After the International Olympic Committee has suspended the Russian Olympic Committee due to doping allegations, it was announced that clean Russian athletes would be invited to compete as Olympic Athletes of Russia under a neutral flag at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

An OAR Invitation Review Panel determined the pool of Russian athletes who have fulfilled the pre-games testing requirements and could be invited according to several criteria available to the panel. The original number of 500 athletes has been reduced by 111 by the panel last week.

From this list three goaltenders, eight defencemen and 14 forwards have been chosen to play as Olympic Athletes of Russian in the 2018 Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament by the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia.

The invitations to all athletes will be formally issued at the OAR Delegation Registration Meeting on 27 January in PyeongChang. No roster has been announced yet for the Olympic Athletes of Russia women’s ice hockey team.

The men’s team has a slightly younger roster than in the past with an average age of 27 years and will include a couple of new players.

For Mikhail Grigorenko, Ilya Kablukov, Kirill Kaprizov, Dinar Khafizullin and Nikolai Prokhorkin it will be the first top-level tournament in senior international ice hockey as unlike the others they haven’t played at the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship or the World Cup of Hockey with the men’s national team before.

Three players from the team were on the roster in Sochi 2014 including Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk and Vyacheslav Voinov. For Datsyuk and Kovalchuk it will be the fifth Olympic Winter Games participation and joining an exclusive club. Only two players – Finns Raimo Helminen and Teemu Selanne – played more, in six Olympics.

39-year-old Datsyuk is the oldest player on the roster and 20-year-old Kaprizov the youngest.

All 25 players nominated play for Russian clubs in the Kontinental Hockey League. More surprisingly, the selected players represent just three clubs. 15 players are under contract with Russian champion and league leader SKA St. Petersburg, eight players join from second-placed CSKA Moscow and two from Metallurg Magnitogorsk.

The team coached by Oleg Znarok is seeded in Group B together with the United States, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Nominations Olympic Athletes of Russia men’s ice hockey team by the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia

Goaltenders:
Vasili Koshechkin, Metallurg Magnitogorsk
Ilya Sorokin, SKA St. Petersburg
Igor Shestyorkin, CSKA Moscow

Defencemen:
Vladislav Gavrikov, SKA St. Petersburg
Dinar Khafizullin, SKA St. Petersburg
Bogdan Kiselevich, CSKA Moscow
Alexei Marchenko, CSKA Moscow
Nikita Nesterov, CSKA Moscow
Vyacheslav Voinov, SKA St. Petersburg
Artyom Zub, SKA St. Petersburg
Andrei Zubarev, SKA St. Petersburg

Forwards:
Sergei Andronov, CSKA Moscow
Alexander Barabanov, SKA St. Petersburg
Pavel Datsyuk, SKA St. Petersburg
Mikhail Grigorenko, CSKA Moscow
Nikita Gusev, SKA St. Petersburg
Ilya Kablukov, SKA St. Petersburg
Sergei Kalinin, SKA St. Petersburg
Kirill Kaprizov, CSKA Moscow
Ilya Kovalchuk, SKA St. Petersburg
Sergei Mozyakin, Metallurg Magnitogorsk
Nikolai Prokhorkin, SKA St. Petersburg
Vadim Shipachyov, SKA St. Petersburg
Sergei Shirokov, SKA St. Petersburg
Ivan Telegin, CSKA Moscow

Head Coach:
Oleg Znarok