But regional bragging rights were also on the line on the final day of the tournament, which attracts teams and players of Asian heritage from across North America, but mainly from Canada.
“One hundred percent, there’s a rivalry,” Allan Chan, a player and manager for the Winnipeg Emperors, said. “You get teams from Ottawa and Montreal. For us, being from Winnipeg, we’re proud of being from the cold, we’re proud of the hardships of Winnipeg and not being as sexy as the other cities. We come here to represent our city and our background.”
Cole founded the Winnipeg Emperors in 2011 to represent the province at the tournament, which accomplished its goal as the tournament’s upper recreational division winner with a 4-0 victory against the Ninja Pandas on Sunday.
“We represented Winnipeg very well,” Chan, who was one of 13 inaugural members of the 2022-23 Winnipeg Jets season ticket advisory council, said.
The Ottawa Yellow Fever arrived in suburban Toronto looking for their first Asian Hockey Championship title in 24 appearances. They defeated the Bamboo Shooters 5-0 to win the tournament’s entry division.
“You see teams from across the country, and you see hockey is being played in other cities all across Canada by other Chinese people, by Asian people,” Evan Hung, a Yellow Fever manager and player, as well as an Ottawa Police Service staff sergeant, said. “We brought a really strong team last year, and we lost in the semifinals. A lot of our younger guys are having kids so they couldn’t make it this year. We reached back and grabbed a couple older guys that used to play with us, so we're like, ‘Hey, we're probably a lot slower now that we're older, but we'll give it a shot, right?’ I’m glad we did.”
