They hoped the World Cup would catapult them back into the international community. But since the hockey NHL postponed the event, the Russians remain isolated and wondering what to do next.
The next World Championship was to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia. However, following the invasion of Vladimir Putin’s troops into Ukraine, Finnish Tampere and Latvian Riga shared the hosting.
Neither the national team nor Belarus, which is on the side of the aggressor in the ongoing war, will take part in the tournament. The IIHF Ice Hockey Federation decided to exclude both national teams from its structures at least until the end of the current season. The word “minimum” is important. No one currently knows how long the current situation will last.
Therefore, Russia hoped to peek back into the international community at the World Cup, which is organized by the NHL as a separate entity.
The overseas league had planned its tournament for February 2024 and already had it outlined, but recently announced a delay of at least a year.
It is speculated that the main reason was the problematic participation of the Russian team. The NHL wanted to include him, but the rest of the European participants were against it. They were not going to play against him even if he carried a neutral flag.
“In Europe, all countries have a completely different point of view. None of them want Russia in the tournament, but the NHL does. Everyone knows it,” the daily Iltalehti quoted Finnish coach Jukka Jalonen, who is skeptical about the immediate future of the World Cup.
The Russian media reacted differently to these facts. Sovetskyi sport published a commentary in which it lashed out at “stupid Europeans”. Mikhail Skryl from the Sport-Express newspaper expressed his regret that the aging stars of the generation Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin may never get the chance to bring home their first medal from a major event where the best play the best (the truncated World Cup does not count).
The Russian website Championat then came up with a proposal for an alternative to the World Cup. “Europe does not want to play with Russia, to hell with it! It’s time for the NHL to think about a new Super Series,” he wrote, referring to the matches between overseas and Soviet clubs between 1976 and 1991.
According to the idea of journalist Pavel Panyšev, the best Canadian and Russian hockey players would compete against each other in an unspecified number of duels. Europe’s permission would not be needed in that case.
The rivalry between North America and Russia, respectively the Soviet Union, has a tradition. The most famous is the 1972 Series of the Century, in which Canadian professionals, then ineligible to play in the World Cup or the Olympics, narrowly defeated the Soviet pseudo-amateurs.
It was from the Series of the Century that the Canada Cup, now the World Cup, finally sprouted.
However, the specific fights between Canada and Russia did not disappear even after the end of the Cold War. For example, since November 2003, six matches have been held annually between Russia and the CHL, which brings together three elite overseas juniors. Basically, it is a clash between the best Russian juniors and the Canadian ones.
However, even this event has recently been crushed by unfavorable circumstances. It was not played in 2020 and 2021 due to covid, this year the organizers canceled it in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
