On the eve of the start of the 2023-24 season between the New Jersey Devils and the team he spent the most significant part of his hall-of-fame career, the Buffalo Sabres, former goaltender Dominik Hašek made it clear that he won’t be in Prague – about an hour away from his hometown of Pardubice.
At many major sporting events in the past – such as the Summer Olympics in Paris – he’s used the X platform to express his views on Russians being allowed to participate along with the rest of the world’s athletes while their country wages a war of aggression in Ukraine.
Here are his posts from Thursday:
-Dear citizens, dear hockey fans,
The new season of the NHL will start tomorrow in Prague.
Which, as a person for whom human lives are the first place on the imaginary scale of values, I cannot remain indifferent. Unfortunately, I have to state that this will be the third season when the NHL will once again be a huge advertisement for the Russian imperialist war and other Russian crimes, including the genocide of Ukrainian children.
The NHL will once again be responsible for a large number of lost and maimed human lives! The fact that two teams without Russian players came to Prague this time does not change anything. This is not a mitigating circumstance from my perspective.
The NHL has not changed its position at all since the beginning of the war, and Russian citizens can still play in it.
And why do I openly oppose it? And why do I speak out against this openly?
In this context, I must reiterate the most important point. After the start of the Russian imperialist war, the NHL became an advertisement for this war, because Russian citizens continued to perform and play in it! Every citizen, unless he is a dissident, is an advertisement for his country's actions.
In the case of Russia, those actions since February 2022 are imperialist war and other horrific crimes against humanity. Whenever and wherever Russian athletes publicly perform, they automatically become an advertisement for the war and the further killing of innocent Ukrainian citizens.
The NHL is well aware of this and still lets them continue to publicly participate in its league! That is why the NHL became and still is an advertisement for the Russian imperialist war. Therefore, the NHL is directly responsible for a huge number of lives lost and maimed.
As a citizen and as a player who has played a lot of games in the NHL, I am not going to overlook this. I am convinced that sooner or later the NHL will have to pay billions of dollars to Ukraine for its approach.
In this context, however, it should be emphasized that the regular employees of the NHL, i.e. the players themselves, are not responsible for this advertisement of the terrible Russian actions. And that includes the Russian ones also. All responsibility rests with the top leadership of the NHL! That means 32 individual NHL team owners and Commissioner Gary Bettman.
They are the ones who set the rules. And they can change them at any time. These are the people who made the NHL, the competition that meant so much to me, the biggest advertisement for the Russian imperialist war in the entire sports world! It is they who bear the greatest responsibility for the lives lost and maimed and for the enormous financial damage caused by the advertisement of their league.
I have always loved and still love hockey. But at the same time I know there are more important things. Nothing is more valuable than human life. Therefore, I consider it my duty to inform NHL fans about what I have already described. That the league is an advertisement for war! And because of it, many lives have been and will be lost and maimed. It may sound harsh, but that's the reality.
So I want to say to all NHL fans that whenever Pastrnak, Draisaitl, Matthews or Laine score a goal, McDavid, Kucherov, Crosby or Dahlin make a pass for a goal, goalkeepers Vasilevskiy, Bobrovsky, Hellebuyck or Saros make a famous save, Gudas or Tkachuk make a nice hit, so it is a beautiful viewing experience, but at the same time it is an even bigger advertisement for the atrocities committed by the Russians in the war!
So, this spectator experience unfortunately costs human lives. These are the lives of people who are far away from you, you don't know them, but they are heroes who fight and die in defense of their homeland. And what is even worse, it is also the lives of innocent civilians and Ukrainian children that Russia, led by Putin, has decided to take not only their country, but their lives as well...
They are people who are probably very distant from you, you can't identify with them as you do with the players you admire, who win games for your beloved team. But nevertheless, or precisely because of this, I would be very happy if you would think about it and ask yourself what is more.
Is human life or hockey more important?
It is genuinely important for me to inform all hockey fans of my positions, which is why I am issuing this statement.
In conclusion, I want to say that I once again offer the NHL management help in communicating and setting such rules so that the competition is not an advertisement for the Russian war. At the same time, I also offer help to the Russian hockey players themselves, so that they can continue to participate, while not being an advertisement for their country's imperialist war.
I offer a helping hand not only as a former hockey player, but also as a citizen for whom human life is the highest value.
Dominik Hasek
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