PRAGUE, Czechia — With three males’s world championships now performed because the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation banned Russian athletes, the worldwide hockey group seems to have utterly moved on with out one of many sport’s most adorned nations.
This 12 months’s IIHF World Hockey Championship was successful by any measure, smashing the earlier attendance document whereas delivering a compelling competitors and memorable gold-medal remaining.
There was definitely no feeling on the bottom that something was missing or lacking.
From the European nations, specifically, there continues to be heavy assist for the IIHF’s ban of Russia and Belarus. These two nations have been excluded from all worldwide hockey competitions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022.
Requested by The Athletic through the world championship if he felt these sanctions have been nonetheless applicable, Finnish coach Jukka Jalonen mentioned: “Yeah, positive. Little doubt about that.”
“I believe given the circumstances it’s fairly cheap,” mentioned Finnish ahead Ahti Oksanen, who performed 4 years at Boston College earlier than carving out a professional profession nearer to house. “I do know the state of affairs in North America is somewhat completely different than right here in Europe as a result of in Europe we’re actually near Russia and coping with them on a regular basis. Proper now I believe it’s cheap.”
Finland coach Jukka Jalonen reacts throughout a preliminary spherical recreation towards Canada in Prague. (Robert Hradil / RvS.Media / Getty Photos)
There isn’t a finish in sight to the ban with the Ukraine invasion persevering with.
In truth, the potential of Russia returning for the 2026 Milan Olympics grows dimmer with every passing day the battle continues.
In February, the IIHF prolonged its ban on Russia and Belarus by means of occasions in 2025, citing security issues. A call that covers the primary Olympic event that includes NHL gamers in additional than a decade can be reached subsequent winter, IIHF President Luc Tardif informed reporters Sunday at a press convention in Prague to shut the world championship.
“We’ll decide subsequent February, as we at all times do,” Tardif mentioned. “It doesn’t matter what the Worldwide Olympic Committee decides. That is how we now have acted earlier than, and we now have not waited for the Olympic Committee’s resolution, though after all we talked with them.”
A restricted variety of Russian and Belarusian athletes can be permitted to take part on this summer time’s Paris Olympics, though they’ll be required to compete with out their flag as particular person impartial athletes and should move a vetting course of that ensures they’ve not actively supported the struggle in Ukraine.
No Russian or Belarusian groups have been allowed to qualify for the Paris Video games.
Whereas the subject stays a considerably delicate one to debate publicly amongst hockey gamers and executives — a lot of whom proceed to work with people from these nations within the NHL, or elsewhere — the nationwide federations they performed for spoke loudly with their actions on the world championships.
Kazakhstan was the one nation of the 16 within the competitors to convey a participant from the Russian-based KHL.
Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Latvia and France have explicitly banned those that stay within the KHL from being eligible for nationwide staff obligation since after the Ukraine invasion started in 2022. Slovakia joined them forward of this 12 months’s world championship, ruling in April that these employed within the KHL wouldn’t be eligible as a result of they hadn’t performed or practiced with the nationwide staff all season.
The Swedish Ice Hockey Federation was far more direct than that when issuing its indefinite nationwide staff ban on KHL gamers in August 2022, with chairman Anders Larsson saying in a press release that it despatched an essential message to the hockey world as a result of, “it’s about our basic values.”
Russia final competed within the 2021 world championship, shedding to Canada within the quarterfinals throughout a event performed beneath bubble-like situations in Latvia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
General, the nation has received 27 world championship golds in males’s hockey — second solely to Canada’s 28 — whereas historically being certainly one of its prime attracts. The event was so essential to Russians that they might virtually at all times produce a star-studded roster, with prime gamers keen to leap on a trans-Atlantic flight instantly after being eradicated from the Stanley Cup playoffs even when it meant solely getting a recreation or two in on the worlds.
Nevertheless, worldwide competitors is a privilege, not a proper, and it’s onerous to see anybody welcoming a Russian staff again earlier than the struggle in Ukraine is over.
“I believe the entire state of affairs has to relax,” Oksanen mentioned. “They should cease no matter they’re doing. After that, we are able to rethink the state of affairs, the entire hockey world can rethink the whole lot. Then hopefully they’ll come again after.”
Added Jalonen: “The struggle needs to be stopped after which perhaps it takes a while to get them concerned once more.”
It took eight years after the tip of the Second World Battle earlier than Germany was permitted to return to a world hockey competitors on the 1953 world championship, the place it competed as West Germany.
The way to deal with Russia is especially entrance of thoughts proper now in Finland, a rustic that endured the Winter Battle in 1939 when the Soviet Union invaded its territory. These nations share a land border that stretches 1,289 kilometers from north to south.
“They’re our neighbors,” Jalonen mentioned. “Now we have greater than 1,000 kilometers along with them. After all, we now have to be prepared as a result of something can occur. I don’t assume we’re afraid, however we’re prepared for something.”
(High photograph: Bruce Bennett / Getty Photos)
