Inside Haoxi Simon Wang’s journey to the top of the 2025 NHL Draft from China

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article included an image of a different OJHL player named Simon Wang.

NOBLETON, Ont. — On a brisk but sunny fall Tuesday, the parking lot at the Nobleton Community Centre is full for a 1:30 p.m. puck drop between the Jr. A King Rebellion and Burlington Cougars. At the desk just inside the front doors, the scout’s sign-in sheet fills an entire page. They’re all here to see Haoxi Simon Wang, a 6-foot-5.5, 215-pound defenseman born, raised and developed in China.

On this day, scouts from the Capitals, Panthers, Stars, Red Wings and Jets are among those who’ve crowded into the small stands. Wang’s adviser, John Walters of The Will Sports Group, and one of their consultants, Brett Valliquette, mingle and answer questions.

When the national anthems play, Wang stands a head taller than most of his teammates on the bench. This is one of the final games he’ll play for the Rebellion in the Ontario Junior Hockey League before signing with the Oshawa Generals and jumping to the Ontario Hockey League.

He won’t turn 18 until the end of July. By then, he’ll be the third-ever Chinese-born player selected in the NHL Draft, following 2024 Jets fourth-rounder Kevin He and 2015 Islanders sixth-rounder Andong Song. He’s expected to make history and become the highest-drafted Chinese-born player ever. When NHL Central Scouting released its players to watch list, they gave him a “B” rating, which indicates a “second- or third-round candidate.”

Wang is the early story of the 2025 NHL Draft, with his hot start, Boston University commitment and “unique and special” skating for his size attracting 20-plus scouts to each of his games.

“I saw him twice and will again. He is for real,” one director of scouting with an NHL club said via text early on this season.

How did Wang get here?

It starts in the west end of Beijing.

Wang is driving home from school at Everest Academy, a small private school in the Vaughan Sports Village just north of Toronto, telling the story of how he found hockey. He was 4, and “at the time in China, hockey wasn’t popular at all (and) there might have been two rinks in the whole city of Beijing.” One of his friends from kindergarten told him, “Yo, you’ve got to check out this new sport, it’s really cool.”

Enamored by the Superman look of the skaters in their equipment after the friend’s mother eventually invited him and his mom, Willa, out to watch a practice, Wang told his mom, “I gotta get out there, I feel something.” It came shortly after Willa’s father, a former speed skater and basketball player, died. Missing him and wanting her son to learn how to skate, she told him that if he came back to several more practices and kept coming she would consider enrolling him.

After he did, she eventually agreed. At the time, though, they lived on the west side of Beijing and the closest rink was in the east of the giant city.

Willa also worked at a state-owned company at the time. Her hours were strict, and she couldn’t ever finish work early, so they were always late for his hockey because of the rush hour traffic.

“I would even cry in the car because I cannot go anywhere and there’s so many cars stopped,” Willa said.

For years, she made noise about getting a rink in the west of the city, but nobody was willing to make it happen. After Beijing was awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics in the summer of 2015, though, the country ramped up investment in ice sports.

Determined to make the rink happen, she sought out that investment and used it to rent “a big place,” build a rink in it and hire a hockey coach and figure skating coach. With additional support from the government, she eventually opened two clubs, the Beijing Capitals Minor Hockey Club and the Beijing Miracle Figure Skating Club.

“The government put so much money and encouraged the children to (be involved) in these sports so I began to get involved in the business,” said Willa.

Over time, she opened more rinks (today, Willa owns multiple arenas in China as president of the Beijing Xinghongao Sports and Culture Co.).

Though he eventually got on the ice 3-4 times a week, Simon said the players were divided by position, with defensemen focusing solely on defending and forwards focusing only on one-on-one skills — and not taught to pass.

“In China, we don’t have a lot of systems and we’re missing the soul of hockey. It’s just trying to do your own thing, get the puck, curl around and do the Wayne Gretzky stuff,” he said, chuckling. “I was just running around. Looking back on it I feel like I wasn’t playing hockey, I was just there on the rink skating around.”

Though the sport has grown dramatically in the country since 2015 and Willa says there are roughly 5,000 minor hockey players in Beijing alone today, the programming scales back as kids get older.

“They just play from 4 years old to 12 years old and there’s many teams but not a high level,” Willa said.

