The World Juniors is a wonderful time of year, where everyone comes together to get really, really into teenager hockey and making value judgements about their country and others about the results. Recently the tournaments have been really, really good; and this year’s tourney in Red Deer and Edmonton is sure to be a real delight!
So naturally someone had to come in and stop that and make a big huge mess that could put the entire tournament, and the structure that reinforced it, in jeopardy.
And this
time it wasn’t even the IIHF’s fault!
What happened exactly?
The Court of Arbitration for Sport, a major international court based in Lausanne, Switzerland; designed to deal with state-level sports concerns, ruled last Friday that the Russian Federation should be allowed to participate in tournaments run by the IIHF, which largely governs all major international Ice Hockey tournaments in the world. This ruling would be effective immediately.
Their ruling is as follows:
…This year, CAS has received three separate appeals by the Russian Ice Hockey Federation (RIHF) against the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) concerning the participation of Russian teams in IIHF competitions and participation of the RIHF in an IIHF Congress. Today, CAS upheld one of these appeals, and the IIHF are ordered to allow the participation of Russian teams…
…In January 2026, the IIHF Council decided not to reintegrate Russian teams into IIHF competitions for the 2026-2027 season, citing safety and security concerns. The RIHF appealed this decision to the IIHF Disciplinary Board, and the decision was annulled in May 2026. The matter was sent back to the IIHF Council to re-analyse it based on safety, security, operational, and sporting plans. In June 2026, the IIHF Council decided to maintain their initial decision not to reintegrate Russian teams...
…The CAS Panel, composed of Mr Giulio Palermo as President (Italy), Mr Ismail Selim (Egypt) and Mr Mark Hovell (UK), found that the IIHF arguments citing safety, security and other concerns were not supported by sufficient evidence. They noted that the IIHF Disciplinary Board already found that the evidence was insufficient to establish the legal requirements for non-participation. The Panel unanimously concluded that, in the light of the applicable IIHF regulations, only substantiated security concerns could outweigh athletes of a particular nationality to participate in competitions. Consequently, the appeal was upheld.
This ruling ends a 5 year ban that started back in 2022 thanks to the Russian Federation’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which still roils to this day and has claimed the lives of thousands, if not millions at this point.
The IIHF, had this to say about the ruling yesterday:
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) expresses its disappointment with the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to allow the Russian Ice Hockey Federation in entering a Russian Team in all IIHF Championships with immediate effect.
The IIHF disagrees with this aspect of the ruling and maintains that its decisions were necessary to protect the safety and security of all participants and safeguard the integrity of its competitions.
While the IIHF respects the authority of CAS and will act in accordance with its ruling, the outcome does not remove the concerns that informed its assessments.The ruling also has significant practical implications for competitions already at an advanced stage of preparation. Changes to participation require extensive coordination with the relevant Member National Associations, organizing committees and host authorities, including a review of competition formats, schedules, travel and accommodation arrangements, and safety and security measures. These decisions made by CAS do not consider the practical elements which cannot be implemented immediately…
…The IIHF will urgently assess the steps and time required to give effect to the ruling and address its operational consequences. The safety of all participants and the integrity of each championship will remain central to this work.
Further information on implementation and the practical arrangements for the competitions affected will be communicated in due course.
How everybody else is responding
Well just about everybody has given out a statement, but as it usually is in hockey, everyone shrugged their shoulders, started going back to their starting positions, and started setting early tournament ros-
I’m kidding just about everybody is mad as hell.
The most obvious concern is that a bunch of countries that are either close to Russia, Ukraine, or both are actively refusing to play Russia if they show up.
Finland; famously frosty on Russia at the best of times, has built a coalition with Sweden, Germany, Latvia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Czechia at lightspeed to refuse to play the Russians if they’re allowed to play at any and all levels. Turku, a host city for the 2028 World Juniors, is actively threatening to withdraw as host. Multiple companies; Skoda, Volkswagen, AJ Produkter, and Strauss; logos you may not immediately recognize but will almost assuredly notice if they leave the ice surface, have either threatened or are actively pulling out of this year’s tournaments. Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport (a real position, I am told) basically said whatever restrictions Canada has for Russian athletes is gonna stay in place if they’re allowed for the WJC, and it doesn’t sound like their Foreign Minister is super jazzed about the idea either. The DEB, Germany’s head office for ice hockey, is currently in Berlin discussing if they’d like to withdraw consideration for the host of the 2028 tourney.
The Czechs, who are in very close proximity to what’s happening in Ukraine, are actively considering banning Russian/Belarusian players from getting into the country at all, and their president is more than happy to sign that into law if it’s brought to his desk. This of course means they’ll effectively be banning the Russian U18 women’s team from participating in the U18 Worlds this January in Ostrava.
The USA has been quiet about it, but I can only imagine they’re probably not gonna be thrilled with being the only other team at the World Championships if this keeps up.
What can the IIHF even do here?
