Nordic Vikings was lucky to beat Hokay Hopes on penealties 6-5 and ended the Asia Tour with a third straight Victory.
Nordic Vikings Youth Team was playing their third game in Beijing on Thursday 28 February and won a quite tight game on penalties. The Hope team started the scoring but Vikings worked themseleves back into the game and build up a lead of 3-1 in the end of second. In the third then suddenly all happened. First Hope leveled the game to 3-3 and then Vikings again did two fast goals to 5-3, before Hope Team finally leveled the game to 5-5 in the last minutes. In the penalty Shoot Out the Vikings Asian Players did a great work. First to score was korean Filip Jacobsson before Vietnamese born Goalie Leo Hedman, cloesed the Shop for the evening. Also swedish U 18 player Jonas Magnusson who played several shift in Hope Team in their game against New Zeeland scored the game winner on penalties, so penalties was really the name of the evening for the Nordic Players.
We where a little bit lucky today to came out with a victory, said Daniel Zhang, the Chinese born Vikings Captain, who was shooting one of the penalties and did his best performance during the tour.
Nordic Vikings are still undefeated in China but also Chairman Per-Erik Holmström admitted that Daniels view was on target. It has been chocking day for many to see the development here but not for me. Zhang Yuan who today was eleceted in as an honorable member in Nordic Vikings at the AGM, has done an astonnishing work with both his team and with his club. I would say that if you talk just on the Hockey Level his players are playing on they are currently leading and playing the best ice hockey in China, including all from Club to National Teams, as far as I could see. So I really hope they will allow the rest of China to see them play because they are playing a modern Russian Icehockey, developed over several years with hard work and with a lot of individual skills, that are also fun to watch.
If you look deeper at todays game against Vikings they have the 3 best kids on the ice, but I think that both teams was a little bit unfocused today and could have done better. I am sorry for that the circumstances around the game in preparation took out a little bit of the focus of the game today and I think players on both side missed a lttle bit of the opportunity and fun with that. The Hope Team died after the early scoring, and beacause some of them have played before in the evening. In the Vikings Team all players was frozening in the beginning, and then later when they seems to controlling the game they suddenly almost lost it when Hope Team came back two times and leveled the game with skillful actions.
On this tour I have also seen other positive developments in the Beijing Hockey and will thank also the new Beijing Ice Hockey Federation and also Beijing Puck. I think we should allow all to participate in the this game and especially people with skills, therefore we have togehter with Furudals Hockeyschool invited 2 people from each organisation in Beijing to the Asian Summer Camp between 10-16 August, where we also collect more players with Asian routes in the Nordic Countries as well as inviting 2 persons from both Korea and Japan in the weekend.
