MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. The World Cup of Hockey will not be held in February 2024, but the championship may take place in 2025, the National Hockey League (NHL) Public Relations said in a statement on Friday.

"Over the last year, the NHL and the NHLPA (the National Hockey League Players’ Association - TASS) have been working on plans to conduct the next World Cup of Hockey, the premier international best-on-best hockey tournament, in February 2024. Unfortunately, in the current environment it is not feasible to hold the World Cup of Hockey at that time. We continue to plan for the next World Cup of Hockey, hopefully in February 2025," the statement said.

The previous World Cup of Hockey was held in 2016 in Toronto, Canada. The teams of Russia, Canada, the US, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic as well as Team Europe and Team North America (which represented players aged 23-and-under) took part in it. Team Canada won the championship, while Team Russia made it to the semifinals. The tournaments were also held in 1996 and 2004.

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Congress, hosted by Finland’s Tampere on May 27, voted that the national teams of Russia and Belarus would be sidelined at the 2023 World Championship, just like at the recent 2022 Ice Hockey World Championship, due to the ongoing developments in Ukraine.

However, at its meeting in late September, the IIHF Congress announced that the national ice hockey teams from Russia and Belarus would remain in the top division of the world championships after sanctions against their countries were lifted. According to IIHF President Luc Tardif, it meant that there was no aggression at all toward Russia.

Later, the IIHF held a meeting with Hockey Europe (a collaboration of ice hockey leagues in Europe), the Alliance of European Hockey Clubs (EHC) and the IIHF Member National Associations to discuss possibilities of the 2024 World Cup of Hockey.

On August 24, the NHL Public Relations reported that the NHL and the hockey league players’ trade union made progress in the negotiations on the 2024 World Cup. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said then that the Russian national team’s participation in the upcoming championship was in question.