It is important to remember this decision was not their choice. The IIHF has been adamant that they do not want to have the Russian Federation at their tournaments and has not budged on that fact throughout the last five years; especially now that sponsors are pulling out.
In fact, kicking the can down the road on reviewing this ban has been the strategy for most of it’s length, as any and all reviews it had to publicly disclose, which riled up the member nations, and just about all of them have largely ended on “Safety concerns. Sorry. Kick Rocks.” and that has satisfied everyone aside from the Red Machine…but now the Red Machine has to be in the tournaments this year.
You gotta make it happen now…somehow. A major point of concern is that the CAS did not set any particular guidance on how to reintegrate Russia back into their tournaments. This is now the single biggest defining point of discussion about this decision.
Russia’s lack of participation doesn’t mean that the tournaments have held an empty space; the IIHF structure is resilient to the idea of member nations dropping out if they have to, able to just promote the next best team into the Championship level, and the problem both Russia and the IIHF have is that because they’ve been out for five years, there’s no guarantee they would have remained at that level through the last five years and it would be enormously unfair to Norway’s U20 team to kick them out of contention even if they weren’t in a good position to keep their space; they earned it, Russia didn’t. Further, Ukraine just earned promotion to the World Championship last year, and if they drop Russia in there and both teams meet…what the hell do you think is going to happen? I guarantee you they’re not gonna play an IIHF compliant game.
And they have to figure all of this out in a month.
One thing it could do is draw from FIFA and FIBA’s playbook, which has not actually “banned” Russia from international competition, it’s just turned a blind eye to teams not showing up to play; denying Russia the capacity to advance or gain points; leaving them in a constant state of showing up to waste time, but also saying that they are participating.
For some levity, I suggest malicious compliance; allow Russia to compete…but backdate their performances from 2022 onward.
For instance, if they would like to participate in the IIHF World Championships, they would have to accept terms in writing that state they did not field a team in 2022 through 2026, which means they’ve played no games, accrued no points in the standings, and thus have been relegated to World Championships Division 2 Group B. For the WJC team, they’d be kicking it in Istanbul for Division 3 Group A, and the Womens Worlds squad would be in the exact same boat. This means it would take Russia over half a decade of uninterrupted promotion to get back to where they were and they cannot falter once. This either pisses them off so badly or directly puts them in the path of the Ukrainian team in Division I Group A at the Championship level in four years, which would then necessitate restarting potential bans due to much more substantial safety concerns.
And the only answer you should give to them about it is “What, didn’t think you were gonna be playing Belgium and Thailand in the Fatih district? Tough, dawg! Show up! You know how many times Austria’s survived the executioner’s blade at World’s? Be more like them! ”
The IIHF really doesn’t need this right now
The ruling on this appeal is sort of the last thing the IIHF needs right now.
They’re already in a protracted fight with the USA and Canada over their sweater manufacturers, who are not the IIHF approved manufacturer of True Hockey, but both countries had already applied for exemptions prior to the decision and already have official sweater manufacturers, so that’s in court and almost certainly the kind of legal snarl that can make your cells divide when they start digging into the contracts and dates and going through appeals; all of which is only for the IIHF’s benefit as they want to be able to sell extremely mediocre sweaters that harken back to the mid-00’s in the worst way. The kind of thing they’d almost assuredly tell teams to just grin and bear were it not Canada and the US complaining about it.
This kind of thing dropping less than a month before the World Juniors? With absolutely no guidance at all on how to actually get this done? Chosen by an outside court? Agonizing. I wouldn’t wish that kind of organizational nightmare to my worst enemy.
How does this effect the Bruins?
To be honest? Not much!
…Yet.
While it isn’t going to necessarily bug the main team, there’s a non-zero chance that their prospects; guys like Dans Locmelis, Oscar Olsson, Dean Letourneau, and Nils Bartholdsson could end up on their respective teams and will have noteworthy absences on their tournaments. Of course, given how hard some teams are going on this, some might just pull out altogether, meaning that some prospects miss a major tourney due to something entirely out of their control, and I’m sure they would’ve chosen to attend had they been given the opportunity.
Where this could become a real problem is if it follows the players home for 2028. Sure, NHL teams and owners are probably in better positions to demand the stars play the Rooskies if they want them to; but if the pressure once again mounts as an avenue for the WCoH’s sponsors to suddenly get cold feet and demand less russian action, then they may not have much choice. After all, there will be no Ovechkin to sell the idea of a Russian team to fans after this year, and Nikita Kucherov isn’t exactly a patch on that unless he ends up somewhere the mediasphere can grasp onto.
Thank god the WCoH has Team Europe as a fallback if that goes belly up. Maybe turn them into Team Adidas? They probably already have a considerable amount of experience with the brand.
With such precious time before the first of the major IIHF tournaments kicks off, we’ll have to keep an eye on what they decide to do, as it could have major ramifications on the international game going forward for the next few years.
We’ll keep you posted on how this turns out in our World Juniors primer this December.
