Russia’s soul searching on ice: ‘We are lagging behind our main competitors’

Finland's Teemu Selanne celebrates his goal with his linemates as Russia's Valeri Nichushkin skates away during the first period of their men's quarter-finals ice hockey game at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, February 19, 2014. Mark Blinch / ReutersShow less

Moscow // As Russia gears up to host the 2016 Ice Hockey World Championship starting Friday, the country is struggling to revive its once feared team.

Plagued by sub-par international performances despite having some of the world’s brightest talent, Russia held a soul-searching meeting last month in the hope of solving its ongoing hockey troubles.

A televised meeting hosted by Vladimir Putin, the president, saw government and hockey federation officials, in a rare admittance of weakness, concede that Russia had been surpassed.

• See also: NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs: Previewing the second round, including Crosby v Ovechkin

“We are lagging behind our main competitors – Canada, the United States, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic – in terms of infrastructure and coaching,” Arkady Rotenberg, a long-time Putin ally who serves as chairman of the hockey federation, said at the meeting.

The World Championship, held in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, is the first major international hockey tournament in Russia since the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when its team suffered a humbling 3-1 loss to Finland in the quarter-finals of a cornerstone event of the Games.

Since National Hockey League (NHL) players have been allowed to compete in the Olympics, Russia has won two medals, a silver in 1998 and a bronze in 2002.

Meanwhile, Canada has won three gold medals and Finland, a country of 5.5 million, has reaped three bronze and one silver.

Russia’s World Championship team will be missing star forwards Alex Ovechkin and Yevgeny Malkin for at least the start of the tournament with the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins meeting in the second round of the NHL play-offs.

Several teams competing at the World Championship are also missing key players, many of whom are still in the NHL playoffs or have turned down their country’s invitation.

During the recent meeting, legendary Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretyak, now president of the Russian hockey federation, implored Putin to build three national training centres.

Rotenberg said Russia lacked some 6,000 qualified coaches and needed to build several more arenas for the sport to thrive.

Putin is mulling adopting a national hockey development programme starting in 2018 once the financial burden of hosting the Fifa World Cup will have been lifted.

Hockey experts attribute the national team’s shortcoming to an approach that focuses solely on trying to win medals instead of trying to build up the sport at grass-roots levels.

“All the changes that could be taking place in junior hockey will only give results in five, 10 years,” Igor Kuperman, the assistant general manager of the bronze medal-winning Russian Olympic team in 2002, said. “Who will look five, 10 years ahead when you have to win a medal right now?” Russia is also interested in buttressing its Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which spans from Zagreb, Croatia, to the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk, by assuring KHL players spots on its national team.

“The Russians want to show that the KHL is good. They want to have KHL players on their national teams,” said Craig Button, the former general manager of the Calgary Flames who now serves as director of scouting for Canada’s TSN sports network.

“Maybe the KHL player isn’t as good. (Russian hockey officials) also have these competing agendas. And when you have competing agendas, it’s very hard to put your best foot forward.”

Russia’s national team struggles to find a “style of play that would maximise the abilities of everybody” because it patches together a group of ill-matched players from different leagues, Button said.

Putin, who said last month that the KHL had work to do to catch up to the NHL, has charged league managers with creating a strong league that would serve as the basis of the national team.

“It’s a comment that’s laughable,” Button said. “And right there lies the problem.”

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