Halla Defeats China with New Players

China has been struggling for quite some time, but Wednesday night in Anyang they showed a glimmer of hope. They stunned Halla and the crowd by not only scoring first, but finishing the first period up by a score of 2-1. it was mid-way through the second before Halla regained the lead and then started to run away with it.

They may have been aided by some questionable calls by the referees. In the early part of the game, it seemed as if the referees were allowing China to get away with some minor infractions. This isn't to dimish the hard work of China though. They played hard in the first period and held things together well. Their goalie made a couple of good stops, and they took advantage of some chances. The problem came in the second, when Halla finally woke up, they just couldn't stop scoring. The third goal which started the come-back was almost comically slow. A wide open net, Sang-Woo Shin fired a shot but didn't get all of it. The goalie couldn't recover, despite the pucks slow pace. The game quickly swung from a close interesting match to a blow-out in a period of about six minutes. Could China perhaps should have called a time-out to calm things down, but they at least kept up their resolve, and played hard to the end. Towards the end of the game things became chippy and an uncalled boarding against China led to a scrap near the end of the game.

Min-woo Lee celebrates the tying goal, his first Asia League goal.

After a Chinese player had been hit hard with his head down a bit, Tae-hwan Park was taken into the boards with a hard cross check that left him stunned on the ice. A clear boarding, the Chinese official declined to call it which lead to an Anyang Halla player coming in to defend their own. This quickly degenerated into a scrum with several players exchanging blows and roughing and misconduct penalties handed out both to Park and Chongwei Wang of China. 

China has some potential. They've failed to get any points, but if they could play a whole game like they did the first half of the game against Halla, they could be a serious threat to several teams.

Tanaka and Kondo both had a goal and an assist for China. Min-woo Lee, Derlago, and Sang-woo Sin each had 2 goals for Halla. Radunske had a goal and 3 assists.

Halla has had their regular culling of players sent off to military service. This year it's a hard one, but there is a positive aspect. The military is going to start a team which will allow players who go for their 2 year service to continue to play and develop. Next year this team will take part in the Korea Domestic Championship as well. Off to the military this year are:

• Sung-je Park
• Yoon-hwan Kim
• Won-jung Kim
• Woo-sang Park
• Byung-Chun Jung
• Ki-sung Kim
• Yong-Jun Lee

Won-jung Kim and both Parks are tough for Halla. Sung-je Park was showing a lot of promise in net this year, doing much better than starting goalie Eum when he was given a chance. Woo-sang had been overseas for a the past year or so and his return was very benificial. Won-jung Kim is a tough loss as he put up 20 points in 24 games. Not the top player, but he was still sixth on the team, right behind Woo-sang who had 21 points in 20 games.

To help fill their roster though, Anyang Halla has brought in some Koreans who grew up in Canada and have been playing hockey there. Most notable among them is Woo-Je Sung. Sung grew up in Canada played for the Calgary Mustangs and then found his way over to Finland where he was playing in the same league as some of the other Halla exports. Halla has also brought in Ji-min Kim who played in the OJHL and Jung-hyun Ahn who was playing in the SJHL. These are all young players who are only 19/20 years old, but show some great promise.

Halla also added three players from Yonsei University, Ji-man Yoon, Young-Jun Lee, Hyung-gon Jo and one player from Korea University, Min-woo Lee who scored two goals.

 

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