 Kanto University Championship All Star Team earlier in the year.
The 2009 Kanto University Ice Hockey Championships (aka 58th Chichibunomiya Cup) concluded on 29 April with the bronze medal game and the finals held at Dydo Drinco Ice Arena in Higashifushimi, Tokyo.
The Rabbits no more at Higashifushimi. But the White Bears junior teams are prominent, and that’s kind of fitting since the Seibu Railway team that occupied Higashifushimi before their merger with Kokudo was the White Bears.
The first game was the third place match between Hosei University and Meiji University.
Meiji looking funky in their throwback-ish uniform. The game was no contest though, as Hosei took a 2-1 lead into the first intermission, then never looked back on their way to a comfortable 5-2 victory.
And the feature game of the day was the finals between Waseda University and Toyo University, powerhouse Japanese university teams.
Waseda players start to warm up on the ice while Meiji and Hosei players were still on their way off. There was no Zamboni between the previous game and the next game’s practice, as the schedule was pretty tightly packed. The Zamboni came on after the pre-game practice though.
Waseda’s #21 Shuhei Kuji who was heads and shoulders above the other players on the ice, as he singlehandedly scored Waseda’s first goal by dancing through the Toyo defence from the blue line before cleanly beating the goalie to score unassisted. Kuji has already played and has scored for the senior national team, and it shows, he’s got quick hands and feet. Hopefully his growth as a player won’t be stunted in the near future.
Waseda looks like Harvard (no surprise as a self-professed Japanese Ivy) and Toyo’s looking NY Rangers. The standing room only crowd was much larger than at most Asia League games.
Kuji also scored Waseda’s only other goal in the game, but as teams Toyo was far superior and the game ended 6-2 for Toyo with an empty netter.
Congratulations Toyo University, the 2009 Kanto champions!
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)
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.
Waseda U 1 (0-0，1-2，0-2) 4Korea U
21:10 Waseda Yamashita (Kaneko) EQ
22:53 Korea #15 Kim (#10 Kim) +1
36:32 Korea #10 Kim (#14 An) EQ
48:31 Korea #24 Lee (#35 Shin) EQ
50:14 Korea #15 Kim (#16 Yoon) EQ
–
21 March 2009
Waseda U 5 (1-0，2-1，1-0，GWS 1-0) 1 Korea U
*Since the aggregate score from the 2 games was tied, a Shootout (GWS) was used to decide the series winner.
09:40 Waseda Matsuura EQ
20:26 Waseda Nagata (Aoki) EQ
24:32 Waseda Kuji EQ
27:46 Korea #8 Chu (#18 Han) -1
44:07 Waseda Kuji (Nakai) EQ
60:00 Waseda Terao GWS
The teams seem evenly matched (though I have no idea what kind of rosters were used) so this should be a good annual series with each university playing host every other year.
Japanese and Korean Ivy schools Waseda University and Korea University have started their annual friendly ice hockey matches with the games on 20-21 March 2009 in Higashifushimi, Tokyo. The series will be hosted by each university on alternate years. The two schools already have annual competitions in various sports such as football (soccer) and basketball.
Similarly, rival schools Keio University of Japan and Yonsei University of Korea have also began holding annual ice hockey games between them which started with Keio’s visit to Korea in mid-February this year.
(From Breakaway #016)
This may be a great trickledown effect of the Asia League with barriers between the hockey playing nations of Asia slowly falling away, let’s hope that further hockey exchanges like this continue between Asian nations for the development of Asian hockey.
Posted by japanstats on 2009 February 14日 Saturday
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.
The two best college hockey teams gave the pro sides scares as both games were tied heading into their 3rd period. And Halla’s 3rd goal seems to be an empty netter, so essentially the two pro clubs barely managed 1 goal wins over university teams. The pro sides are allowed to dress imports for this championship, and by looking at the goal scorers, it seems like these games were played with full squads (though maybe not at full effort).
Anyways, standings after the group stage:
Group A: High1 (2-0), Yonsei U (1-1), Hanyang U (0-2)
Group B: Anyang Halla (2-0), Korea U (1-1), Kyunghee U (0-2)
Semifinals:
11.6 14:30 High1 – Korea U / 17:30 Anyang Halla – Yonsei U
