The Canadian contingency was a hodgepodge of U.S. collegiate players—ranging from Sweet, Cahow, a player from Yale, and one from Cornell—to young Canadian talent. Interestingly, the team’s goalie was only fifteen years old.

The Russian and Kazakhstan teams, on the other hand, contained some national players.

“So all of these people had dedicated their entire lives to playing hockey,” Cahow said. “Then there was us, who were a rag-tag group. There was definitely a pretty wide gamut of talent.”

Russia emerged with the best record after each team had played each other twice, so on the final day of play, Kazakhstan and Canada teamed up for an all-star combat against the winners, even combining lines.

“It was really bizarre trying to play with them,” Sweet said. “I played with this 40-year-old woman on her line. And I was like ‘drop it!’ and she clearly doesn’t know what drop it means because she doesn’t speak English. And she’s yelling at me in Russian.”

YOU DON’T KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE

Through their competition and cooperation with the Kazakhstanian team, Sweet and Cahow came home with some lessons about hockey and what it means to play it.

Before the all-star game, the Canadian and Kazakhstanian teams shared the ice for a practice run by the coach for Kazakhstan.

“It just made me appreciate how hard they work,” Cahow said. “We had a game that night, and we skated hard in that practice. Then when we went out to warm up for the game, and the Kaz coach was running that, too. And we ran. I was exhausted before the game.”

It was clear to Cahow and Sweet how much hockey meant to the local team and their compatriots. The women played with old sticks, worn pads and dull skates.

“They play with these huge wooden sticks that probably haven’t come out in 15 years,” Sweet said. “This one girl was playing, and the blade of her stick was completely broken—there was a hole. And she played a whole game with it, like that’s her stick. She couldn’t afford anything else.”

Many of the Kazakhstanian women played under constrained circumstances, too, often having to fight to play hockey, even at the highest caliber.

“There were girls on the team who were like, ‘My parents hate that I play hockey. They want me to stop,’” Cahow said. “We’re talking about people who are going to represent them in the Olympics.”

But in large part, hockey also helps bring people together in the simple country. The captain of the Kazakhstan team was 40-years-old, and she played on the same line as her 14-year-old daughter. Her husband rounded out the family presence by coaching the team.

Sweet and Cahow also visited a youth hockey program of 14-year-old boys who were training in the mountains. The boys requested autographs and treated the Americans like celebrities.