Malaysia latest addition to IIHF family

Originally published on IHWC.NET in 2007

By Lucas Aykroyd

Going purely by the numbers, the best-ever performance by an Asian country at an IIHF World Championship was Japan’s sixth-place finish (in a four-way tie) in 1930. More recently, Japan could do no better than 14th place at the 1998 tournament. So there’s a long way to go in hockey for the world’s most populated continent, and suffice it to say that Malaysia’s task is considerably more difficult than Japan’s.

Malaysia received associate membership status in the IIHF in 2006, becoming the 65th nation in the worldwide ice hockey family. The tropical Southeast Asian country of 24 million inhabitants made its debut in international competition at the 6th Asian Winter Games in Changchun, China in February 2007. Things started promisingly for the relatively diminutive Malaysians with a 7-3 win over Hong Kong, but then went downhill with losses of 14-1 to South Korea, 15-0 to North Korea, and 10-2 to Kuwait (in the game for seventh place). So at least for now, Malaysia will remain better known for its beaches, rainforest, Islamic monuments, and multi-ethnic cuisine than its hockey prowess.

Not surprisingly, hockey in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur has been largely driven by the expatriate community. In the summer of 2006, IHWC.NET’s Lucas Aykroyd caught up with several local hockey representatives from the Kuala Lumpur Cobras and asked them to explain in their own words what the nascent hockey scene is like here.

Alex Kam: I’m originally from Mississauga, Ontario, and I’ve been here for six years now. I work at DHL in Cyberjaya as a manager during the day, and at night I double as the Cobras’ hockey manager. My role there involves wearing many different hats. I try to line up sponsorship for the team, help create the jerseys, do merchandising like golf shirts, T-shirts, and hats. I work with volunteers to do the designs. I also organize the ice time at the rink along with Susan Loh, and help them run the league. I set all the rules for the league and give my advice to the locals on what needs to be done. We also do the tournament registrations. We play in about four tournaments a year: Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok, and some of us play in Dubai or Tokyo or wherever. I just make sure I get all the players that are interested in playing and then give the list to Johnny, who’s our captain. It’s up to them to pick the team that will best represent the Cobras. I make sure everybody gets to the city OK and knows their schedule so the guys show up on time for their games. Then it’s just about having fun.

Johnny Boulianne: I’m from Quebec, Canada and I’m 42 years old. I’ve been in Malaysia for seven years now, and I’m a design manager for a train manufacturer locally, which is what brought me here. I ended up staying here. My function with the Cobras is captain for the last four years now by default. I’m mainly responsible for selecting the team for tournaments and training the guys for specific drills when we want to improve certain aspects of our game. It always depends on who we have on the team because there’s a lot of coming and going in the expat community. If we happen to have better players in the pool, we have a better team to take to tournaments. One of the major elements is the goaltending. We presently have a pretty good one, who got the award for the Best Goaltender at the last World Ice 5’s here in Malaysia. He’s from Sweden. It hasn’t always been the case for us. Most of the guys who play in tournaments have played junior in Canada, be it Junior A, Junior B, or Junior C. There are also a few who have played at the AHL or NHL level. It’s a pretty good caliber when you go to tournaments.

Susan Loh: I’m Malaysian, and I got involved in ice hockey through my son. Ten years ago, we sort of converted over from in-line to ice hockey. The most important thing in Malaysian ice hockey is the work that’s being done on development. People like Alex and Johnny and a few others play very important roles, guiding us on the rules and regulations and development of ice hockey. When this rink [the only rink in Kuala Lumpur, located at the Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall] opened up about ten years ago, we approached the management and we didn’t have any expertise or skills in ice hockey. We didn’t know anything about the equipment or skates we should use. From about 20 players, the club has grown to about 120 players of all ages, as young as six years old and up to about 45 years old. The league is supported by one of the major newspapers in Malaysia, the Star Metro newspaper. This is still a very new sport in Malaysia, but gradually it’s growing.

