High1 has announced their new additions to the team for the 2009-10 season. The team has kept one import in Alex Kim (15G+21A=36P, 13th in the league) but has made a wholesale change on the rest of their import lineup.
Returning to the team after a season in Europe is Tim Smith, he rocked the league with his brother Bud for 2 seasons from 2006-08 (63GP 106P). Joining Tim as the new imports are veteran centre Trevor Gallant and young defenceman Jeremy Van Hoof.
The team is also undergoing a major uphaul with many veterans leaving the team and 5 Korean rookies entering the fray. Also joining the club are stranded Seibu Prince Rabbits defenceman Yuya Yamada (25GP 3A) and rookie forward Hiroki Ueno (24GP 16+14=30 at Waseda University) who had signed on to play for Seibu but had the misfortune of the team folding before he ever wore their sweater.
It’ll be intersting to see how this new, younger version of High1 will fare in the upcoming season, though with top dog Seibu gone, the team should see its fortunes improve from the 5th place finish (13-4-19) and first round elimination from the playoffs it suffered this season.
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.
Posted by japanstats on 2008 February 13日 Wednesday
The 75th edition of the All Japan Ice Hockey Championship final tournament was held in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan from 4 – 10 February, 2008.
In the final, Seibu beat the Nippon Paper Cranes 5-3 to win its first All Japan Championship since 2004 when the team was still called Kokudo.
Oji Paper won the bronze medal game 4-1 over the Nikko.
Final standings:
Gold: Seibu Prince Rabbits
Silver: Nippon Paper Cranes
Bronze: Oji Ice Hockey Club
4th: HC Nikko IceBucks
Tournament MVP: Obara Daisuke (Seibu Prince Rabbits)
(The All Japan Championship is an open tournament, similar to the FA Cup, with regional qualifiers for club teams, university teams, and high school teams. Asia League teams, the elite teams in Japan by far, enter the tournament in the quarterfinals.)
In the quarterfinals, AL teams won all their games, as expected, but Waseda University put up a valiant effort against the Cranes who have not been playing like a defending treble winner (2007 AL Regular Season, Playoffs, and All Japan Championships), Waseda only lost by 1 goal with the final score being 3-2 in favour of the Cranes. Other quarterfinal results were Nikko IceBucks 7 – 2 Toyo University, Oji Paper 10 – 0 Chuo University, Seibu Prince Rabbits 12 – 0 Toyota Centuries (Hokkaido club team).
The ice hockey finals for the 80th Intercollegiate Ice Sports Games was held on 9 January at the Hakucho Arena in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, and Toyo University shut out Meiji University 4-0 behind Haga’s natural hat trick to repeat as champions.
Toyo University 4 (2-0, 1-0, 1-0) 0 Meiji University
Japan, Hockey, Baseball, etc. 