TAMPA—Longmou Li didn’t grow up loving hockey, not really. How could he? He wasn’t yet born when China was at its international hockey peak, back in 1981; even had he wanted to play in his home city of Nanking, there wasn’t a rink to skate on. He knew hockey existed, sure. But he couldn’t reach out and touch it.

Today, Li, a perpetually cheerful and bespectacled 33-year-old, is closer to the game than most. He is the colour commentator for CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster, which is broadcasting the Stanley Cup final on site for the first time. He is leading interviews — at one point he emerged from a heavy Patrick Kane scrum saying, “I thought I would die in there” — and Li is the centrepiece of their seven-man crew. And it’s all because of the Edmonton Oilers.

“I move to Edmonton in 2001, and for two, three years, oh my god, it was crazy. It was like hell,” says Li, grinning. “First I had to do my English second language training, but when I go into university, my adviser said, if you want to make the winter shorter, you have to learn hockey. So I started, and it made my life better and better.”

Li was there to get an electrical engineering degree from the University of Alberta, and it was Alberta because his uncle worked for the Alberta Research Council, advising on agriculture. But Li’s English was just shreds and pieces. In university, the first year was mostly math, and Li immersed himself in hockey — reading about it, listening to Rod Phillips call games on the radio while he delivered pizzas, watching it on TV.

“I remember one day was storm, and we have 28 drivers for Panago, and that day, only five drivers, because the others were stuck in the snow, couldn’t get engine started, whatever,” says Li. “I make like 72 deliveries that day, from 12 to 12. Made 500 bucks. And my owner had (Oilers) season tickets, and after that he give me three, four games per season, every ticket. Row 9, behind away team.”

When the Oilers made a run to the Stanley Cup in 2006, Li started writing pieces for China Sports Weekly in his spare time — “circulation is eight million, very big,” he says, which is a hell of a way to start a media career — and he was delivering pizzas during Game 7 when Edmonton lost to Carolina.

“All the streets were quiet,” he says. “I was on Whyte Avenue.”

When Li graduated he worked for Shaw as a technician, but he’d caught the bug and went to night school to get his sports management degree. Li volunteered for CCTV at the Vancouver Olympics, advising on who were the best players, doing some editing and watching every game he could; when a chance to work in Chinese hockey presented itself in 2011, his sports management professor told him it was a better opportunity than finishing his degree.

Li went home. China has excelled at producing single-sport athletes, but team sports are the new frontier. Li became the general manager of China’s U-18 team, and vice-president of the Beijing Minor Hockey Association. And with China bidding for the 2022 Olympics — and with the NHL working hard to reap anything from the Chinese market — CCTV got into hockey, four games a week. Li was given the job. The Oilers weren’t quite Sports Weekly material anymore, though.

“We have the right at CCTV to pick up whatever games we want, right?” says Li. “So every first month, I put on a lot of Oilers games. After first month, no Oilers games anymore.”

As for the final, he says, “Games are at 8 o’clock in the morning — still better than late, better than Europe. Last season we average 400,000 to half a million (viewers). These days, maybe 800,000 to one million.”

Last year they broadcast games from a studio in Beijing, but with the Olympic vote coming, CCTV sent seven people to the Cup final. Li is extensively documenting the trip on Instagram as chinaoilers — plane tickets, a media pass, his vantage point for games, a selfie with Connor McDavid on the media bus. (He did misidentify TSN’s James Duthie as TSN’s Darren Dreger in one picture, but that could happen to anybody.)

“It’s a little bit of dream for me, because I always wanted to bring hockey to China,” says Li. “China, hockey used to be very popular game. But when I come to Canada there was no ice rinks. But now we have three big ones, and another four under construction. China in the next five years could have 500 rinks. Minor hockey in China is going crazy — five years ago we only have 200 players in Beijing, right now we have more than 2,000.

“Because parents see hockey as one of the best educations. It’s good sports, for kids. All families have single kids, and kids can make friends in hockey.”

So he is now the beachfront for the place the league wants to go. The Toronto Maple Leafs established a Weibo account — Chinese Twitter, basically — last year, and sent a delegation to China to search for business opportunities; they played one game with all-Chinese ads on the rink boards. The NHL wants to do business in China.

Li is thrilled. He’s less excited about the Oilers, though, after years of disappointment. But McDavid, I said. He nodded, his smile turning sober.

“Hopefully,” said Li. “Whatever they do, I cheer for them. But I think they need more defence. I don’t think they need more up front, more young players. Because young players don’t know how to battle, how to defence. And we need defenceman, and we need a very good goalie.

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“He’s very good. But hockey is team sport. He needs men. He needs people like a (Alex) Killorn, like a (Chris) Kreider. Taylor Hall same line, who’s gonna defend? Nobody.”

Yep. Oilers fan.

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