The Russian doping scandal has hit the hockey world and at the Olympic level nonetheless. According to reports, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) will be asking for the names of 14 players who were listed in a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) earlier in July.
The report has already caused a major stir for Russian athletes and their involvement in the international games, but according to the report the host country of the 2014 Winter Olympics had 14 players who took part in the men’s and women’s hockey programs that were flagged for doping.
Now, according to Sportsnet’s Scott Lewis, IIHF president Rene Fasel will be asking WADA for the names of the 14 players.
“We will do it…, at least if we find out they tested positive we will of course suspend them,” said Fasel, according the Lewis article.
The men’s team rostered 16 NHL players at the 2014 games – including Semyon Varlamov, Nikita Nikitin, Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk, (currently suspended) Slava Voynov, Alexander Semin, Nikolai Kulemin, Artem Anisimov, Valeri Nichushkin, Fedor Tyutin, Sergei Bobrovsky, Alexei Emelin, Anton Belov, Andrei Markov and Vladimir Tarasenko.
Even with the star power of the men’s team, both Russian teams finished outside the medal standings at home.
While the doping scandal – to this point – has been the focal point of the IIHF and the international committees, there’s no word yet on whether there will be implications on the NHL if any of their players were named in the WADA report.