The Sibir club received four technical defeats for violating the limit on foreign players

A rather loud emergency happened in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The Sibir club was given four technical defeats for violating the limit on foreign players. The Novosibirsk team released four hockey players with the status of foreigners onto the ice, assuming that Fedor Gordeev, who has Russian citizenship but has lived almost his entire life in North America, does not have it.

The Continental Hockey League announced that it immediately counted four technical defeats to the Sibir club. They were awarded to her in the matches of the current regular season that took place at the beginning of the season. We are talking about the meetings “Avangard” – “Siberia”, “Barys” – “Siberia”, “Siberia” – “Barys” and “Siberia” – “Avtomobilist”.

The reason for the sanctions was a violation of subclause 2.3 of clause 2 of Article 41 of the KHL Sports Regulations – the application for a single match exceeded the established limit on the number of hockey players in the status of “foreign player”, that is, the limit on foreign players. There can only be three of them in a team’s application for a game. In these games, exactly three players played for Siberia, officially designated on the KHL website as foreigners – Canadians Andy Andreoff, Taylor Beck and Trevor Murphy.

Siberia was let down by defender Fyodor Gordeev, who appeared there in the off-season. On the KHL website, a Russian flag is placed opposite his name.

But Gordeev, who has lived almost his entire life in Canada, also has citizenship of this country. The KHL clarified that “after identifying the violation, an additional check was carried out on the sports citizenship of the hockey player established for the season,” “who has a Russian passport.” According to its results, “it was confirmed that Gordeev does not have the right to play for the Russian national team,” thus being a foreign player. At the same time, “the club was aware of the player’s foreign status during the application for the season.” The KHL noted that “in accordance with the regulations, responsibility for controlling the number of foreign players declared by the club for the match lies with the club.”

The consequences of the incident look very serious for Siberia. In the matches for which she was punished, the team scored four points, but has now lost them. Before this, the Novosibirsk team occupied ninth place in the Eastern Conference table, but had the same number of points as the eighth-placed Neftekhimik, in the last position giving the right to play in the playoffs. In the regular championship, “Sibir”, which instantly lagged behind him, has 16 meetings left to play.

Alexey Dospehov