Belle taking unique journey from China to 2025 NHL Draft

The 2025 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be held June 27-28 at L.A. Live's Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The first round will be held June 27 (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+, SN, TVAS), with rounds 2-7 on June 28 (Noon ET; NHLN, ESPN+, SN, SN1). NHL.com is counting down to the draft with in-depth profiles on top prospects, podcasts and other features. Today, a look at right wing William Belle of USA Hockey's National Team Development Program Under-18 team. Full draft coverage can be found here.

In the journey of a United States hockey player, the most basic of questions, "Where did you learn to skate?" tends to produce a response in one of three categories:

The community rink, the family backyard, or a pond near the player's house.

USA Hockey National Team Development Program Under-18 team forward William Belle has a bit of a different answer.

"The 27th floor of a public shopping mall in Dongguan."

Belle is believed to be the first player raised in China to compete internationally for USA Hockey.

Belle lived in Dongguan, China, until his family moved to the U.S. in May 2015. His father, Travis, is American, and his mother, Yu Wei, is Chinese; his parents met in China while his father was working there.

The 18-year-old was among the 90 Draft-eligible prospects who participated in the 2025 NHL Scouting Combine earlier this month. None of the other 89 have a hockey origin story quite like his.

Belle (6-foot-3, 225 pounds), who is committed to play at Notre Dame in the fall, skated for the first time at age 6, and only by happenstance.

"It was a birthday party," he said. "I don't know. I just kept going back. A couple months later, my dad bought hockey skates. The blades were unsharpened. The skate size was my shoe size. We didn't know anything. My dad played football. It was completely new to us."

While plenty of families tell stories of arduous commutes across snowy roads to hockey practices, Dongguan presented its own challenges: The city has a population of more than 10 million people, so the Belle family spent two hours in traffic every time William skated at the mall.

To make that sacrifice, the Belles must have seen immediate signs that their son was destined for hockey stardom, right?


Nope.

"I was in figure skates for six months, just waddling around," Belle said. "I didn't know how to stop for almost a year."

Spoiler alert: Belle learned the hockey stop. In the meantime, his family became acquainted with two American coaches who had played college hockey in the U.S. They invited William to play in a weekend league in Hong Kong. Soon, the Belles were taking two-hour train rides there in order for William to face more advanced competition.

"I was probably playing four years up," he said.

Many hockey players share memories of going to youth tournaments in Toronto, Boston or Detroit. Belle's routines were a little different. He accompanied his father on business trips throughout Asia.

"I was with him in some meetings; other times I would wait in the lobby playing on my iPad," Belle said. "I remember going to Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam. We went to the Petronas Twin Towers [in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]. Every time he would travel, he would turn it into a trip for me and him to look around. All those big Chinese cities: Shanghai, Beijing. ... We always stayed in this one hotel in Hong Kong called the Shangri-La. It was awesome."

Travis, who grew up in Virginia and played defensive end at North Carolina State University, earned a master's degree in assembly engineering. He worked in China for 15 years, starting as the manager of factory operations for Bryan Ashley, a hotel furniture manufacturer.

After Travis was promoted to a position where he could work remotely, the Belles relocated to the U.S. They chose the Boston area because of the city's overall academic environment and availability of high-level hockey.

"Originally it was for school," Belle said. "We had no idea I was going to be playing for Team USA or committed to a school. We just thought of [hockey] as a fun hobby."

Belle enrolled at Shattuck-St. Mary's, the Minnesota prep hockey powerhouse, beginning in the eighth grade. Even then, Will said the intent of playing hockey was to improve his overall college application, not improve his NHL prospects.

That perspective changed during Belle's three years at Shattuck. Already one of the most physically advanced players in the program, he dedicated himself in the weight room.

"He got to be so big and strong," said Des Christopher, associate head coach of Shattuck's Under-16 team. "It was really impressive. He can really skate and shoot too."

Belle joined a roster headlined by established youth hockey stars Cole Eiserman, Macklin Celebrini, Aidan Park and Brodie Ziemer. He also learned how to handle the independence of dormitory life, very different from the years when he accompanied Travis on business trips throughout Asia.

"He landed here and had to build relationships," Christopher said. "This was probably more of a community than he'd had in his younger years of hockey."

Belle spent his U-17 and U-18 seasons at the NTDP, learning ways to use his physicality to forecheck aggressively and play responsibly in his own zone.

Even though he was left off the U.S. roster for the 2025 IIHF Under-18 World Championship, Belle benefited from his time at the NTDP.

"This place really taught me how to play for a team, how to play in a system, and how the mindset for everything should be, 'Do this for the team,'" Belle said. "Here, everybody is used to being one of the best players [in youth hockey]. Then they get here and they've got to play in roles. That was the big thing, learning how to buy into my role."

That mindset of adaptability has come to define Belle's life. At 5 years old he spoke only Mandarin Chinese and never had worn hockey skates. Now he's about to enroll at the University of Notre Dame, possibly as an NHL draft pick. He's skated many miles since the shopping mall in Dongguan.