The International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF still gives points to Russia, even though the country is banned from the World Cup. The matter is somewhat embarrassing for the IIHF.
17:33•Updated 17:48
Russian ice hockey players have not participated in national team tournaments after the 2022 Olympics. The IIHF excluded Russia and Belarus from the World Cup program after the war of aggression began.
Despite that, after the men’s World Cup that just ended, Russia rose to second place in the international ranking, ahead of Finland. The reason is that the IIHF decided to continue awarding ranking points to Russia and Belarus based on their pre-bracket success.
Chairman of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association and member of the IIHF Council Heikki Hietanen commented on Russian and Belarusian points rewards for Urheilu.
– It does look a bit funny, Hietanen admits.
Russia passed Finland, because due to its pre-war discus success, Russia again got the third most points, while Finland was eighth in the World Cup and the points pool was reduced.
– It’s starting to be several years behind them without them (Russia) playing. Is it right that they still get the points they once earned? Hietanen asks.
According to the Finnish member of the IIHF, the matter has been taken into account in the international federation.
– We are now discussing how to deal with it in the future. It was the decision of the situation at the time, we didn’t want to punish them by dropping the ranking or losing points, but ended up with this solution.
However, the IIHF has not yet made any decisions to change the current situation.
– But of course we will think about these again, Hietanen answers.
What would be fair?
When a decision was made once before to distribute list points to Russia and Belarus, what has caused the sense of the decision to be questioned even within the IIHF?
– In general, we have thought about how fair this situation is for other countries, Hietanen says.
According to Hietanen, there has been no consideration of the possible return of Russia and Belarus within the IIHF. The decision should be made in time to get the right teams on the league ladder. Russia and Belarus would return to the main league with the current system.
If Russia and Belarus were to come back, the IIHF might be in a difficult situation. Ukraine will play in the A group of the first division in 2025 and aim for promotion to the main league. Such a situation is possible that Ukraine would be a country to be dropped from the series due to Russia or Belarus. Everyone understands what this would look like.
– It’s quite pointless to start speculating and throwing your own positions, time will tell how this goes. Very quickly, there is no such situation in sight that Russia or Belarus would be returning to the World Cup, Hietanen says.
In Hietanen’s opinion, the ranking system is good except for the oddities caused by Russia.
– There is no need to change the system per se, but if Russia’s position is maintained, there will be such funny situations. It has been discussed whether something should be done to Russia’s scoring or not. No decisions have been made.
According to Hietanen, the points scored by Russia will be discussed again at the next IIHF meeting.