When Chris Woo was 13 years old, he sent a letter addressed to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, specifically to forward Paul Kariya.
“I wrote about how cool it was to see a player of Japanese descent get drafted so high, ” said Woo, who is of Chinese and Japanese descent. “I never thought I’d hear back from him.”
Kariya was selected by the expansion Mighty Ducks earlier that year as the No. 4 pick in the 1993 NHL Draft.
When Woo was in elementary school, he would occasionally write to the Los Angeles Kings in the ’80s and early ’90s. He was used to getting the same response: a postcard, sometimes signed without personalization, sometimes pre-printed with an autograph.
This time, though, there was something else.
Woo opened the envelope to find a single Kariya 1993-94 Fleer Ultra Team Canada card with Kairya’s signature in gold. No note or letter accompanied it.
“Kariya’s was special, and a little mysterious, because it was just a card signed in gold pen, without any message,” Woo said. “I had never received a card from a hockey player.”
“I hold that one near to my heart,” Woo said. “It has a lot of sentimental value.”
That single card helped launch a passion project for Woo called Asian Hockey Card Collection: one that has grown to include 550 hockey cards, with 504 individual players — all of Asian descent. Along with it, an Instagram page with over 2,500 followers and a website database to share his collection.
Woo, now 45 years old and a corporate lawyer, grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The same place where Korean American NHL veteran Richard Park, who played 14 seasons and 738 games in the NHL for six different teams including Anaheim, was raised.
Woo fell in love with hockey at the age of six, when his father took him to his first Kings game at the Great Western Forum.
The next day in school, his teacher asked about his weekend and he told her about the Kings game.
A day later, the teacher gifted him a signed photo of former Kings player Marcel Dionne.
“It turns out she was next-door neighbors to (former Kings) Marcel, Jimmy Carson and Luc Robitaille who were young and were living with him at the time,” Woo said.
Woo remained a Kings fan, but he also branched out to other Southern California teams when Asian players, such as Kariya, played in Anaheim or when Robin Bawa, the first player of South Asian descent in the NHL, played for the San Jose Sharks.
His passion for the game translated onto the ice, where Woo played club hockey for UCLA.
For Woo growing up, print photos and cards were one of the only ways he could see what his role models looked like, other than on TV.
In the 1992 NHL Draft, Hiroyuki Miura became the league’s first real Japanese player ever drafted when the Montreal Canadiens chose him in the 11th round with the No. 260 pick.
“Before the days of the Internet, before widespread coverage on TV, for an Asian person like me, there weren’t many of us (in the NHL). So when you did see a name or a face, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. There’s someone out there that sounds (like an) Asian defenseman,’” Woo said.
The only problem? Miura’s late-round selection made finding information about him a challenge for Woo.
“I remember specifically when reading about him, looking through the draft results and seeing that name and always wondering, ‘OK, what does he look like? A defenseman? Is he a big guy, or a small guy? Is he a puck-moving defenseman, or is he defensive?’”
“I still to this day don’t know what he looks like. I know there’s one card out there that exists … but I’ve never seen him,” Woo said.
That one card is a 1993-94 Wheeling Thunderbirds Photo Pack Hiroyuki Miura card. It is still the card Woo is most eager to add to his collection.
“Cards did give you a picture — a fuller picture — of who the player was,” Woo said.
In early 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Woo returned to his old hobby of card collecting. As his collection grew, he wanted to educate others on Asian hockey players.
Woo began using Instagram to share his collection in a space that attracted the attention of those with the same interest.
Rediscovering an old passion is one thing, but Woo also felt it was important to tell the players’ stories. He wanted to go beyond just the picture and information that fits onto a sports card.
His research led him to want to advocate for one player in particular, one who was not only an Asian hockey player, but the one who paved the way for everyone else who has followed.
That player was Larry Kwong. A Chinese Canadian born in 1923 in Vernon, B.C., Kwong became the first Asian to play in the NHL after he was called up to the New York Rangers against the Montreal Canadiens on March 13, 1948 at the Montreal Forum.
Kwong’s single shift in the third period lasted a minute, yet it made NHL history.
“He broke the Asian color barrier,” Woo said.
With a growing community on Instagram, Woo then created a petition to induct Kwong into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the builder category. The petition now has over 12,000 signatures.
“That’s what my Instagram page is really about. It’s about sharing the stories, the backgrounds of these players that otherwise the community wouldn’t know about,” Woo said.
“That’s the same with Larry. You only have one shift in the NHL, but there is a deeper backstory there that people should really try to take notice of.”
Kwong died on March 15, 2018, and although he was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2013, the goal to see Kwong posthumously inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame remains an ongoing objective for Woo.
“I think the ultimate acceptance (from the hockey community) would be getting him inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Woo said.
The HHOF permits that “Only members of the Hockey Hall of Fame Selection Committee may submit official nominations of candidates for election into Honoured Membership,” according to its website.
When asked about the possibility of Kwong being considered for selection by The Athletic, the HHOF responded in an email:
“While we appreciate receiving ‘public submissions’ our management, staff and members of the Board of Directors and Selection Committee refrain from commenting on any particular candidate other than those successfully nominated and elected so as to comply with the confidentiality provisions set out in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s corporate by-laws.”
Woo’s ongoing ambition to petition for the NHL’s first Asian player includes collecting and sharing his Kwong cards. His favorite is Kwong’s first card, which he believes is over 70 years old.
The card features Kwong in the Quebec Senior Hockey League, where he played for the Valleyfield Braves, scoring 66 points in 60 games; it was a year after he was named the league’s MVP in 1951.
“The Larry Kwong card is special to me,” Woo said. “There are very few of these cards in existence.”
Cards like Kwong’s are what make Woo’s Instagram page the perfect platform to share his collection. There’s an equal emphasis on famous player cards that people can recognize by just looking at them. Then there are the cards of players that few people know about.
“The Instagram account has followers of diverse backgrounds. You have collectors who like to see not necessarily the Jason Robertsons or the Nick Suzukis, but some of these players who played in the minors or the juniors they never knew were Asian,” Woo said.
“But then you actually look at it and there are quite a few.”
Although Woo knows that some of the Kwong cards in his collection could go for hundreds of dollars, he never thinks about selling them or their monetary value. Others are junior hockey cards and don’t hold much dollar value, but Woo knows how much they are worth in his eyes.
“I would never and I do not sell any of the cards,” Woo said. “For me, it’s more of just something that I like to pull out every now and then and look at and admire and then also tell the story.”
This includes unique collector’s items, such as a Keanu Reeves trading card from an old board game. There are no official Reeves hockey cards, although that card features a photo of him in a hockey jersey.
“It’s historically the most popular post on my Instagram account, partially because not many people knew that Reeves played hockey growing up and had junior and professional hockey goalie ambitions as a youth,” Woo said.
Reeves was slated to try out for the Windsor Spitfires of the Canadian Hockey League. An injury prevented him from attending, and he ended up going to New York to recuperate, where he became interested in acting.
“I actually saw him play in a charity event in the early 2000s, and he was very good,” Woo said.
On Aug. 22, two years after Woo’s post, the Windsor Spitfires signed Reeves to a one-day contract where he signed memorabilia for charity.
Whether it is a card of an All-Star pro Asian hockey player, or one that paved the way by playing one shift, Woo hopes that increasing the visibility of these players will continue to grow the game within the Asian community, both in North America and internationally.
“It shows that there are NHL players that look like you,” Woo said. “And I think it opens up the possibilities for these (young) players to chase the dream, as well.”
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(Top photo, card images: Chris Woo)
