Strain in the puck

They decided to prepare for the Olympics with insurance

Everything, from January 15, there will be no hockey before the Olympics. “Stop” said the continental hockey league itself. But the point is not only in the pandemic, which has already been quarantined seven KHL clubs.

At the beginning of the week, the League leadership also discussed various options for the development of events. The shaft of positive tests was growing rapidly, the matches were canceled one after another, but on Tuesday after a meeting with representatives of clubs, the KHL President Alexei Morozov said that everyone came to the decision to continue the regular championship and hold the playoffs to identify the winner in fair wrestling. The calendar, of course, was already flying a somersault, but the hockey community calmed down a little: it is better to play a truncated version than not to play at all.

There was not enough calm for a day. Already on Wednesday, the “agreed decision” was dramatically changed to the opposite, and it is unlikely that the level of the Russian hockey federation is not the level.

It seems that hockey bosses were waiting for reaction from the very top. And waited.

If at this moment there is nothing more important than Olympic gold, then the KHL and FCR were to take under the visor and report that in a single patriotic impulse they did everything possible for the Russian national team.

At the official level, this sounded as concern for the health of hockey players, coaches and staff: “As of the morning of January 12, the number of players, trainers and representatives of teams, who identified positive tests for coronavirus, amounted to 171 people. The growth over the past day amounted to 60 people. In connection with the rapid increase in the number of sick, high contagiousness of the virus, the League decided to postpone game days 15, 17, 19 and 21 to later dates ... ”.

In official statements, not the word that Omicron attacked hockey players, but with high infection, coupled with unreliability of tests, the disease is mainly asymptomatic, short quarantine - everything is something like in the overseas NHL. Which, by the way, does not interrupt its championship, despite the frightening background. Moreover, regular championships in the upper and youth leagues are not interrupted in Russia. Yes, the situation is not easy, serious instances with a different level of prohibitions at the federal level will come to business, hockey bosses can praise the irony of timely measures. But so far it looks like a reinsurance with certain goals.

Involuntarily, it was a conclusion that it was required to bring out first of all the candidates to the Olympic team, and, as compensation for the interrupted season, the KHL received permission to play in the Olympic pause, which according to the plan begins on January 23-so that the wolves are fed and the sheep are whole, and the shepherds are calm for the place, and the large bosses are appropriate.

Only four game days are “removed” from the championship, but this “pebble” gives rise to an avalanche of problems.

Our hockey authorities were not ready for force majeure, without showing the necessary flexibility, which is not surprising. The fact that they hastened to bend down, making far from all the arranging decision, and even in the situation of the strictest secrecy, is also half a bastard. But the fact that hockey as a state project has been twisted as they want for a year - this is a real trouble, and the pandemic is only sharply highlighted by the ongoing chaos.

Is a honest struggle possible in the absence of leaders in the teams, including legionnaires, is a rhetorical issue. FCH President Vladislav Tretyak, approving the decision of the League, called on the clubs to support each other in difficult times, but what does this really mean does not know Vladislav Aleksandrovich himself. There are a lot of options for the development of events, and all of them, if not dead end, are close to that. It is possible that the regular championship will end with this pause, and the playoff playoffs will be completely canceled.

But this is a trifle compared to the fact that Russia can be left without the coveted Olympic gold. For the sake of such a state order, no one and nothing sorry.