When Wang turned 12, one of the parents of one of his friends, Zev Zekun Zhang, who’d moved to Canada a couple of years earlier to pursue hockey (Zhang now plays for the Vaughan Kings U18 AAA team), called Willa to tell her, “If Simon wants to keep on playing hockey, he (should) come to Canada to Toronto.”

When Willa raised it with Wang, his first thought was: “Oh, wait a second, I think I love hockey more than he does and I’m better at hockey than him.”

After talking it over, and knowing he wasn’t a very good student and hockey was his only sport, they made arrangements for Wang to move in with the Zhang family, enrolled him at Everest Academy, and he joined the AAA Toronto Titans. After a year with the Titans, though, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and he returned to China to continue his studies and play hockey in Beijing, where some rinks were still open.

Once things began to return to normal, Wang returned to Canada and boarded at St. Andrew’s College, a private school in a suburb north of Toronto. Unhappy with the coaching he’d received with the Titans, he also joined the AAA North York Rangers through a connection with their owner, Adam Henrich, and Walters.

At the start, it was tough and Wang found it hard to make friends. Though his English was passable (he’s completely bilingual now) from attending an international school taught by Canadians and Americans in China, it was teammate Will Muszynski’s friendship that made the difference.

“The culture was the biggest part that really shocked me, how people treated hockey here and having to wear a suit to games and in your daily life everyone is doing hockey,” Wang said. “In China, we just study and sports is more of like a fun thing.”

“He was 6-foot-6 but he was really sensitive in a good way,” said Neil Doctorow, Wang’s head coach with the AAA North York Rangers. (Courtesy Willa Wang)

On the ice, the AAA speed and quickness of the passing were also “definitely overwhelming.”

Valliquette said Wang “knew nothing about hockey three years ago.” As there were no games on TV in China growing up, he’d never actually watched hockey before either, only beginning to watch NHL highlights on YouTube every morning with his breakfast after he came over.

But he had the size (Wang said he was always tall) and he had the edges. After returning at 14, he and Valliquette began renting ice and skating at the local NTR rink at 7 a.m. before school every Tuesday and Thursday. Over the last couple of years, Valliquette has taught him to “understand the offensive game and all of these fakes and little techniques.”

In that last season of minor hockey with the Rangers in 2022-23, Walter’s dad, Joe, began driving him to his games and giving him tips. Wang said his hockey IQ began to take shape in those car rides.

“He was 6-foot-6 but he was really sensitive in a good way,” said Neil Doctorow, Wang’s head coach with the Rangers that season. “He wanted to please the coach and he wanted to do a good job but he also didn’t want to disappoint anybody.”

Wang was also “always eating.” That season, they gave him a hard time about it.

“Between periods he’d eat a full meal,” Doctorow said. “It was insane watching this guy eat.” (Wang said he “just love(s) to eat” and that he always has snacks like pretzels and beef jerky with him.)

On the ice, Wang “tried to out-skate and out-skill everybody,” according to Doctorow, who was tasked with teaching him how to play within a team.

“He could handle the puck really well, he was an excellent skater, unbelievable shot, but he was still growing into his body and when he made mistakes they were big ones,” Doctorow said. “So we really helped enforce the idea of identifying areas when you should move the puck and areas when you need to make a play. And it took a long time, it was probably the hardest thing that he had to overcome.”

Though it took time and Wang was skeptical at first, Willa stayed out of it and he grew more receptive to the heavy coaching. Once it clicked, he started putting up points on a weak team.

He also had to learn to use his size.

“He didn’t really want to hit guys, so it took a long time to get him to do that too,” Doctorow said. “But to be fair, I think Simon was like, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody.’ He’s a big guy but he’s a very kind person and he was significantly bigger than 90 percent of the league and I think he was aware of that and didn’t feel like really badly hurting anybody so he just sort of backed off.”

As the year progressed, though, the pieces began to come together and “he looked like a skilled forward but he was this big 6-foot-6 D.” They even used him all over their power play, from the bumper to the net-front and the point.

“You just don’t see a lot of players when they grow into their bodies at that age have even the agility and speed. And I also think he’s pretty creative, so it just needed to come together and he just needed more in-game experience,” Doctorow said. “I think if you were sympathetic to where he came from then you could see that as long as he was given opportunities and guys didn’t quit on him that he would for sure put it together and there was no denying his skating and skill.”

