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Nobumasa Kinugasa used to dream about an NHL career, only to have the Pacific Ocean and minimal professional hockey heritage in his homeland get in the way.

Still, the native of Kobe, Japan, got further than most compatriots: Playing a few semi-pro seasons in places such as North Carolina and Quebec. And now, as coach of a Nikko Icebucks 12-Under squad of top players from the Tokyo metropolitan area, Kinugasa, 43, is helping Japanese youngsters step across that ocean to play the sport they love.

Last weekend, the Icebucks partook in a 12-Under tournament at the Kraken Community Iceplex, surprisingly knocking off a pair of British Columbia teams from the Vancouver area 6-4 and 5-4 before falling 5-0 in Sunday’s championship to another Canadian squad from the Semiahmoo First Nation community near White Rock. For the young Japanese hockey aspirants, invited overseas by the Kraken, it was a chance to grow both on and off the ice.

“For a lot of the kids, it’s their first time coming to the United States,” Kinugasa said. “It’s a good environment here, the people are very nice and the kids are enjoying it a lot.”

The visit was made possible by a relationship between Kraken chief operating officer Rob Lampman and Icebucks’ COO Hiyoki Takayuki, who worked together for soccer’s FIFA global body at the men’s 2002 World Cup shared jointly between Japan and South Korea. The Icebucks used to do exchanges with the New York Islanders back when they were owned from 2001-2016 by Chinese American billionaire Charles Wang – who wanted to expand the game’s reach within Asia – and had since been looking to partner with another NHL squad.

“We’re always looking for ways to promote the game outside of our traditional markets,” Lampman said. “So, when this opportunity was presented, it made sense for us to explore it and see where it took us.”

The Icebucks have a team in the Asia League Ice Hockey pro circuit and also a junior program with teams of varying age levels.

They spent a week in Seattle touring the city, taking part in on-ice clinics run by Kraken player development coach David Kyu-Ho Min, playing in the tournament and attending a pair of Kraken home games. Kraken head coach Dan Bylsma also visited the Icebucks’ bench to offer words of encouragement to the young players ahead of Sunday’s tournament finale.

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“Hockey isn’t that big in Japan yet,” Icebucks’ coach Kinugasa said. “But over here, the hockey environment is so different. You have so many arenas and so many different teams that you can really battle at a high level.”

Kinugasa only learned about hockey in Japan because his father was into skating and took him many times to a nearby arena. Once he learned to skate, he was literally a leg up on other athletes trying hockey as a sport.

That’s why he feels the early exposure to hockey in North America for his young players is important.

“They’re seeing things here they’ve never seen before,” he said, pointing around the Kraken Community Iceplex. “For instance, we don’t have arenas with three different sheets of ice in Japan.”

Some of the players immediately noticed differences even before taking the ice.

“A lot of people, when they come up to you at the hotel or in other places, they always want to shake your hand,” Icebucks captain Toichiro Sakamoto, 12, said through an interpreter. “They don’t do that in Japan. They don’t come up to strangers and shake your hand.”

Seiya Mori, 12, an alternate captain with the Icebucks, also said through an interpreter he noticed the food portions here “are much bigger” than he’s used to back home.

“It’s the same with a room or big spaces (in public),” he added. “Everything here is a big size compared to what we’re used to in Japanese culture.”

Both enjoyed the experience of watching a Kraken practice last Saturday ahead of their semifinal game, getting to see NHL players up close. At one point, Jaden Schwartz skated by and playfully banged his stick against the glass where they were standing rinkside – causing the players to erupt with laughter.

In fact, they were so glued to watching practice that many were reluctant to head to the adjacent ice rink to play their semi-final game.

Sakamoto came away awed by seeing the players’ skill levels up close.

“They never missed a single pass,” he said.

Mori couldn’t believe the size and speed of Kraken players.

“You could see a big difference between them and us,” he said. “They had great control of the puck and always did what they were trying to do with it.”

Both enjoyed the tutelage of Kraken development coach Min, who took them into a video room to show footage of how NHL players take their shots. They’d never been tutored using video before and were impressed by how quickly Min. brought them out to the ice for practical instruction that implemented techniques they’d just seen on the big screen.

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“We don’t learn things that quickly back home,” Sakamoto said.

For Kinugasa, he hopes such experiences drive his players to want to pursue the sport at higher levels.

Japan saw its first hockey played 100 years ago and has held a four-team national tournament since 1933 – one of the country’s oldest sporting events -- but the sport remains far less popular there than baseball and soccer. There were believed to be about 30,000 registered hockey players in Japan around the time of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, but by 2020 the number had dwindled to 18,000 – with cost and lack of available ice time cited as reasons for the declines.

The country’s limited pro attempts saw the six-team Japan Ice Hockey League created in 1966, but it folded in 2004 when the international Asia League was created and encompassed Japanese squads, including the Icebucks. Japan does have men’s and women’s national teams -- the women qualifying for the Winter Olympics in 2014 and 2018.

The only NHL player to hail from Japan happens to be a current Icebucks player in the Asia League, goalie Yutaka Fukufuji, who played four games for the Los Angeles Kings in the 2006-07 season. Fukufuji, now 42, has spent the past dozen seasons with the Icebucks.

Kinugasa hopes seeing Fukufuji with their local team and getting to experience playing in Seattle will inspire some of his youngsters to want to cross the ocean more permanently in pursuit of pro hockey dreams.

“Now that they’ve seen it here,” he said, “they’re going to want to come back again.”