The Uncertain Future of Russian Ice Hockey: How Slavic Tensions are Leading to a Crackdown on NHL Players

Referred to in the West as “The Red Army,” the CSKA club of the KHL has historically had military affiliations. Photo by Klim Musalimov.

The year is 2006, and bodyguards have been patrolling an apartment building in Helsinki, Finland for days, protecting a young Russian man hiding inside. Just blocks away, his countrymen hunt for him; they know he plans to flee to the U.S. Our defector isn’t who you would expect. He’s not a double-agent carrying state secrets or a journalist seeking refuge. Rather, he’s a hockey player.

At age 20, Evgeni Malkin, future three-time Stanley Cup champion and forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins, made international headlines in August of 2006 when he went missing upon arrival at a Helsinki, Finland airport, only to reappear days later in the United States, where he promptly tenured his resignation to his then team, the Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Russian Superleague. Malkin, who was picked second overall in the 2004 National Hockey League (NHL) entry draft, had been coerced into signing an extension with Metallurg a week earlier, crushing his dreams of playing in the NHL. When he initially turned down the contract extension, team officials had followed him home. There, for hours, they threatened his reputation and questioned his patriotism until Malkin succumbed and signed in the middle of the night. With his passport held hostage by Metallurg, Malkin’s only path to escape was to flee during the team’s trip to a tournament in Finland. He hid in an apartment under a fake name, his location unknown to even his parents. When he finally received a visa, Malkin boarded a flight to America, where he began one of the greatest NHL careers of our generation.

As operatic as Malkin’s escape was, it was not terribly unique when it comes to the general experiences of Russians in the National Hockey League. Sixteen years prior, Sergei Federov, considered to be one of the greatest Russian players of all time, had defected from the Soviet Union to the United States following a complex operation engineered by the Detroit Red Wings. Even today, the attempts at defectment continue. Earlier this year, Ivan Fedotov, Russia’s best goalie, signed a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers. In late June, as he was preparing for his move to America, Fedotov was suddenly detained for evasion of military service and was consequently shipped off to Siberia.

Sports are inherently political. When athletes win, they serve as a source of power and national pride. For Russians, ice hockey reigns supreme. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia pulled together the Russian Superleague, replacing the Soviet Championship League. The Superleague struggled to compete with the NHL, especially when it came to salaries. To develop a league that could rival the West, Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin pooled together their money and connections to create the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). In many ways, the KHL is the pet project of Vladamir Putin. He’s been its most vocal supporter, pushing for its expansion across Eurasia. President Putin’s influence can be seen throughout the league, from the vast number of pro-Putin appointees on the KHL board, to rigging the 2017-2018 season so his favorite team would win. As such, the act of leaving Russia to play in the NHL is seen as an act of disloyalty against the leader of the nation, and by extension, one's own homeland. But, in the midst of Russian malfeasance both on the ice and off, with regards to its recent invasion of Ukraine, the NHL must stand firm in its commitment to Russian athletes on its rosters, for ice hockey has once again become a proxy battle in a broader conflict between Russia and the West.

The rivalry between Russian and North American hockey has always been embroiled in politics. During the Cold War, international hockey games between the two regions acted as proxy battles, the varying styles of play epitomizing the cultural clash of the Soviet Union and the West. Its height came during the Winter Olympics of 1980, when an underdog US team faced off against the reigning Russian team and won in one of the greatest upsets in sports history, an ideological victory that would soon parallel the fall of the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, many of Russia’s greatest players would defect to the NHL. Russian hockey, which had been dominant for decades, would never be the same again. Conversely, North America’s National Hockey League would go on to become the greatest league in the world.

Fedotov’s detention comes at a time when the future of Russian players in North America hangs in the balance. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian ice hockey is experiencing a renaissance, especially as their own professional league, the KHL, continues to gain prominence, growing even beyond Russian borders. With the backing of Putin, the league’s legitimacy has grown since its establishment in 2008. Their contracts are paying better than before, and younger players are choosing to sign longer contracts with top KHL teams. As a result, drafting Russian players has become a gamble for NHL teams; there’s the risk that a player will be tied down overseas, unable to come over for years. 

Compounded with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the presence of Russian athletes competing at the professional level has become highly controversial, resulting in Russian teams being banned from most major conferences. The National Hockey League, the only North American sports league with a notable Russian player presence, severed its ties with the Kontinental Hockey League back in March, a week after its statement condemning Russia and suspension of Russian business relations. While Russian hockey players remain active on NHL rosters, the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), a major junior league, made the decision to ban Russian players from their import draft.

A further aggravation, the Kremlin has been repressing dissent, stifling free speech with censorship that rivals that of the Soviet Union era. Back in March, Putin named pro-Western Russians as a target of his crackdown, going so far as to say that anyone with a tie to the West was a traitor. With the resurgence of Russian hockey and the Kremlin’s renewed Cold War, it’s impossible to consider the circumstances of Fedotov’s detainment separately from the war Russia has waged on Ukraine.

By the end of the 2021-2022 season, some NHL teams and representatives began to fear that the ongoing tensions could lead Russia to prevent Russian NHL players from returning to their teams as many players return home in the offseason to see their families. It quickly became clear that even their biggest stars weren’t safe from attacks from the Russian government. Just days after the news of Fedotov’s detainment shook the hockey world, Kirill Kaprizov, Minnesota Wild’s rising star and one of the biggest Russian players in the NHL, was accused of purchasing a fraudulent military identification card. Kaprizov fled for the US, leading to a month-long struggle as he tried to return to Minnesota, only successfully arriving in early August.

The political and cultural capital of hockey within Russia and its direct ties to Putin make the potential rise of the KHL a cause for concern. The National Hockey League serves as a tool for establishing Western dominance and diminishing that nationalist appeal of the KHL. Even so, the path forward for Russians in the NHL isn’t clear. While drafting Russian players becomes more contentious year after year, there’s also the question of whether the NHL should suspend Russian player contracts altogether. Here is what reins true: the dream of an NHL career has been powerful enough to cause near-theatrical defectments for Russian players. As a heated war continues in the fields of Europe, the NHL must find the courage to fight another one on the ice.

Heather Chen is a staff writer for CPR. A first-year at Columbia College, she plans to major in Sustainable Development.