Japanese Junior plays in the Memorial Cup

[dimwit]

Japanese hockey player Takuma Kawai makes his way to the Memorial Cup

Gatineau Olympiques defenceman Takuma Kawai may be a Japanese hockey player, but he's sporting a very Canadian gap in his front teeth.

Kawai moved away from his home and family in Eniwa, Japan, at 15 to pursue his dream of playing hockey in Canada.

The 19-year-old is living that dream to the fullest at the Memorial Cup, which is the championship of the 60-team Canadian Hockey League.

"I always wanted to come to Canada and play. When I was little I watched NHL games on TV," Kawai said prior to Gatineau's game against Belleville on Monday.

Japanese-Canadians in hockey are common enough. Devin Setoguchi and Kawai's favourite Paul Kariya are just a couple of them.

But media relations personnel from the CHL were scratching their heads to come up with previous players who were born in Japan and played major junior hockey.

From NHL.com

For those of you who are not Canadian and don't understand this. The memorial cup is the Canadian Junior Championships and virtually every hockey player in the NHL including those from Europe has gone through junior system in Canada.

[Behan]

If he gets into the NHL there's a good chance TV stations will start broadcasting games. Ganbare Takuma!

[Gilligan]

For those of you who are not Canadian and don't understand this. The memorial cup is the Canadian Junior Championships and virtually every hockey player in the NHL including those from Europe has gone through junior system in Canada.

Yes, it's true that Canadian Junior hockey plays a significant role in the development of an extremely large number of NHL players]Bobby Carpenter[/URL], Tom Barrasso, Tony Amonte, Doug Brown and Scott Young to name a few). What's more, a number of current American NHLers have also never did (Rick DiPietro, Hal Gill, Shawn Bates and Tom Poti to name a few).

Finally, a quick check of the top European scorers in the game today finds that none of them have played in the Canadian Junior leagues either (Henrik Zetteberg, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk to name a few).

No offense intended dimwit; just trying to show that no matter what Don "Too-Many-Men-on-the-Ice" Cherry may try to tell Canadians, NOT EVERYTHING great about hockey comes out of Canada.

[dimwit]

[quote="Gilligan"]No offense intended dimwit]


HEY! Don was my avatar a while back ago. I didn't intend to degrade junior hockey from other places (even those Europeans:p ) I was just trying to point out that the kid is playing at one of the highest levels of junior hockey

[Jack]

HEY! Don was my avatar a while back ago. I didn't intend to degrade junior hockey from other places (even those Europeans:p ) I was just trying to point out that the kid is playing at one of the highest levels of junior hockey

Hockey players are the biggest French-Canadian export.