Kalniņš spent 12-14 hours on the bus to St. Petersburg. Then it was a 12-hour flight to Khabarovsk via Novosibirsk. “Nice weekend trip,” the hockey player said in a video interview.
“Right now I feel like a zombie. It feels like it’s a different time zone here. I haven’t talked to the coaches yet. I’ve only shaken hands with the coaches and players. That’s all in the few hours I’ve spent here,” said Kalniņš.
“I’ve been training mostly off the ice. I’ll talk to the fitness and goalie coaches to understand what they’ve been doing here and adjust my training plan. I think I’m in pretty good shape.”
It has already been reported that the Latvian Hockey Federation (LHF) rejected Kalniņas’ transfer to the aggressor national team “Amur”.
Changes made in the spring to the Latvian Sports Law provide for a ban on representing national teams for those players, coaches and staff who participate in the sports leagues of Russia and Belarus.
Both Kalniņš and striker Nikolay Yeliseyev have announced that they will play in the KHL next season, who wants to represent the Vladivostok Admiral coached by Leonid Tambiev, despite the military activities carried out by the Russian criminal regime in Ukraine.
