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Vanke Rays claim second title
A tense goaltending duel went the way of Noora Raty and the KRS Vanke Rays as the Russian Women’s Hockey League season came to its conclusion. The Dragons’ success seals a second title in three seasons for the Chinese franchise, while SKIF can take some consolation from a greatly improved season after falling at the final hurdle.
Lady Dragons take first game of final series
The Russian Women’s Hockey League began its final on Friday, with regular season champion SKIF Nizhny Novgorod hosting KRS Vanke Rays at the start of a best-of-five series. And the Vanke Rays got off to a winning start in their bid to win the title for the second time in three years.
SKIF faces Vanke Rays in Women’s final
The WHL final gets underway in Nizhny Novgorod on Friday, with KRS Vanke Rays back for its third successive appearance in the decisive series. This time, SKIF provides the opposition for the Chinese franchise, with the Nizhny Novgorod team making its first appearance in a playoff final.
ROC women prepare for Swiss showdown
Team ROC faces a rematch with Switzerland in the knock-out phase of the Women’s Olympic tournament in Beijing. A disappointing loss against previously winless Finland saw the team finish fourth in Group A. Thus, the Red Machine will take part in the only quarter-final that doesn’t involve an outside from Group B, which was comprised of the five lower-ranked teams in the tournament.
ROC women make winning start
The preparation was hugely disrupted. Several key players were isolating in hospital. Yet Team ROC rose above adversity to make a winning start to its Olympic campaign. Polina Bolgareva’s hat-trick led the win in a 5-2 success over Switzerland — and there are high hopes of more to come as the country bids for a first ever medal in women’s hockey.
Beijing 2022: Women’s tournament starts with a strong Russian accent
When the Olympic hockey action gets underway this week, viewers could be forgiven for feeling they’ve seen a lot of this in Russian hockey in recent years. The Wukesong Arena, which will stage most of the women’s games, was the first home of Kunlun Red Star in the KHL, while Russia’s Women’s Hockey League supplies more players than ever to this year’s tournament. The entire Team ROC roster comes from the league, as does Team China. And there are plenty more with WHL connections lining up for their respective nations in this year’s competition.
Ice Diaries: Michelle Karvinen
Danish-Finnish forward Michelle Karvinen had a unique, albeit brief introduction to Russia’s WHL. She was called to pinch-hit for the KRS Shenzhen Vanke Rays in the postponed championship final, after COVID-19 delayed the postseason and precluded several team members from returning to the squad. While she did not play the regular season with KRS, she had an opportunity to experience their passion and the league’s hottest rivalry first-hand—not to mention a reunion with her college coach, Brian Idalski, in the process.
Ice Diaries: Kimberly Newell
As a child, Kimberly Newell could never have aspired to a professional hockey gig in China. It was an option that did not exist until after she had retired post-graduation from Princeton University, one that the KRS Vanke Rays netminder joked she thought was a “scam” when it was first proposed in 2018. But this twist of fate allowed Newell to fulfill another dream simultaneously, a goal that she had set while studying Chinese in college. After the 2018-19 season, she had the opportunity to travel to her family’s home in Hangzhou, where she had one final conversation with her grandfather.
Sosina steers Agidel to victory
Olga Sosina, captain of Agidel and Team Russia, led from the front to snatch a dramatic victory for her team in the deciding game of the Women’s Hockey League season. The 2020-2021 final, delayed from March due to the pandemic, was completed at last in Mytishchi on Saturday. And, in an epic winner-takes-all battle, Agidel won the title back from the Vanke Rays in a shoot-out.
Ice Diaries: Sasha Vafina
You could hardly say that “everyone and their mother” is an Olympian—but in the Vafina household, this is exactly the case. When Dynamo-Neva forward Alexandra (Sasha) Vafina represented Russia at the 2010 Vancouver Games, she bore the literal and figurative torch from her mother Lyubov, who represented Kazakhstan in their first Olympic appearance in 2002. The mother-daughter pair even played together in Chelyabinsk for a time, an opportunity whose singularity only became clear later.
