Russia has already lost a handful of sporting events. Now its hockey league has lost an entire team.
Dinamo Riga announced Sunday that they have withdrawn from the KHL following the Russian invasion into Ukraine. The club, located in Riga, Latvia, is the second to leave the KHL after Jokerit, a team in Finland.
“The decision to withdraw from the KHL has been made, thus expressing a clear position of the club management,” chairman of the supervisory board J. Savickis said in a translated statement. “In such a military and humanitarian crisis, we do not see any opportunity for cooperation with the Kontinental Hockey League.
The league’s Gagarin Cup playoffs are set to start on March 1 following a pause. Three other clubs — Barys Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan), Dinamo Minsk (Belarus) and Kunlan Red Star (China) — are located outside of Russia.
Dinamo Riga’s Berzins Daniels, left, vies with Dinamo Minsk’s Usov Ilya. Xinhua/Sipa USAIt’s also possible Russia could lose hosting privileges for the 2023 World Junior Championships, and its team could be kicked out of other IIHF competitions. TSN’s Gord Miller reported on Sunday that there was wide support for removing Russia from IIHF events for the rest of 2022 and for moving the World Juniors.
Additionally, the Swiss Ice Hockey Association called for excluding the Russian and Belarusian hockey federations from the IIHF.
