Team USA dominated the Chinese Communist Party’s hockey team 8-0 during their Thursday matchup at the Beijing Olympics.
The Americans scored seven of eight goals in the last two periods of the game, throttling the host nation’s team.
Harvard sophomore and Montreal Canadians prospect Sean Farrell recorded a hat trick and two assists. The youngest U.S. goaltender to play in the Olympics, 19-year-old Drew Commesso, stopped all 17 of the Chinese Communist Party’s team’s shots on goal.
Brendan Brisson, Noah Cates, Brian O’Neill, Ben Meyers and Matty Beniers also scored.
Making up the majority of the team, 18 players from North America are playing for China, including seven Americans. Jake Chelios, who moved from the U.S. to Beijing in 2019 to play for China-owned Kunlun Red Star, said he feels “a certain closeness” with China.
“I think half the family was a little confused of what was going on at first, but now they’re starting to understand how special it is,” said Chelios, according to NBC Sports. “Since we’ve been over here for three years, whatever it is, you do start to feel a closeness to China. We’ve been eating Chinese food, we’ve been living the Chinese culture, so there’s a certain closeness you start to feel with China, and you start to feel like you’re actually going to represent them and you want to win for them.”
Goaltender Jeremy Smith, who previously played for the Colorado Avalanche, said it was a no-brainer when China asked him to play for their Olympic team.
“Of course I said yes,” said Smith, who has his name in Chinese letters painted on his mask. “I think it’s an honor to play in the Olympics. But to dream of playing for the host city in the Olympics, I didn’t ever think there would be a chance for me in my lifetime.”
NBC saw its lowest viewership ever for opening day of the Olympics as many are boycotting this year’s Winter Olympic Games in Beijing because of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses.
Grim reports from witnesses to the CCP’s abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang have revealed killings, torture, rape, enslavement, forced separation of children from their parents, forced sterilization and abortion, enforced disappearances, and destruction of cultural and religious heritage.
China expert Adrian Zenz characterized China’s suppression of Muslim Uyghurs – which has reportedly impacted over 1.5 million people – as “probably the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust.”
