Colorado entered the NHL playoffs this season as the defending champion. A year ago, Russian hockey player Valery Nichushkin made a huge contribution to the Avalanche’s success. This spring, he was again in the spotlight, but in a negative way. The Russian got into a story with a drunken Ukrainian who ended up in his hotel room, and was soon removed from the squad. Now the Seattle police have released a video of the same girl talking about a certain “man who took her passport” and called him a “liar and a psycho.”

What happened at the hotel

Nichushkin started the season in a great mood. After his Stanley Cup triumph, he signed a lavish eight-year contract with the Colorado with a cap hit of over $6 million. Unfortunately, the Russian missed 29 regular season matches due to injuries, but was good in the rest of the matches. In the playoffs, he managed to play two matches in which he scored one goal. And then he disappeared.

The club kept silent, citing “personal reasons”, but it was clear that the case there was not clean. Journalists in America at first hinted that they were not allowed to tell everything they knew, then information appeared that Nichushkin had gotten into a story related to alcohol. And a little later, the Denver Post shared the details of the incident. According to them, a drunk 28-year-old Ukrainian woman was in Valery’s room, who was in an inadequate state due to severe intoxication and tried to hit the Colorado doctor. The girl refused to leave the hotel, so I had to call an ambulance.

At the same time, Nichushkin’s name was uttered only once, when it was said that everything happened in a room filmed in his name. Pepper was added to this story by the fact that the Russian has long been married to Muscovite Svetlana Gavrilyuk. And obviously she wasn’t in the hotel room. Then there were no new details of what happened, only rumors appeared that the player would continue to play for Colorado and would not return to Russia.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Alexey Kudenko

New details of a high-profile case

And now the police in Seattle, where the incident occurred, have released camera footage taken at the hotel on the day a drunk Ukrainian woman was found in Nichushkin’s room. In the video, team doctor Bradley Changstrom talks to a police officer and reports that the girl was found in the hockey player’s room by Colorado employees about an hour and a half before the ambulance was called.

We tried to get her out of the room. And she was obviously drunk. It’s clear that I couldn’t put her in a taxi because of security, Changström says in the footage posted by 9news.

In another moment, a girl on a stretcher got into the frame. Apparently, it was the same Ukrainian woman who loudly stated the following.

This man took my passport. He is a liar and a psycho. And generally very bad,” she said.

It is worth noting that the girl did not name Nichushkin, and the hockey player himself never appeared on the 20-minute cut from the cameras. But the video got the Denver police officer on duty, Lieutenant Todd Fuller, who traveled with the Colorado as a bodyguard. He explained to the Seattle police that there was no crime, and the incident was the result of severe intoxication.

The club has not yet made official statements about Nichushkin and whether he will continue his career in Colorado. It is obvious that the matter is not easy there, otherwise the Avalanche would have published some kind of press release long ago. The summer for the Russian NHL star will be difficult and nervous.

Well-known Russian coach Ilya Vorobyov believes that Florida head coach Paul Maurice realized that at some point Russian players in the NHL should be given more time.

Vorobyov in the 2012/13 season was part of the coaching staff of Maurice at Metallurg Magnitogorsk. In the final of the upcoming Stanley Cup, Florida will play against Vegas. Both clubs have never won the Stanley Cup before, the final series starts on June 3rd.

This is his second Stanley Cup final. Rod Brindamore then played in his Carolina, whom he now beat in the playoffs in a coaching confrontation. Paul retired from hockey early with an eye injury, became a coach early, started in the minor leagues, climbed early. By the way, 10 years ago, he put on glasses not because of poor eyesight, but because he saw with only one eye. He was insured that, God forbid, nothing happened to the second.

I would be very happy with his championship, as well as, I repeat, the championship of Sergei Bobrovsky and Sasha Barkov. After a year at Magnitogorsk, Maurice told me that he began to understand the Russian guys more. After all, here and in the NHL are completely different environments, language. In the NHL, everything is required immediately, and if you don’t fulfill it, then you are eliminated if you are not a superstar. Now Paul understands that at some points in the NHL, the Russians need to be given more time to open up, ”Championship” quotes Vorobyov.