Nordic Vikings and Hokay Hope Team will meet Chinese
National Team in Beijing in two informal Games in Changchun. The Games will be
played in Jilin Provincial Winter Sport Center. Saturday 29 19.30 and Sunday 30
March 13.00.
It’s really an honour to play this game in Changchun
of several reasons. First it is the hometown of Lanli, IOC delegate and Vice
President for winter sport in China and also Mr Yu Chairman of Ice Hockey
Federation. It has been a long walk for Nordic Vikings and also Hokay since
2006 but this is really the first attempt for the next generation and this team
is built mainly on Lanli Idea of a combination of Nordic and Chinese players.
The Nordic Vikings part consists of many players from the
Premiership Team Mora, The Town who is also the Swedish sister town to Changchun.
The towns are connected to each other through Swedish Vasaloppet. In the Nordic
part from the old team you could see Goalie Peter Andersson known as “Great
Wall” in Beijing 2005 and Norwegian Joachim Tangen. It also hosts the old
Harbin coach Jari Koskinens son Viktor and two next generation players from AIK.
In the team also 15 years old Daniel Chang, born in China but ice hockey
educated in Stockholm. The Chinese part comes from Hokay Hope Team,
who won the Chinese Junior Championship in December. These players have been
developed in the Beijing Club since 2007.
“I think this will be special games and a real first
test for the Next Generation, It will give both team a good test for future
games” says Per-Erik Holmström Chairman of Nordic Vikings.
This time also an introducing Bandy in China will
occur. In conjunction with the games in Changchun it will also be a
demonstration of Bandy, which is very famous in especially Sweden and Russia,
where audiences over 30.000per games arise.
“We hope that China could send a team to World Cup in Khabarovsk
already 2015 and that Bandy will be an Olympic Sport when the Winter Olympics
take part in Beijing. Ice Hockey is born in my heart but Bandy is a really nice
classic team sport on Ice with an old classic tradition and I believe China
have talent enough to be good at it pretty soon” says Per-Erik…
