from Mike Ives of the New York Times,

Taking the ice here on a recent weekday evening, Barry Beck issued an unsubtle warning to a fellow skater who had come to play hockey without neck protection.

“If you don’t have a neck guard, this is what you get,” he said, miming an attack. “A judo chop.”

In the 1980s, Beck, 59, was known throughout the N.H.L. as an enforcer with a crushing slap shot and a penchant for scrappy fights and bone-crushing body checks.

But here in a Hong Kong shopping mall, Beck, a former Rangers captain, was goading a 10-year-old about a quarter of his size — and the boy did not flinch. They both laughed.

Players and coaches say Beck, a 6-foot-3 defenseman who moved to Hong Kong in 2007, has played a key role in developing the city’s youth hockey culture. He is primarily known not as an ex-enforcer, they said, but as a hockey oracle who dishes wisdom with tough love and a side of Canadian wit.

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