Chen Siqi

vankochensq@163.com

THE highly anticipated Shenzhen Kunlun Red Star women’s ice hockey team lived up to expectations by securing the championship in China’s first professional women’s ice hockey league with a resounding 6-1 victory over Harbin in the final, held in Beijing on Wednesday.

Acknowledging the outstanding performance of the Shenzhen team, due credit must be accorded to Noora Raty, the team’s goaltending coach. Raty, a Finnish national, initially joined the Shenzhen Kunlun Red Star ice hockey club as a goalie in 2017, amassing an impressive record of 77 games. In the most recent league, she took on the role of goalie coach, extending her contributions to the team in this new role.

In an exclusive interview with Shenzhen Daily earlier this month, Raty offered profound insights into the pivotal role of goaltending.

“Goal tender is the most important position in hockey. You can win a lot of hockey games just by having a good goalie,” Raty said.

Raty lauded the stellar performance of the team’s three goalies — Wang Yuqing, He Siye, and Song Tianxin — who took turns competing throughout the league. Impressed by their unwavering focus and tenacity, Raty said, “Our goalies have done really good job. They kept staying in focus, making the saves,” Raty added.

Throughout the division games in Shenzhen, Raty could often be seen observing from a vantage point, keenly analyzing the goalies’ performance and diligently taking notes for post-game reviews and improvement.

Skilled, athletic, and swift. These are the three characteristics Raty uses to describe the essential qualities of a proficient ice hockey player. However, she emphasizes that for a goalie, the mental aspect holds the utmost significance.

“Goalie is like an individual athlete on the team. They’re totally different from players in how they train and what they do on the ice,” Raty said. “And the hardest part for goal tending is the mental side of the game,” adding that “there’s a lot of pressure on you, because if you fail, your team is gonna fail. If you succeed, your team is gonna succeed.” As a goalie coach, she made it her responsibility to ensure that players felt mentally prepared.

Despite the challenges, Raty’s dedication to the sport remains unyielding, as she believes in the joy and character-building aspect of ice hockey. Expressing her dedication, the 34-year-old said, “Ice hockey has been a very important part of my life. I’ve done it for 30 years. So, it taught me a lot and built my character.”

Raty, regarded as one of the best goaltenders in the world, has represented her country in four Winter Olympics, securing two bronze medals. Since joining the Shenzhen club in 2017, she has contributed to the team’s three championships, namely two in Russia’s Women’s Hockey League and the latest in China.