It's Mikala!

BEIJING, May 23, 2013 (City Weekend) — Most of us associate Beijing with winter sports like seat-skating with long screwdrivers on Houhai, the occasional snowman construction project and hibernating until spring. We might bust out the occasional unintended axel in our rented figure skates or head out for a weekend ski trip to Wanlong, but that’s about it for winter sports here for most of us.

The key is “most of us,” because it turns out that after almost 30 years of play in Beijing, hockey is the coolest game in town. On May 11, Canadian Curtis Dracz scrambled together the second annual Hockey Night in Beijing. The title is a play on Canada’s premier televised hockey program, Hockey Night in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Sports’ branding for televised National Hockey League (NHL) games, including the mega-popular weekly double-header, pre- and post-game commentary.

While Hockey Night in Canada probably wouldn’t offer too much excitement for anyone but hockey fans, Hockey Night in Beijing brings everyone into the fold. For two and a half hours before the main event begins, there are games to win prizes like a beer cozy shaped like a hockey glove and Nokia phones, and performances from Canadian International School students.

This year, Irish Volunteer took care of the beer garden, the Swan with Two Necks, a Shunyi watering hole, served up burgers and hot dogs, and Santa Fe, a relocation company, donated a bouncy castle, offering something for people of all ages and levels of hockey fanaticism.

“People thought they were just coming to a game,” Dracz says of the first Hockey Night in Beijing, adding that they were shocked by the lights, music and decorations. “When the lights are out, it’s all pretty exciting.”

Since the late 1970s, people have been dumping and chasing, passing pucks and stacking the pads right here in China’s capital through Beijing International Ice Hockey. According to the group’s website, the club teams grew out of Cold War-era winter games between the Canadians and the Soviets on the former Soviet Union’s outdoor rink.

The club teams have evolved into a proper league, composed of quite an assortment of ladies and gentlemen who just freaking love hockey—and most still have all their teeth! Of the 100 players on the roster, “40 percent is Canadian content, with 10 percent American and 10 percent Russian, and the remainder of the team made up of Swedes, Fins, Czechs, a lone Swiss, a crazy Irish goaltender and a brave Greek,” the site boasts.

While he may not be the man who brought it here, Dracz, who hails from Ontario, is the most active promoter of the sport, Beijing International Ice Hockey and the Canadian lifestyle that is tied to the game with thick, chunky laces. For Dracz, Canada is more than maple syrup, Celine Dion and poutine. It’s hockey, even if that sometimes means jerseys as casual wear, bulky skate laces in dress shoes and the all-too-frequent “hockey haircut,” aka the mullet.

Hockey, he explains, isn’t just a sport. “It’s a complete life experience. Hockey guys stick together and drink together, play together, party together,” he says, adding that everyone tries to help each other. “It’s more than just coming out and playing hockey.”

This sense of community is even more apparent here, where so many players are away from their hockey buddies and families back home. And it’s lucky that they’ve all found each other, because, as Dracz says, their partying and hockey-loving ways mean they don’t end up on a lot of guest lists.

“Everything we organize is among ourselves,” he says with an earnest Canadian chuckle. “We don’t really get invited to other things. We’re probably a mess.” Mess or not, Dracz is putting his hospitality background to work for hockey here in Beijing. He helped pull together the first Houhai Pond Hockey Tournament on Feb. 2, which turned out to be “a rare beautiful day” for outdoor sport and spectating.

They worked with the relevant organs to secure about 2,000 square meters of space on the frozen pond, where they organized two makeshift rinks that held simultaneous games throughout the day. Heineken set up a bar and the Irish Volunteer, the league’s main hang-out in Lido, supplied two giant vats of stew.

While 100 people participated in the tournament, Dracz says the onlookers were the biggest thing, with people who knew nothing about hockey stopping to watch, decode the game and keep their eyes glued to the scoreboard. “Thousands of people go through there every day! The fences were covered with people!”

The goal of these events is not just to give hockey lovers the chance to watch or play the sport, it’s also about inviting more people into the community and offering a glimpse into authentic Canuck life. After all, he says, “It’s not just about the game or being cold in an arena.”