40-year-old Russian defenseman and former NHLer Sergei Gusev has been handed down a six-month ban from playing in the KHL for doping, ESPN reports.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency handed down a vague ruling that serves the ban as punishment for “breach of anti-doping rules.”
The suspension is back dated to March 23 when his KHL squad, Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, was in the playoffs, which means his suspension is almost over as soon as it started.
Though he wasn’t a part of it, this is the second time Gusev has been on a team that gets caught up in a doping scandal. He was on the 2012 Avangard Omsk when future NHLer Anton Belov was caught doping during the Gagarin Cup Final. The follow season Belov would play his one and only NHL season, logging 57 games for the Edmonton Oilers.
Gusev may be familiar to some North American fans. He was a 3rd round draft pick for the Dallas Stars in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft. Over the course of four NHL seasons he played a total of 89 games split between the Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning, scoring four goals and 10 assists with 34 penalty minutes.