Gary Bettman spoke to reporters in Toronto on Tuesday after the NHL general managers’ meetings, at the end of a fortnight in which Russian participation has become the loudest argument in the sport. He drew the same line the league drew in 2022.
“We’re committed to ultimately doing the right thing, which on a daily basis may change, but we’re still not doing business with Russia, and the players in the NHL who are from Russia play for their NHL teams,” Bettman said. “They’re not playing for Russia.”
That distinction is the whole of the league’s position. Russian nationals skate for the clubs that employ them, not for their country, and the NHL has drawn no further conclusion from where they were born.
The 2028 World Cup of Hockey:
| Teams | When | Hosts | Russia’s status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | February 2028 | Calgary, Edmonton, Prague | Undecided |
Will Russia play in the 2028 World Cup of Hockey?
The tournament is run jointly by the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association rather than the IIHF, which means last month’s Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling ordering Russia’s reinstatement does not apply to it. No deadline has been set for the league to make up its mind, and Bettman gave no sign of rushing.
What does complicate things is everything happening around it.
“The Canadian government saying Russian teams can’t come in anyway is very complicated from our standpoint,” Bettman said, referring to Ottawa’s decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players from entering the country for the 2027 World Junior Championship in Alberta.
He also pointed at the mess the CAS ruling has created for the international federation, with several national associations now refusing to take the ice against Russia at all.
The IIHF “is going to have to work through it, because a number of federations have said they’re not going to play,” Bettman said.
He and deputy commissioner Bill Daly met new IIHF president Franz Reindl in Toronto on Monday, before the Hall of Fame ceremony, to go through it. Bettman acknowledged that Russian players want to be at the World Cup.
“We understand that,” he said. “But it’s complicated.”
None of this is new ground for the league. The NHL condemned the invasion in February 2022, suspended its relationships with Russian business partners, paused its Russian-language channels and ruled out holding events there, while stating at the time that its Russian players compete on behalf of their clubs rather than their country.
It never seriously considered the route Wimbledon took in banning Russian and Belarusian competitors outright. Calls for it have come from inside the sport, with Hall of Fame goaltender Dominik Hasek demanding in 2022 that the league suspend the contracts of every Russian-born player.
Alex Ovechkin, who faced protests in Ottawa last week, is the name most often attached to the argument.
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