China Recruited Canadians to Avoid Embarrassment on the Olympic Ice

China went into overdrive to recruit foreign talent so it could field an Olympic men's ice hockey team. In 2016 the Red Star officially hit the ice as the first Chinese team in the Kontinental Hockey League, widely regarded as the word's second most competitive ice hockey league after North America's National Hockey League. "Watching a team being beaten, 15-0, is not good for anyone, not for China or for ice hockey," Luc Tardif, president of the IIHF, told Agence France-Presse in September. While having nine out of 24 players actually originating from China doesn't seem half bad for a country that had barely heard of ice hockey six years ago, a closer look at the statistics reveals to what extent the national team relies on foreign athletes to remain even remotely competitive. South Korea faced an identical dilemma for its 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, when it recruited seven foreigners to play on the South Korean men's Olympic hockey team. One possibility is that foreign-born players were required to renounce their citizenships and be naturalized as Chinese citizens, for "Legitimate reasons." Alternatively, it is possible that the International Olympic Committee and the IIHF have made an exception, permitting non-nationals to compete for China. The last possibility is that China is the one making an exception, granting foreign Olympic athletes some form of dual citizenship to be eligible for the Games.