Raiders assistant coach Cole Bell is in his first season on the bench with the Prince Albert Raiders after two year as an assistant coach with the Chinese men's international team. (Mark Peterson/Prince Albert Raiders)

By Nick Nielsen

Coaching Chinese Men's International Team

Bell shares experience coaching Chinese men’s national team

Nov 21, 2025 | 4:00 PM

It’s been a unique path for Prince Albert Raiders Assistant Coach Cole Bell to find his way to Prince Albert.

Born in Davenport, Iowa, the 36-year-old played two seasons of NCAA III hockey with Lebanon Valley College and Becker College, before playing two more years back with Lebanon Valley as team captain when their program moved to the American Collegiate Hockey Association. After six games in the Federal Prospects Hockey League during the 2013-14 year, he transitioned into coaching.

Over the next 11 seasons, Bell served in various roles, including as the head coach at the University of Jamestown and Ohio University, and up to the ECHL as an interim assistant coach with the Indy Fuel.

In 2023-24, while Bell was getting ready for a Friday night game as the assistant coach with Stevenson University in NCAA III, he received a call from his former teammate at Lebanon Valley, Spiros Anastas, who had a unique opportunity to coach the men’s international team for China.

“He just got hired as a head coach, and the long and short of it was he was starting this job in a couple weeks and was looking to build a staff and wanted to know if I’d be willing to, and also if I was able to join, because I was working in university at the time. He’s like, ‘I need to know when by the end of the day’, I’m like, ‘well, I work at the university and it’s 4 o’clock on a Friday, that’s not going to happen’,” Bell said with a laugh.

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He eventually got approval from the university to miss the remaining six games of the season so he could head to China.

Aside from knowing that some of the players in China had hockey experience in North America and the KHL, they weren’t exactly sure about the level of play they’d be walking into.

A big reason why Bell and the rest of the staff were brought in was to try and overhaul the Chinese hockey program and help grow the sport within the country.

“We knew that the group that we were working with was never going to play in the Olympics. They’re not ready. They’re still growing as a sport in that country, but we said we wanted to start the movement, if you will, or start the momentum,” he said. “We wanted them to be on the couches in 40, 50 years watching China compete in the Olympics and know that it started with them and know that it was them that took it to the youth hockey and really started to grow the sport.”

Bell speaks highly of the experience, and he’s glad he got the opportunity to travel to different countries around the world with stops to play games in Great Britain, Finland, Kazakhstan, India and Serbia, just to name a few. When he wasn’t on the ice, he tried to take in the tourist attractions, like the Great Wall of China and Tiananmen Square. He enjoyed meeting the locals, even if he couldn’t speak the language.

He said that language barrier is actually part of what made him a better coach through the experience. It forced him to simplify his approach.

“It certainly has helped me as a coach just be more efficient, sort of be to the point and clear with my communication. Whenever I’m doing video or sitting down with a guy, just make sure everything is to the point for them and make sure it is as easy to understand as possible. It doesn’t matter if they speak my language or not, I think that’s just a good working practice. It certainly was a challenge and I’d like to think through any kind of challenge, you end up growing, you end up getting better one way or the other.”

Since the two years they spent coaching together in China, Bell isn’t the only one who has moved onwards and upwards from coaching the Chinese program. The head coach that recruited him, Spiros Anastas, is now an assistant coach with the Chicago Wolves of the AHL, and Tim Army has moved on to the NHL as an assistant coach with the Anaheim Ducks.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com