NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters on Wednesday that the league was caught off guard about the conversation that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump previously had regarding a hockey competition between American and Russian players.
“We learned about it from the media reports,” Bettman said at the annual NHL GM meetings in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I’m not going to speculate or anything else. It is what it is.”
According to a summary released by the Kremlin on Tuesday, United States president Trump reportedly lent support to Russian president Putin’s idea of organizing hockey matches in the U.S. and Russia featuring NHL and KHL players. The conversation between the two leaders occurred during a phone call about Russia’s war in Ukraine, though the White House’s statement did not mention hockey.
The NHL also released a statement on Tuesday, saying it became aware of the conversation between Trump and Putin after the fact.
“Obviously, we were not a party to those discussions, and it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time,” the league’s statement said.
Bettman referred to that statement at a press conference recapping three days of NHL GM meetings in Florida, where he talked about the success of the 4 Nations Face-Off and the upcoming international calendar. NHL players are expected to attend the 2026 Olympics in Milan, Italy, after not participating in the 2018 and 2022 Olympics. National hockey federations had to use players from outside the NHL during the last two Winter Games.
Whether Russia will have a team in Milan remains to be seen.
The IIHF suspended Russia and Belarus from international competition since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. That suspension remains in place through at least the end of the 2025-26 season. But the International Olympic Committee decides on Russian participation in the Olympics.
When the NHL and NHLPA announced in February the 2028 World Cup of Hockey tournament – which will be run separately from the IIHF – both parties noted they will monitor world events before deciding on whether Russian players will participate or not.
“I’d love to see our Russian players playing in these tournaments again,” NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh said in February. “They’re incredible hockey players. The issues are political. Not political as far as the NHLPA – it’s world politics we have to get through. I’m hoping that as we get closer to the Olympics, closer to the World Cup, we will start seeing Russian athletes back in the competition.”
“The international federation just voted to keep Russia out of many competitions, as have many other sports, and we’re going to have to see what the International Olympic committee does,” Bettman also said in February before the 4 Nations Face-Off, which didn’t include Russian players. “But we have enough time to deal with the realities with what the world situation looks like before then.”
The KHL left the jurisdiction of the Russian Hockey Federation and became a non-member organization of the IIHF before the 2024-25 season. In May of 2024, the IIHF also fined the Russian Hockey Federation $1.1 million for violating the IIHF International Transfer Regulations when signing Philadelphia Flyers Ivan Fedotov to a contract with CSKA Moscow of the KHL.
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