Though Wang only had seven points in 33 games at season’s end, the Generals saw that potential and drafted him with the 83rd pick in the 2023 OHL Priority Selection. So did the Dubuque Fighting Saints, taking him in the ninth round of the 2023 USHL Entry Draft (those rights have since expired and he was re-selected in the ninth round of the 2024 draft by the Lincoln Stars, who tried to lure him south in advance of college).

That summer, Wang moved into a condo — living primarily by himself as Willa traveled back and forth between Toronto and Beijing — and began training with strength coach Stark Guo, who he said has been phenomenal for him, helping him with injury prevention, nutrition and adding even more speed and explosiveness.

He also went to the summer camps of some NCAA programs, attending Merrimack’s, and then Harvard’s, and then Boston University’s, initially just for fun to see if he could get anything out of them.

He was a standout at a couple of them but played his best at Boston University’s, catching the eye of Terriers associate head coach Joe Pereira in particular. After a visit to BU’s facilities he said, “Yeah, this is the place.”

After committing to BU in September 2023, his rookie season in the OJHL with the Brantford 99ers was another learning experience and saw him miss time both with a broken first rib and to play in an international event with China’s U18 team.

In May, Willa purchased the 99ers, adding the team to her portfolio of rinks back in China, and after approval from the OJHL’s Board of Governors relocated them to Nobleton.

After another summer of training in the gym with Guo and skating with folks like Valliquette, Wang came back for his draft year a completely different player.

Mark Joslin, the team’s general manager and head coach with both Brantford and King, said he came into Jr. A “very, very raw,” but there was clearly something there with his combination of size and skating.

Early on, like with the Rangers, he was also timid physically.

“Last year, I’m not sure he threw a hit,” Joslin said.

As with Doctorow, though, he learned quickly. He did all the right things in the offseason. He got stronger. His zone exits really improved under the tutelage of Rebellion assistant coach and former NHLer Nikolai Borschevsky.

This season, before making the decision to join the Generals, he was playing 20-25 minutes per game as a big part of both special teams with the Rebellion. When he signed with Oshawa, his 17 points in 29 games led all Rebellion defensemen.

“His feet are good enough to play in the NHL right now and his brain is catching up with his body and his feet and everything else,” Joslin said. “He’s a very bright kid, he’s very good in school, he was very raw maturity-wise last year in terms of fitting in with the boys and being one of the guys. but this year he has turned the page and fits right in. And he’s sometimes trying to do too much on the ice but he just turned 17 and he’s raw.”

Brandvold has watched all of his games and has encouraged Wang to play more physically, which he has done and then some — sometimes too much so and at the wrong time, according to Joslin.

“He’s playing with an edge, he’s playing with confidence, he’s playing with poise. It’s very enjoyable to watch his growth … the interest from the NHL got crazy,” Joslin said. “He’s definitely going in the right direction.”

“I miss the family time a lot,” said Wang, who tries to get back home to Beijing each summer. (OJHL Images)

These days, if you ask Doctorow if he’s surprised that the kid who needed so much coaching has become a top prospect for the NHL Draft, his answer is a firm no.

“At the beginning of the season, I would have said ‘yeah,’ because he was tough to get through to and over-handling the puck was so ingrained, but by the end of the season … he was very easy to get along with,” Doctorow said. “He was like this super nice giant.”

Looking back on his journey, Wang believes it all started with his parents’ open-mindedness when the Zhangs first called.

“I’m really lucky I have very supportive parents that understand what I like,” he said.

He misses home, though. The last time he saw his dad was in February and it was only for a few hours between games with the Chinese U18 team. They try to talk often on the phone and he tries to get back every summer, but training has taken priority.

“I miss the family time a lot,” he said.

Home will always be a part of him and his hockey story, though. He’ll carry it with him when he hears his name called, and when he someday lives out his still-new dream in the NHL.

“It’s really exciting to have the chance to showcase my country,” Wang said. “I feel like I have a good chance to show people that Chinese people can do it at this level. They’ve just got to put in hard work, dedication and everyone can make it.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Photos: Courtesy Willa Wang, OJHL Images)