For the third year now, Russian hockey players have not taken part in the world championships. Unfortunately, in Russia they have begun to get used to the fact that the leaders of world hockey have completely forgotten about common sense.

However, there are things that, even against the backdrop of discrimination against Russian sports and unprecedented sanctions, seem like real blasphemy. During the World Championship match in the Czech Republic, the International Hockey Federation actually erased the Russians from the history of this sport.

A humiliation that we will not forget and will not forgive.

A provocation, not a simple mistake

The International Hockey Federation decided to diversify the picture and showed an interesting infographic during the broadcast. During the confrontation between Sweden and the United States, the following text was displayed on the screen: “The Swedish team is an 11-time world champion. Only the teams of Canada (28) and the Czech Republic (11) took more titles.”

You don’t have to be a rabid hockey fan to sense something’s fishy here. Obviously, the list lacked the achievements of the national teams of Russia and the Soviet Union. Our guys won gold medals 27 times in total, five times this happened within the Russian national team, and another 22 victories were won by Soviet hockey players. Actually, the Canadians got ahead of us only in 2023, and that was thanks to Russia’s exclusion from participation in international competitions.

Thus, Russia should be at least in second place on this list. But the International Hockey Federation preferred to forget about it. There is absolutely no belief in the so-called human factor here. If it were a conditional year 2021, then such excuses could still pass. And then with sincere apologies from the IIHF and Luc Tardif personally. Now this is an obvious provocation and a deliberate erasure of Russia from the history of world hockey.

Luc Tardif / Photo: © Xavier Laine / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

The IIHF still didn’t understand anything

But the confrontation between the USSR and Canada is still, perhaps, the brightest page in the development of hockey. Valery Kharlamov, Boris Mikhailov, Vladislav Tretyak, Vyacheslav Fetisov and many others are real hockey legends who were and will be respected all over the world. Their play was admired in the USA and Canada, regardless of nationality, even despite all political differences. Still, they used to be able to separate sports from politics.

The actions of Tardif and the IIHF cannot be called anything other than disgrace and dirt. Moreover, this is so small that the organizers of the world championship in the Czech Republic should be ashamed. To exclude an entire country from world history is a real mess. Moreover, a country that has made a huge contribution to the progress of hockey and without which the very existence of the IIHF would be unrealistic.

This looks especially funny when you watch NHL matches, where Russian hockey players are literally carried in their arms. And not only stars of the level of Ovechkin, Malkin and Kucherov. Our guys are highly regarded there, hundreds of fans buy their jerseys. And no one cares about secondary factors, sanctions and so on. The IIHF will also understand this, but it will be too late. The status of the World Championship without Russia has already fallen below the plinth, and soon the medals of these competitions will completely depreciate to the level of chocolate ones.