Luc Tardif can be paying shut consideration to world occasions over the following few months.
The door for considered one of hockey’s powers to rejoin the fold may just quickly swing open.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has indicated he plans to paintings to finish Russia’s conflict in Ukraine when he returns to the White Area later this month.
If that occurs, the trickle-down impact may just come with a lifting of Russia’s ban from global pageant that’s been in position because the nation invaded its neighbour in February 2022
“We need to let the door open once conceivable,” Tardif, the president of the Global Ice Hockey Federation, stated Sunday.
“It is going to be attention-grabbing to look what’s going to occur within the subsequent two months.”
Russia has been frozen out of the sector junior hockey championship — the 2025 tournament concluded Sunday in Ottawa — at the side of different males’s, ladies’s and para hockey tournaments.
Tardif stated a choice at the box for subsequent 12 months’s international juniors in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., can be made in February.
He added the IIHF can even press the Global Olympic Committee on a solution for the 2026 Video games in Milan and Cortina, Italy, that can see NHL avid gamers go back after a 12-year absence.
Get breaking Nationwide information
For information impacting Canada and world wide, join breaking information indicators delivered immediately to you after they occur.
“The organizing committees have to grasp who’s enjoying to prepare a agenda,” Tardif stated on the IIHF’s remaining press convention in Ottawa. “The groups even have to look precisely what is going to be their agenda.”
Tardif stated having Russia and Belarus, which used to be additionally banned because of its make stronger for the conflict, could be just right information for hockey and the sector.
“We would like them again once conceivable,” he stated. “It is going to imply the conflict can be over.
“(Russia) is ignored for any pageant. However allow them to come too early, that’s now not going to be just right.”
Tardif used to be additionally requested concerning the NHL’s plans for a world agenda that is going out of doors the IIHF sphere with the impending 4 International locations Face-Off and a push to carry a Global Cup each and every two years starting in 2028.
Tardif stated the NHL has floated the theory of a Global Cup in Europe, however added that might be tricky with the lads’s international championships, which can be held each and every spring.
He additionally identified the IIHF doesn’t grasp its males’s worlds in North American as a result of it might struggle with the NHL playoffs.
“We would like the similar appreciate,” Tardif stated. “The need to prepare a contest in combination, we will be able to do it within the Olympic Video games, remains to be there. However what we wish is a partnership — equality within the partnership. We made a proposition on the finish of December, so now we open the dialogue about that, and I am hoping we will be able to have the similar luck because the Olympic Video games.
“However we nonetheless were given so much to talk about.”
REFFING STANDARD
Canadian fanatics and avid gamers have been left fuming after the underperforming nationwide crew used to be bounced from the sector juniors within the quarterfinals for a 2nd instantly 12 months.
The host country’s efficiency used to be pockmarked via undisciplined play, however the referees did the squad no favours in its knockout-round loss to Czechia, together with two questionable consequences for kneeing.
“If you need me to make an apology, I will be able to do it,” Tardif stated. “I’m now not at the ice. I’m now not a referee, and I need to give protection to the referee. Get well and analyze what’s just right or now not. That’s just like the participant. For a large number of video games, every now and then that’s self-discipline and every now and then that’s possibly a foul name — possibly — however that’s human.”
2027 HOST CITIES
Hockey Canada has nonetheless but to announce the host towns for the 2027 international juniors in Alberta.
The province held a couple of pandemic-impacted tournaments in 2021 and 2022. Calgary is construction a brand new NHL area, however Scotia Position isn’t anticipated to be in a position till the autumn of 2027.
COSTELLO HONOURED
The IIHF introduced the sector junior MVP trophy has been renamed the Murray Costello Award.
Costello, who led the Canadian Beginner Hockey Affiliation and Hockey Canada as president for twenty years, died in July at age 90.
&replica 2025 The Canadian Press
Discover more from The Mass Trust
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
