That start for Wang came in Beijing when he followed a friend to hockey practice.
“He started playing, and he told me this upcoming sport is extremely cool,” Wang said. “I went to watch one of his practices and then I told my mom, I think I’m in love with the sport. I was 4 1/2 at the time.”
Wang loved it enough to make the journey to Canada before he became a teenager.
“One of my friends was in Toronto as well,” Wang said. “He started to go for a pro career, and then I kind of came along and stayed at his house for a year. Then COVID hit, so I went back [to China] for a year. Then after that, I just didn’t really miss home that much, to be honest.”
His mother, Willa Wang, helped along the way, including starting a rink-building company.
“When I was 10, she saw this upcoming market of hockey and the Winter Olympics in China for 2022 at the time,” he said. “So she gathered a few partners of her and built a new rink [in Beijing], and started to own the hockey club and the figure skating club. And that’s when I have all these amazing facilities to train at when I was kid and build a lot of fundamentals and fundamental skills for me when I moved to Canada.”
Wang grew into an interesting enough prospect that Oshawa selected him in the fifth round (No. 83) of the 2023 OHL draft, and hoped to get him into a uniform despite his college commitment.
“For me, you can’t teach size, you can’t teach his natural ability, his skating ability,” Malone said. “When you put those two intangibles together, he makes a very exciting prospect. I think his hockey IQ, both with and without the puck, are very high. He makes a lot of good decisions, a lot of really good reads. He’s a tough defender to beat. He understands the defensive side of the game, from a defensive standpoint and being a hard defender and taking on top matchups. I thought the way he distributed the puck and understood certain weak points in teams’ forechecks, and then offensively, when to jump down and join the rush. He just did a lot of really good things consistently for us throughout his time with us.”
Wang said he’ll stay one more season with Oshawa, pushing his Boston University commitment to the 2026-27 season.
Malone won’t be there to coach him after being hired as an assistant with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ American Hockey League affiliate, on June 2. But he saw Wang’s plan to return to Oshawa as an opportunity to continue his progression.
“We’re looking forward to him coming back and continuing to get better, and continue to do what he does on a daily basis,” Malone said, prior to accepting the position with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. “Just continue to make everyone around him better. He’s had a big year. He’s had a lot to digest in terms of attention and expectation, and he’s met those with flying colors. So for me, it’s just to continue to do what he’s doing, continue to work the way he’s working, and whoever drafts him is going to get rewarded with a prospect that’s willing to do whatever it takes to be a full-time NHL player. And that for me is what is going to separate him from a lot of people in his age group and his peers, is just his commitment to the game, his hungriness, his eagerness to get in and do the hard things and to make himself better on a daily basis and do it consistently.”
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