On Tuesday afternoon, there was a call that took place between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, focusing on a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine.
However, the Kremlin’s readout of the call between Trump and Putin also revealed that the leaders spoke about hockey games. Per Meredith McGraw, at the end of the Kremlin readout: “Donald Trump supported Vladimir Putin’s idea of organizing hockey matches in the United States and Russia between Russian and American players playing in the NHL and KHL.”
The second-last line of the readout indicated that Trump is on board with the idea of having Team USA take on the Russian players in a competition.
The two agreed to discuss the matter further down the road.
Russia has been banned from all International Ice Hockey Federation events since the country began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That ban has included the IIHF world junior championship along with the world championship held in the spring. The Russians were also banned for the most recent 4-nations face-off, which featured Canada, USA, Sweden and Finland.
It did not take long for the National Hockey League to issue a statement on the idea of organizing hockey matches in the United States and Russia between Russian and American players playing in the NHL and KHL. The league responded, by Chris Johnston:
“We have just become aware of the conversation between President Trump and President Putin. Obviously, we were not a party to those discussions, and it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this point.”
Now, first off, I’m wondering, how within this very serious call, did the topic of hockey come up???
Second of all, the KHL may be the second best pro league, but it’s not close. It would be like pitching the idea of seeing NHL teams against AHL teams.. no one would be interested because just like with the KHL the talent levels are not equal.
I’m going to say this, and you can ignore it if you’d like, but personally, I see nothing good coming out of anything these two discuss.
