Bad news for the next Olympic ice hockey tournament. Less than four weeks before the opening of the Beijing Winter Games, the second professional league in the world, the KHL, announced that it was putting its season on hold due to the health crisis. All Russian league matches are suspended until January 22 at the earliest. In a press release, the KHL specifies that 124 of its players had tested positive for COVID as of the morning of Tuesday, January 11, including 27 cases for the day of Monday, January 10 alone. The pause of the KHL, and the outbreak of the virus among its teams, promises to be a new challenge for the teams qualified for the Beijing Games, after the NHL gave up on releasing its hockey players. Russia, in particular, was supposed to make up its squad mainly with players from this league. Same thing for China, qualified as host country. Most of the 12 countries present at the next Olympic tournament are expected to select at least a few players from the Russian professional league.