Johnny: Our ice rink itself is about two-thirds the size of a North American rink. The center zone doesn’t have a red line. So it’s like one small zone, a center zone, and you’re already in the other zone. Skating obviously is the art of hockey. If you have good facility with that, it’s 90% of your game. Here, the ice is rather on the soft side, because it’s hot. Still in good condition, but a bit soft. So we don’t sharpen our skates as often as we would in Canada. But it’s pretty much Alex’s hockey school that takes care of teaching the kids how to improve their skating skills. You’d be surprised to see some of the locals’ skills in skating. For people who started to play hockey at 14 or 15 or 16 years old, after four or five or six years, some of them are very skillful. There is some talent locally. In our league, we mix the expats and the locals. When we have a group of locals on our team, of course we try to teach them the principles of the game: what to do, where to position yourself, the basics. Look where your teammates are when you don’t have the puck. Stuff like that. They have to learn to pass. We try to improve their structured team game.

Susan: We have this World Ice Hockey 5’s tournament that’s been held in Malaysia four times, and we have players from all over the world. It’s more like a recreational competition. Of course it’s a good opportunity for locals to get involved in this, because Asian countries like Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines will all come over here for this tournament, and that way the local boys have a chance to play against these teams. Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, especially, are very good. UAE was the champion for the 2004 World Ice Hockey 5’s Asian A Division, and this year Hong Kong took the title for Asian A. For Asian B, Malaysia took the title. In terms of progress, I’d say we’ve done remarkably well. Considering we don’t have a fully qualified foreign coach, a Canadian coach, to guide us, it’s all due to the efforts of the expatriates to help us out. Alex is the one who initiated the hockey school in Malaysia. We focus on development. I feel the future of the sport belongs to our young people, kids as young as five or six. But right now it’s more on the teenage level: 14 or 15, up to about 20 years old. Through hockey schools, people are coming in gradually. We have very good exposure because we have the Star newspaper, who are our official media sponsor, and that helps to publicize ice hockey in Malaysia. We also have the Astro news cable company giving us their support. This is all very new. It’s a tropical country. It’s hot! But people like to go into ice hockey because it’s cold. It’s a cool sport. The trouble is, Malaysians are very gentle people.

Alex: Getting hockey equipment here is very difficult. A lot of the expats will go home in the summer and we’ll tell them, “We need pucks or certain pieces of equipment,” and they’ll bring them over. When I get to go home, maybe every other year, I make a big list, and I bring back a hockey bag or two hockey bags full of equipment for them. As for following the NHL, we just keep up with it on the Web. We joined a fantasy league so every morning we’re on there too. We have friends in Finland who watch the World Championships and Olympics and they’ll be SMSing us in the morning about the scores.

Johnny: If we want to have it live, the only way is through Internet radio, which is available. It’s like back in the 60’s, when people didn’t have TV. About a year and a half ago, we tried to put together a petition with 100,000 names to send to the local cable company to say there are enough people to have some hockey amidst the thousands and thousands of football games and bowling and ping pong and pool. But it didn’t work.

Alex: I think we got up to a whole 300 signatures!

Johnny: For some of the final games at our regional tournaments here in KL, we try to have a P.A. announcer who between the play will try to keep the people alive, informing them about who’s playing and what the score is and when the next game’s coming up. We have a pretty good sound system at the rink. We throw T-shirts to the crowd. It’s a multi-level shopping mall, a bit like the West Edmonton Mall. It’s quite fun. The crowd likes to watch hockey. Especially during the finals, you can see all levels are packed. When you score a goal, the crowd goes nuts. It doesn’t matter which side scores. They see a goal, they’re happy. We always have a section for VIPs for the important games, but normally there’s no seating area. Only at one end of the rink are some coffee tables. Due to the size of the rink, we play 4-on-4. There’s not enough room to play 5-on-5. So we have two forwards, two defensemen, and a goalie. It’s the same thing when we have a tournament in Singapore. Their rink is slightly larger than ours. In Hong Kong the World Ice 5’s were also played 4-on-4. But in Bangkok they have an Olympic-sized rink. We obviously played 5-on-5 there. In Dubai it’s a big rink, Olympic-sized. So it would be 5-on-5 there too.

Alex: If you want to talk about Malaysian players, Gary Tan was born and raised here. He’s definitely the best player in Malaysia. At the same time, he realizes his limitations, and he’s getting older, in his mid-20’s now. So he’s taken it upon himself to get more into coaching. He spent three months in Canada to get his Level One certification for coaching. Now he’s back and he’s trying to share that knowledge and experience with the local kids. Moving forward, I think Gary Tan is the person to put your money on to spearhead hockey in this country.