With the way the World Para Hockey Championship round robin works, Team China had an inkling heading into the tournament that they would have a chance at putting together a solid showing in the round robin.
Seeing as the event doesn’t take into account results from the previous Paralympics, China was seeded according to their previous showing at a world championship, that being their victory in the World B Pool in 2021 that earned them promotion into the A Pool.
A year later, China would continue their meteoric rise with a bronze medal at the 2022 Paralympics. But since that result wasn’t a factor in their worlds seeding, China was treated as a team that had just been promoted to the top pool.
The results have shown it.
Playing lower-ranked teams in Group B, China has cruised into the playoffs with a perfect 3-0 record, outscoring their opposition 22-2 in the process. That included a 7-0 victory over Germany on Wednesday morning, giving the Chinese crew their third comfortable win in as many outings.
“The run-up to Worlds this year was very similar to the run-up in 2022 for the Winter Olympics, so we’ve been preparing for a lot of different scenarios,” said China coach Yin Ji Wu. “The difference is we’d never played Team Norway before this time, but it’s gone very well so far.”
That things were as close as they were between the two teams was in part a product of Germany’s defence-first style of play, something Yin admitted was a bit frustrating for his crew.
“I think some of the players on the team today weren’t maintaining a cool mind, and obviously Team Germany (focussed on defence), so we should have adjusted our strategies accordingly to create more offence and score more,” he said.
That frustration led to a few more penalties than China would like to see, especially knowing that playing undisciplined will be suicidal against elite teams like Canada and the U.S.
“That’s what I told my team right after the game, we need to reduce the penalties,” Yin said. “Even though the two teams are different in their levels, if one person is gone from the team we have four players against five and that’s not what we want to be doing.”
Shen Yi Feng continued his impressive tournament with four goals for China, giving him 11 through three games. Wang Zhi Dong scored a pair and Che Hang had their other marker.
Germany coach Andreas Pokorny was happy with his team’s showing, especially to see progression compared to their previous meeting with China, where they absorbed a 17-1 loss.
“They were third place in the Olympics and they’re going for a medal, so they’re a good team,” Pokorny said. “Today we played right to the end and didn’t give up, the first two goals were a little bit too quick, but other than that I’m very proud of the team because they played physical and good compared to our game yesterday (a 1-0 shootout loss to Italy).
But that’s the difference between a perfect team and our team.”
While China now looks toward the quarter-finals, Germany had to sit and wait for the result from the afternoon game between Italy and Norway to find out whether they would be facing relegation to the B Pool. An Italy win would see Germany sent down alongside Norway, with a Norway win seeing Italy joining them in Pool B.
“We’ve had three good games now and now we have to wait to see what happens… we did our best, we showed up, and we’ll see if we get to stay up,” Pokorny said.
