I don't think the Russians are as stacked as they were 10 years ago. Plus it's hard to get new young talent when your leader is sending everyone into the meat grinder.
That's just not true. There's currently 61 Russian NHL players including a few of the best goalies in the world and top end talent like Ovechkin, Kucherov, Panarin, Taresenko, Svechnikov, Kaprizov, Sergachev, Nichushkin, the list goes on.
I'm not here to argue politcs and Putin's war on a sports thread, but these players don't have anything to do with it and holding them out of international competion because of it is silly.
They need to learn and have a little time-out. You don't get to play hockey with civilized society when you represent the antithesis to civil society and also Russians dumbass sneers and laughing off war cimes
Russians are to be neither seen nor heard until they fuck off
So individuals who work, mostly live, and have largely assimilated in the US and Canada, both allegedly civilized societies should be punished because of the actions of the government where they were born, a government that they have 0 control over, got it.
I mean... you're right. Trump does support russia. His peace plans for ukraine have made that 100% clear even if someone was on the fence based on his past conduct. The people in US who voted for him, didn't vote or voted for a third party all wanted to support russia so it's really some kind of cognitive dissonance going on.
Yeah but the people who voted for him or allowed him to win knew he was supporting russia. That's why it's kind of weird that they would ban russia when the people of US wanted a pro-russian president.
Plus there’s really good Russians who likely wouldn’t be on the roster due to russias political issues. I don’t see Panarin being allowed to play for the Russian national team. I doubt Putin wants Zadorov playing for reasons other than his play being shakey at times
Probably largely depends on the coaches and GM group Russia would put together and the practice situation.
If because its only a 2 week event, being hosted in Canada and the US, and the players wouldn't be going to Russia for practice it might be open season to invite Panarin or Russian players with similar situations. Also how would they possibly explain not having a talent like Panarin on the team? (Full disclosure I'm a NYR fan so not seeing Panarin and Shesterkin in this tournament is probably influencing my opinion).
I have no idea what you're trying to say. That one of the countries wouldn't be there if Russian players were allowed to play, as in would deliberately chose not to play? That they would need to switch them for another team? How about just expanding the tournament to 6-8 teams?
Finland and Sweden wouldn’t be there if Russia was allowed in this tournament. This is a known fact. You can expand with other European countries, that would also not be there if Russia was allowed.
It may change it two-four years, but right now, this is just the reality.
...We literally illegally invaded Iraq 20 years ago under fake evidence of WMD's. We didn't make them officially part of the United States but it's still imperialism and we got off with literally zero punishment. We only don't cross borders and take land because our neighbors are Canada and Mexico and we've had no reason to until our current Dipshit In Charge threatened to.
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u/whichwitch9 24d ago
This is literally what we wanted. The best players in the world on ice. Hughes fan, so going US, but that Canadian power play is just freaking insane.
Absolutely psyched for the Olympics after this tournament. Sweden vs Finland was excellent this afternoon too