Starting as a dragon

24 May 2019

College hockey star Alex Riche is the latest player to join Kunlun for the coming season. The 22-year-old center has just completed four years at Princeton, during which time he helped win the NCAA’s ECAC Championship in 2018. Over the course of his college career he had 75 (26+49) points in 122 games and improved his production every year.

The next step was an invitation to Red Star’s camp in May. Riche is a player with Chinese heritage and thus, potentially, could form part of the 2022 Olympic roster if he continues to progress while playing in the KRS organization. On signing for two years with the club he said: “I’m super excited to begin my professional hockey career with KRS and look forward to the new experiences of playing in the KHL and living in Beijing.”

Riche, who also had two productive seasons in the OJHL before going to college, has previous experience of Red Star. Last summer he was part of a camp organized by ECAC / Princeton in Shenzhen, home of the KRS women’s team. He was invited there as a star of the Princeton team and Red Star’s assistant coach Alex Kovalev had this to say about the promising young forward.

“Riche performed really well for his college team, where he was one of the leaders. In May he took part in our training camp, where he also showed off his strengths and earned the right to have a shot at the KHL. It’s also important for us that he has Chinese roots. He could represent his ancestral homeland at the Winter Olympics in 2022.”