Ice Diaries: Emily Costales, Leah Lum
KRS Shenzhen Vanke Rays forward Emily Costales was a member of the 2020 WHL Championship roster, but her season hardly ended with a happily ever after. Assisted off the ice with a knee injury in the definitive clash against Agidel Ufa, she never got to experience the rush of the final seconds or the hurricane of confetti that fell on her teammates’ shoulders. Wheeled into the locker room after the presentation had ended, her tearful reunion left a fire burning for a retake. Up until two weeks ago, the Vanke Rays were on track to deliver that redemption — winning the regular season and sweeping the semifinals versus Biryusa.
All around the world – the WHL makes an international impact
The Women’s World Championship starts next month — and the Women’s Hockey League is set to be well represented when the action gets underway in Canada. In total, 33 players from four countries have made the preliminary rosters for their national teams.
Warming up for the Women’s Hockey League playoffs
It’s playoff time in the Women’s Hockey League this week, with the semi-final action starting on Wednesday. We have two best-of-three series on the way, starting in Krasnoyarsk, where Biryusa faces defending champion KRS Vanke Rays, and moving on to Nizhny Novgorod where a fast-improving SKIF takes on Agidel.
International action and playoff battles – Women’s Hockey League round-up
The KHL isn’t alone in preparing for the final weeks of the regular season. In the Russian Women’s Hockey League, the battle for playoff places and championships is heating up. Meanwhile, Team Russia took on the best in the league as part of its preparations for April’s World Championship in Canada.
Ice Diaries: Megan Bozek
The KRS Shenzhen Vanke Rays were first named for the rays of light they cast on Chinese women’s hockey. Despite their on-ice luminosity—crowned WHL champions in March after a masterful league debut—there is one small irony. The team has barely seen sunlight since winter began in their temporary home of Stupino, Russia.
Ice Diaries: Rachel Llanes
Rachel Llanes took her first strides on-ice at a middle school birthday. Twelve years old and already years behind her counterparts, the California native was among the least likely to advance in professional hockey. “I think the best part about it was that I never expected to go so high,” the KRS Vanke Rays star described on the eve of her departure for Russia. “I was only doing it because I really loved it.” Llanes was the first player in history to win the Isobel Cup, Clarkson Cup and WHL Championship—an impressive trophy case for a career that began at a party.
Ice Diaries: Alex Carpenter
My first meeting with U.S. Olympian Alex Carpenter took place one degree south of the Tropic of Cancer, nearly one year ago to the day. The clawing humidity of September in southern China was hardly the autumn I knew. Carpenter grew up in Massachusetts, where dropping temperatures and black ice would have been unmistakable heralds of hockey season. In Shenzhen, flowering vines and lush Southern Hemisphere sunsets categorize the brief and mild winter, if you can even call it that. China’s sprawling tech hub is perhaps among the most unlikely destinations for a women’s hockey capital, and yet, they boast one of the most decorated and visible captains in Alex Carpenter.
Ice Diaries: Anna Prugova
Anna Prugova was the youngest hockey competitor at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, debuting between the pipes for Team Russia at sixteen years and eighty-six days old. The Khabarovsk native’s career had begun only a handful of years prior, when her father stood the young goalie in front of a glass window and began to shoot pucks in the family’s backyard.
Ice Diaries: Alena Mills
Sporting an unmistakable mullet wig and a few dipsy-doodles, Alena Mills’ impression of fellow countryman Jaromir Jagr was one of the most memorable moments of the 2020 WHL All Star Weekend. While the joke elicited a response from the The Ageless Wonder himself, I recently discovered something interesting: this was hardly the first time Alena Mills had impersonated Jagr.
Ice Diaries: Brian Idalski
There are head coaching debuts, and then there are baptisms by fire. I think it is fairly obvious which category Brian Idalski’s inaugural WHL season would fall into, one that featured both a global pandemic that rendered his team homeless, and a fairy-tale ending—the championship title.