The Russian striker of National Hockey League (NHL) club Valery Nichushkin unexpectedly withdrew from the team after the second game of the 1/8 final of the Stanley Cup with Seattle.
The club did not later mention the reasons for this decision, and Colorado’s coach Jared Bednar said the Russian forward left the team for personal reasons.
But a few days later, The Denver Post ran a story claiming that a drunk girl was found at the Seattle hotel where Nichushkin was staying with the team. It was recorded that the Russian hockey player was found while checking his room.
The team doctor concluded that he was too drunk and too bad to leave the hotel safely in a taxi. The club called emergency services. The girl was later hospitalized.
The victim said that he is from Russia but was born in Ukraine. He also added that he shouldn’t come to the US because someone “takes his passport”.
Police noted that the girl initially acted aggressively and hit the Colorado doctor, but did not file a complaint.
According to the incident report, the Denver Police Department lieutenant, one of the two police officers on the team, told Seattle police that there were no reports of criminal activity.
Interestingly, the hockey player’s manager, Mark Gandler, even stated that there were no drunk girls in Nichushkin’s room.
“A drunk girl was found in Nichushkin’s room? No, that’s not true. What’s wrong with Nichushkin now? No comment,” Gandler said in an interview with Sport-Express.
Well-known journalist Adrian Deiter said that the media misrepresented the information, ignoring the fact that the fire department, not the police, intervened.
“The media continues to copy and paste ‘reports’ about the Nichushkin story to arrive at an important truth: it wasn’t the Seattle Police Department that responded. It was the Seattle Fire Department. The police were not involved at all in this story, the journalist said in a statement.
The identity of the girl has not been released, but journalist Aarif Dean, who works at the Colorado games, claims her name is Irina Prudnikova.
This is not the first time Nichushkin has been in trouble. In November 2021, it was learned that Nichushkin’s doping test in preparation for the Sochi 2014 Olympics tested positive for testosterone and was threatened with suspension for up to four years.
The sample was taken on March 12, 2013. Nichushkin then still played for Traktor and as part of the Chelyabinsk club defeated Avangard (3:0) that day without scoring.
Exactly a year later, all charges against the hockey player were dropped. This became possible after the results of additional research by the Swiss Doping Laboratory.
“The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) informed Nichushkin that all charges were dropped. The Russian Ice Hockey Federation (RHF) will be happy to see Valery in the national team after the team returns to the international arena,” said the Russian Ice Hockey Federation (RHF).
In the current NHL playoffs, Nichushkin played two games in which he scored an abandoned disc. With the Seattle Craken, his team played five games in the series. The score in the match is 3:2 in favor of Seattle.
Nichushkin moved to the NHL in 2013. He was selected 10th overall in the draft by the Dallas Stars. The forward moved to Colorado in 2019. Last summer, he extended his contract with Avalanche for another eight years, bringing it to a total of $49 million.