[ARETE] Sport and Society - Four Nations Hockey

[richard crepeau]

Sport and Society for Arete
February 12, 2025

The Four Nations Hockey Tournament begins today. The National Hockey League and two television networks are touting this as a matchup as the best-on-best of Hockey. Of course, it is not. It is the best hockey players in the National Hockey League from four countries. The four are Canada, Sweden, Finland, and The United States.
At the last World Championship in 2024, the Gold Medal winner was Czechia, while Switzerland won the silver medal. Neither of these teams will be at this best-on-best tournament. Also missing is Germany, Slovakia, and Russia. There are 57 Russians on NHL rosters, and many of the top players at every position are Russians. They will not be participating despite being among the very best at every position.
So, it is a stretch to claim that the Four Nations event will showcase the best players in the world. Also, it seems more than a little curious that an event organized by the NHL excludes a significant number of NHL players. If the Russians are not eligible to play in this event, why are they eligible to play in the NHL?
The exclusion of the Russians stems from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also they are not allowed to play in any International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) competitions. Given this ban, should the United States be granting work visas to these players? Or should players who support the invasion and are supporters of Vladmir Putin, such as Alex Ovechkin, be playing in the NHL?
The answer to these questions is, it depends.
Since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, a crazy quilt of bans and restrictions has developed across the world with various sports federations setting their own rules and regulations for participation.
The IIHF has banned Russia and Belarus from participation in all of its events, and that ban was recently extended into 2026. Oddly, the IIHF continues to include Russia in its ranking system for hockey with the Russian men ranked second in the world and the Russian women sixth in the world. How Russia can maintain these rankings while not participating in world competitions is one of those IIHF mysteries.
The International Skating Union(ISU), the governing body for figure skating, condemned the invasion of Ukraine. This closed ISU Grand Prix competitions to Russia and Belarus skaters, and it cancelled the Russian leg of the Grand Prix events. The Grand Prix series are the major events of the international figure skating season. This ban has also closed the European Figure Skating Championship to Russian skaters. By all accounts this means that the best figure skaters in the world will not be participating in international competitions. However, recent announcements indicate that a path to participation may be reopening.
The International Olympic Committee performs a slightly different dance, allowing Russians to participate as individuals without national identification or use of their national flag or anthem. The non-national identification, after using several different designations, has now settled on “Individual Neutral Athlete” with the acronym “AIN” derived from the French. However, there are no team competitions with this sort of work-around.
In tennis, there is no single standard. Each major tournament sets its own regulations. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) expelled the Russian and Belarus federation from the ITF, but did not ban individual players from events. This has allowed Russian and Belarus participation in the Grand Slam events.
However, in 2022 Wimbledon banned Russian and Belarus players from competition. Prominent players and other tennis organizations did not support that decision and, after one year, the authorities at the All-England Club backed away from the ban allowing participation without country identification.
Russian participation in events, even when no ban existed, has been varied. The Russian Wrestling Federation and the Russian Judo Federation decided not to participate at the Paris Olympics. While competitors in many other sports, including swimming, did participate.
Russia was banned from the World Chess Federation Championship in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.  This was a major development as chess is one of the leading sports in Russia.
No pattern of bans, expulsions, and individual exceptions seems to exist, while team bans and federation expulsions seem to be fairly common approaches. At the same time, whatever drives these decisions seems to have no common root except the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Are there any conclusions to be drawn from any of this? Perhaps not. However, several questions arise from the tortured landscape.
Have behaviors by nations or governing bodies been affected? Are individual athletes the only ones being punished? Is there a long-term diminishing of individual sports or sports in general as a result of these bans? Is power and money the actual ruling factor in these decisions? If a nation other than Russia were to invade another nation, e.g. a United States invasion of Greenland, would these sorts of bans and sanctions be levied against that nation?
These and other questions could help fill the time between periods of the Four Nations Hockey Tournament. Meanwhile, enjoy the not quite best of the best in hockey, knowing that regardless, it will be excellent hockey.
On Sport and Society this is Dick Crepeau reminding you that you don’t have to be a good sport to be a bad loser.

Copyright 2025 by Richard C. Crepeau








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/sport_literature_association/attachments/20250213/936da7a4/attachment-0001.html>