- The IOC provisionally lifted the Russian Olympic Committee’s suspension on Tuesday, ending a near three-year ban
- Russian hockey teams stay sidelined because the IIHF ban is still in place
- Read below for what it means for Ovechkin and a possible Russian team at the 2028 World Cup of Hockey
Russia is a step closer to returning to the Olympics.
The IOC’s executive board provisionally lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee on Tuesday, ending a ban that dated to the weeks after the 2022 Beijing Games. Recommendations that had limited Russian athletes to competing as neutrals no longer apply.
The IOC put it plainly:
Hockey is a different story. Russia stays banned by the International Ice Hockey Federation, a suspension that’s now four years old, and Tuesday’s ruling hands that call back to the IIHF instead of settling it.
That suspension has kept Alex Ovechkin, Artemi Panarin and Andrei Vasilevskiy off the international stage. It also shut them out of the Milan Olympics this past winter, the first Games the NHL sent players to since Sochi in 2014.
Ovechkin, for one, isn’t slowing down. He already committed to a 22nd NHL season at age 40:
There’s a real case the hockey ban could ease. The IIHF said in March it would re-evaluate its stance on Russian national and club teams, and it reinstated Belarus for the 2026-27 season a short time ago.
Then there’s the 2028 World Cup of Hockey. The NHL runs that tournament and isn’t bound by the IIHF, though commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league will take its cue from the wider sports world, which leaves Russia’s spot far from guaranteed.
A healthy Russian roster could throw Ovechkin, Panarin, Vasilevskiy, Kirill Kaprizov and Nikita Kucherov at the rest of the world. Watching a group like that sit out another marquee event would be strange. The IIHF holds the next move.
