Asia League Regular Season Recap

After 147 games the Asia League regular season has come to end. As predicted in the early part of the season, the Eagles ended up setting a record. Not quite as strong as they seemed, but none-the-less they basically rolled over all comers. China did not do as badly as expected, getting 2 points and coming close against teams they really shouldn't have.

League wide, High1 once again had players leading the points rankings. Swift and Barney had 39 and 37 goals respectively, as well as 58 and 50 assists, this made them number 1 and 2 overall in the ranking, and teammate Dong-hwan Song came in fourth with 74 points. Interrupting the trio was Radunske of Halla with 76 points.

Of the Goalies who played over 15 games there were two leaders. Fukufuji of the Bucks lead with save percentage, an impressive 93.24% over 30 games, but Haruna of Oji lead in GAA with 1.99 over 18 games. He was followed slightly by his teammate Narisawa who had a 2.13 GAA.

The Paper Cranes lead the league on the powerplay converting 36.44% of the time, and Oji owned the game short-handed successfully defending 87.5% of the time, nearly 10% better than the next closest team. High1 had the distinction of scoring the most short-handed goals, but also giving up the second most short-handed goals with 7 to China's 10. Goshi Kumagai of China had the most penatlies in minutes with 123 on the season. Second was Swift of High1 with 119.

In the overall goals department, we see that the Korean teams tend to score more goals than the Japanese teams, but also give up a lot more goals. The Eagles led the way in both departments though scoring 199 while giving up just 92.

As for the points record, with the season duration often changing in this young league, it's hard to make direct comparisons. What can be said is this: Of all the 42 game seasons, 102 points in the most, 4 more than the Cranes got in 2004-2005. They averaged 2.43 points a game, which isn't a record. In '03-'04 the Cranes averaged 2.44 points a game in the short 16 game initial season. In '05-'06 they averaged 2.5 points a game. In '06-'07 the Cranes averaged 2.52 points a game, for those who don't know, the Cranes used to run this league. In recent years though, no one has really come close to hitting this level. So do they deserve a record for this regular season performance? It was certainly an impressive feat, but one which the Cranes have done three times before, just never in a season of this length. If the League is going to settle on 42 games as the season, and not drop back down to 36 next year, then a record should be set, as the Eagles truly have the most points ever in a season. Never before has a team breached the 100 point mark.

Oji Eagles

The Eagles got the most points, their goalies were the best, they had almost no stand-out players which meant many players contributed equally to their success. They have almost no players who played at least most of the season who have single digit points. They emboided the term "complete team" during the regular season. Compared to last year, the point totals are just a little higher completely across the board, and the goaltending work was spread out a little more.

Tohoku Freeblades

Last year the Blades finished in sixth place, this year they made a huge improvement and moved to second. Last year they were still reeling from the impact of the Tsunami that struck their region. Go Tanaka made huge leaps this year. Last year he finished with 26 points on the season, this year, 62. The team was also helped enormously by its imports Wrigley and Farynuk who contributed a lot of points, and new starting netminder Hata.

Nippon Paper Cranes

The Cranes were helped by Radja and Obara who did most of the heavy lifting. They improved their ranking by a single position. They had a handful of players who also contributed significantly, but compared to the Eagles they had several players in the single digits. Ishikawa was the main goalie for the season and his performance was consistent, he even got himself a point this year.

Anyang Halla

Halla dropped from second to fourth. They were hampered in the early part of the season by several issues. First was that half of their stars started the season in Finland instead of Korea. With the 2018 Olympics coming, Korea wants to try and improve the hockey team enough to qualify. Part of that had Halla, but seemingly not High1, sending national team players to Finland to get experience. While several of them returned after a few weeks, they were then whisked away to go serve in the military. While they get to practice on the military team, it left Halla pulling players from the Universities and going overseas to find some Koreans who had been living abroad. This turmoil lasted well into the season and it is no surprise that the team struggled at times. Radunske and Jackman both improved their point totals significantly and Derlago was a great addition to the team. The probelm was because of all the turmoil, few other players played a full season. Geun-ho played slightly more games than last season but was down a couple of points and Sang-woo played about the same and was up a couple of points. A player like Won-jung Kim was on pace to really do well, but was called off to military service mid-season. Tae-Hwan Park who is mainly an enforcer/energy player did well this year getting 10 points in 31 games with limited playing time.

Nikko Icebucks

The Icebucks started the season without Fukufuji and that inevitably impacted their overall position. Falling from third to fifth and out of the playoffs. The early busy schedule hurt them the most as it was hard to recover their position once Fukufuji returned to playing form. They also had to contend with a controversial 10 game suspension to Ueno early in the season. Ueno was number two in points to Bonk last year, and that loss combined with missing their star goalie really set them back. They were also missing other big point getters like Dong-hwan Song who moved to High1 and Andrew Kozek who was no longer with the team. Overall, they only ended up with 4 less points than last year, but with the lead teams improving so much it wasn't enough to get into the playoffs.

High1

High1 fell from fifth to sixth. With the Blades taking off, the Bucks maintaining their numbers from last season and High1 faltering a little coming in with 9 less points, it didn't help their ranking. They once again had big numbers from their foreign imports, but like last year, they kept a lot of their eggs in one basket. They were also affected by having to send some players to military service as Halla was. They added some domestic talent in the form of Dong-hwan Song who got 74 points for the team, and Kawaii picked up his game improving from 7 to 23 points and Hyeok Kim improved from 6 to 26 points, but Young's performance slipped a little, and it is hard for 3-4 players to continually carry a team. If the work load was spread out a little more, with 2-3 more solid players putting up 20-30 points the team might see their fortunes improve significantly.

China Dragon

China, the name we also expect to see at the bottom of the list. This year, they doubled their point total from last year and got 2 points. The team is currently rebuilding, working with the Japanese and bringing in some Canadian players to help improve the program, despite their lack of points and success, there were many games over the season which gave hope to the team. Games where China got close enough to pull the goalie, or otherwise finished within a goal or two of a very good team. These kinds of loses, despite still being loses showed improvement. They still got blown out significantly in some games, like their 19-2 loss to the Eagles. Among the Chinese players Hao Zhang had 9 points with 4 goals on the season.

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