IIHF has a chance to make a real statement

The world hockey body will meet Monday to determine how to deal with Russia and it's time to show a maniacal despot and lousy hockey player how it regards him

The hockey world is relatively powerless to stop the rocket attacks or the street fighting. It can do nothing directly to help terrified men, women and children in Ukraine as they seek safety from the worst ground war since World War II. It can do nothing to prevent this ground war from the possibility of going nuclear. It can’t change the mind of a madman.

But it must try. Expecting Russian NHL players, even those such as Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin, who have previously foolishly cast their support behind Vladimir Putin, to denounce a maniacal despot is not feasible. It puts them in an untenable spot. They see what happened to Artemi Panarin and they know the price of expressing their condemnation is too high. Because you never know what a madman is going to do.

So, enter the International Ice Hockey Federation, whose council has called a special meeting for late Monday afternoon (late morning in North America) where it will “review and consider the implication of this conflict on our events.” This meeting has been called exclusively for this purpose, so you’d have to think status quo is not an option.

But the IIHF must do much more than simply “review and consider,” or, for that matter, even be concerned about its events. The body that governs global hockey must back up its words far beyond condemning this war. It must repudiate it in the most direct and impactful way possible by not only pulling all its events out of Russia, but barring Russia from participating in any way with any other country that is a member federation. And while the IIHF is at it, it could make an even stronger statement by doing the same to Russia’s most complicit enabler in Belarus.

You see, people involved in hockey love to talk about how tough they are. They love to point out that hockey players are a different breed of athlete, that somehow they’re born with hotter competitive fires than those who choose to play other sports. It’s not true, of course, but it’s a narrative that hockey people like to believe and propagate. There are countless memes out there about how soccer players get carted off the pitch after the slightest physical contact, while hockey players continue to valiantly play on with blood dripping down their faces.

Nikita Zadorov posted this on his Instagram account.

OK, tough guys, if you’re so unrelenting, it’s time to show it. FIFA has responded to the conflict with moves that will achieve nothing. It stopped short of banning Russia from World Cup qualifying, deciding instead that it must adopt the RFU for its acronym, and that the Russian flag and anthem cannot be associated with the team. It’s an act of cowardice that matches that of the International Olympic Committee, a body that cannot bring itself to ban a country that has been guilty of state-sponsored cheating. Three Olympics have already shown us doing this is useless and pointless.

Generally speaking, hockey revels in its status an outlier. And now it has the opportunity to use that reputation to go to lengths for which other sports bodies don’t have the stomach. It can start by immediately removing the 2023 World Junior Championship from Novosibirsk and Omsk and World Championship from St. Petersburg. It can go further by banning all Russian teams from any international competition, which would immediately put it on the outside of the upcoming 2022 Worlds, World Women’s, World Juniors and World Under-18s. Heck, it can even follow the Swiss Hockey Federation’s call to exclude Russia and Belarus as members of the IIHF.

We don’t really have any idea how Russian players, 55 of whom play in the NHL and another two dozen who are in the Canadian Hockey League, feel about this war. It’s hard to believe many of them would be in favor of it. (Calgary Flames’ defenseman Nikita Zadorov did post, “No War” on his Instagram recently.) So is banning those players from the opportunity to compete on the international stage fair to them? Probably not. But as the late Pat Quinn was often fond of saying, it’s not their fault, but it is their problem. They inhabit a country that has chosen to give unfettered power to a leader who seems to have no qualms about putting world peace in peril to advance his own interests. Some of those players have openly supported him. Former Russian players participate in charity games where Putin can barely get around the ice, yet he manages to somehow score eight goals. It’s pathetic.

It is time for an unambiguous statement. No more “monitoring the situation.” The time for contemplation, for a measured response, is over. Even if it’s symbolic, the body that represents the true hockey world must show courage and decisiveness.