article posted on sport.cz<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Swedish federation didn\u2019t issue a statement and did not immediately respond to a request for one from The Athletic, but notably, any Swedish player in the KHL is banned from playing for the national team. The IIHF also couldn\u2019t be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
This issue is back at the forefront of discussion for a couple of reasons: 1) The IIHF last week reversed a previous decision to ban Russia for all tournaments in 2026-27, saying it would instead go on an event-by-event basis, and 2) The NHL and NHL Players\u2019 Association are currently in the process of organizing the World Cup of Hockey for February 2028.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the next best-on-best tournament on the sport\u2019s international calendar, which puts the league in an interesting position: While the NHL isn\u2019t beholden to follow what the IIHF decides on Russia, a point Daly reiterated on Tuesday, it will be closely following how it navigates those waters.<\/p>\n
Ideally, the IIHF would come to some sort of understanding with the Swedish, Finnish and Czech hockey federations, as Daly seemed to be under the impression it had.<\/p>\n
That would provide a path for the NHL to follow.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine they\u2019d try conducting a tournament without those three countries involved \u2014 particularly with the 2028 World Cup scheduled to stage round-robin games in Prague. And unless there\u2019s an end to the invasion in Ukraine, there\u2019s still little reason to believe that those countries have any willingness to participate in an event also including Russia.<\/p>\n
That was certainly the feedback the NHLPA received from individual players during its leaguewide tour in the fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing out of that, I can just say as much as we\u2019d want \u2014 in a perfect world \u2014 we\u2019d want any top country to be in an event, there were certainly players from other countries that were not comfortable at that time,\u201d NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey said. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to talk to the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time is not necessarily on their side, either.<\/p>\n
For planning and logistical purposes, the field for the 2028 World Cup probably needs to be set at least a year ahead of time.<\/p>\n
The NHL may get feedback in response to February\u2019s All-Star Weekend after making a format change to the three-on-three tournament held during that event. There will now be teams of players representing the U.S., Canada, Finland and Sweden, plus a \u201cWorld\u201d team, which could theoretically include Czechs being selected to play alongside Russians, for example.<\/p>\n
While that scenario isn\u2019t likely to make many headlines in North America, there would almost certainly be scrutiny from back home brought against any player from a European nation who competed alongside a Russian \u2014 even for a fun exhibition \u2014 if the invasion of Ukraine hasn\u2019t ended.<\/p>\n
Based on the swift reaction to Daly\u2019s comment in Europe, that much was clear. The view of the situation is much different on that continent than it is on this one.<\/p>\n
Here in North America, there seems to be full alignment between the NHL and NHLPA on trying to create the circumstances where Nikita Kucherov, Kirill Kaprizov, Andrei Vasilevskiy and other Russians can take their place among the game\u2019s other stars. The league and the union are back in the business of international hockey in a big way following a wildly successful 4 Nations Face-Off event in February 2025 and a return to the Winter Olympics in Milan earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Russian players want to play in best-on-best,\u201d NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh said on Tuesday. \u201cIn a perfect world, we\u2019d love to see them back in competition. There are a lot of other things going on here. Politics around the world. We\u2019re kind of taking it a day at a time to see where we go here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the timeline for that return appears to be beyond the NHL\u2019s full control.<\/p>\n
As much as the door has been opened a crack to the broader discussion about Russia\u2019s return to international hockey, the league is going to need to make sure that everyone else is fully on board to make it work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 Sitting thousands of miles from Europe at the Stanley Cup Final, it is easy to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[210521,385,99,1794],"class_list":["post-682819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}