There was hockey

Pretend that nothing is happening, it becomes more and more difficult

Let's talk for hockey. For its glorious past, distant and not quite distant, for making the game of great people, for me and me who have been sitting at the screens from childhood and filled with colored pencils of the tables of olympiads and world championships, for those who are still hockey, for his immortal soul, for what he was and at least just remained.

"So they play!" Play. In the Continental Hockey League, the playoffs are in full swing, the second stage is about to begin, not all the legionnaires left, Ovechkin caught up with Jagra, drill some kind of sparkles of positive, but they go out on the fly, because we are hanging over all, like a stove, the feeling that the recycling of optimism does not help anyone. Even those who do not hide delight about what is happening - hang over them too. There is still hockey, but not as a holiday and joy, but as an attempt to cling to the previous life and its sensations.

But the life of the former will no longer be, let the awareness of this come gradually and inevitably. Hockey was not tired - he sharply, like much more, went to the side of the road,

He is still able to attract and excite, but let everyone ask himself how capable.

Yes, about the glorious past. This year is special for him. In 2022, we had to celebrate at least two sign dates-the 100th anniversary of Vsevolod Bobrov and the 50th anniversary of the Super Series of the USSR-Canada, in which the same union was led by the same Vsevolod Mikhailovich. Bobrov-perhaps the largest domestic athlete of the last century, a symbol man, but, first of all, nevertheless-a person, not a monument or character of feature and not very feature films. In Vsevolod Bobrov, you must continue to peer at least in order to better understand yourself.

The USSR national team with Bobrov lost the 1972 super-series, but won the whole world. I'm talking about the whole world, not just about hockey. I’ll say even more - the more a long -standing confrontation from us further, the stronger its meaning. Two countries with completely different ideological systems and attitudes, it would seem, unable to understand each other, were able to agree and meet. Yes, on the ice, yes, not without the presence of all the inherent difficult time of the prejudices, yes, with a battle, strongly weighed down by root contradictions, reaching the fact that the outcome of the confrontation could be filed as a victory of a particular political system. I believe that the Soviet leaders, consent to the meeting, pursued the goal quite utilitarian - wipe the nose of the West. They did not assume that over time it would be important not who won or lost, but that this event took place at all. That it had not so much sports as a colossal humanistic effect for all of mankind. If there is an exaggeration here, then a small one.

And how will we now celebrate the two main commodity dates for our sport, with such a February-Martovsky background? How can we boast in terms of the development of the ideas of humanism, goodness and justice? If everything goes further along the path chosen by the owners of the country, then it can easily assume how we will be with the 50th anniversary and 100th anniversary. According to the athlete, they will give an attitude that Bobrov would remain Bobrov, even if he had not won the first world championship for us - 1954 and would remain unknown to the rest of the world. According to the super -series, it was even easier - they defeated the vaunted professionals in Montreal, who behaved like savages in Moscow, showing the true face of the West. If there is a genetic “anti -Western” code, then there is no problem to support it, based on the existing background.

In the later years of the confrontation between the two systems there was no complete isolation of Soviet sports, in the iron curtain there were not just cracks - there were open doors and even gates. Politics also intervened, but not total. The USSR hockey team held so many matches in the season, and in Europe, and in North America, but the current team did not dream of. I’m not talking about how good it was in the USSR - I’m talking about how our current government tried to do everything so that in Russia it was worse than then. And just do not about how she loves hockey. If I loved, I wouldn’t kill. Love sincere from fake love is distinguished by the fact that it is above any prejudices.

Let me remind you that we have by mid -March 2022. Russia is removed from participation in all international competitions of this year, including junior, youth and adult world championships, and is also deprived of the youth world championship - 2023, which has been preparing for so long in Novosibirsk and Omsk. A little more, and the International Hockey Federation will refuse Russia to hold the World Cup-2023 in St. Petersburg, so that the sanctions list tends to expand exclusively.

But there are decisions at other levels. The KHL left the Riga Dynamo, the Finnish Jokerit starred from the playoffs, the Russian clubs left without waiting for the end of the contracts, at least a dozen foreign players, mostly leaders.

The action of the memorandum of the KHL and the NHL about the respect of each other's contracts is suspended, we can only read about the best club hockey, as well as about the next sniper exploits of Alexander Ovechkin.

And with the nearest future of Alexander the Great, as with the future of other Russian stars, it is far from clear - it is possible. This also applies to possible departure from the Russian market of world hockey brands. There are things that are stronger than benefits, contract obligations and other things that work in a more or less normal life.

You can, of course, optimistically hysteria in the spirit of “Let them even roll!”, “We’ll live it ourselves!”, “Who needs these championships, we will organize our own!”, “Now there will be an opportunity to develop our youth!”. This is heard from everywhere, including from the upper reaches, but in fact, what awaits us in the near future is at least a return to prehistoric hockey times, which we so sought to overcome in the middle of the last century, even under the power of cruel and merciless.

We wanted to overcome the borders, and we did it, giving the hockey world that which he lacked - competition and high new samples of the great game, albeit late, but evaluated, including the ancestors of hockey. Our hockey, with all the absurdities, mistakes and problems, survived at the fracture of the eras and could further develop only in the global space. To believe that in the current realities he will be saved by a certain identity, naive and stupid. Only a return will save, only when it becomes possible, no one knows.

You can relate to the head of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach, you can curse it as much as you like for the “intervention of politics in sports”, but he has an iron argument: “He who is grossly violates the Olympic truce with political means, cannot condemn the consequences as politically motivated.” Dot. The question of the timing of the withdrawal of prohibitions is left open - "our further actions will depend on the situation in Ukraine."

“In the evening there will be hockey ...” - how Yuri Vizbor sang. The song is actually about the outgoing love.