How do you know that politics had anything to do with it? I am not saying that it didn't, it might have. I have not heard either way. I would think that a 6th team would be needed also. Who would that be AND would there have been enough time to play all the games in 2 weeks? Does the NHL stop the season for a longer amount of time for this? 2 weeks is long enough IMO. I need my Devils back.
It's obvious what the main reason for Russia being excluded is, considering they are excluded from all IIHF tournaments as well. They wouldn't need to add a sixth team, they could just keep the same format and have everyone play one more game - four round robin games instead of three, and then top two play in the final. This would still make the tournament a few days longer though, and they want this to be as brief as possible, so that probably further enhanced their decision to exclude Russia.
Either way, I'm enjoying watching this tournament, but I always find these NHL-run international tournaments to be kinda lame compared to the IIHF's World Championships since instead of there being actual qualifying criteria with promotion and relegation, the NHL just handpicks which countries they deem worthy, and in their most recent World Cup to make it a round number, they made bogus teams like the North American 23U team and Team Europe. I was rooting for both of those teams to showcase how stupid it was. Imagine players from Canada and the US having to play against their own country in the final, and what anthem would they play if Europe won?
They're bringing the World Cup back in alternating two-year cycles with the Olympics, but at least this time they aren't bringing back those dumb artificial teams, and it's going to be in an actual set interval instead of randomly thrown in whenever they decide to run it (1996, 2004, 2016). This would be completely unnecessary though if the NHL didn't drag their season out for so long and would end before the World Championships like every other league in the world does. Then we'd have a real best-on-best international tournament every year, but of course the NHL is only concerned with what's best for the NHL and not what's best for hockey, so they run their playoffs during the World Championships, they go back and forth on allowing their players to represent their countries in the Olympics, and they run their own mediocre international tournaments as a watered down substitute. I'm skeptical that their ultimate goal for the reincarnation of the World Cup is to be a replacement for letting their players participate in the Olympics, even though that's what most of the fans and players want.
