The NHL will let Russian players take part on its new “Rest of the World” team at the 2027 All-Star Game, a notable opening in a showcase the league is using to reset how it stages its biggest star event. The game is set for Feb. 6 at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, and will also include teams from Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland.
The change matters because Russian players have been frozen out of IIHF events since early 2022 and were also denied entry to the NHL-run 2025 4 Nations Face-Off. Even so, the league is allowing them into an NHL exhibition while the broader debate over their place in international hockey is still unresolved, with the next decision looming over the 2028 World Cup of Hockey.
For the NHL, the 2027 event is not being treated as a straight national-team tournament. Russian players are not getting their own flag or their own team; they are being folded into a broader “Rest of the World” group that uses the NHL shield as its logo. There has been no use of Russia’s flag in the event’s promotion, a small but telling detail in a sport still trying to separate individual players from the politics surrounding them.
That is where the friction lives. The International Ice Hockey Federation is reconsidering its stance on Russian participation, but no final call has been made for the tournaments scheduled in 2026-27. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly spoke with the IIHF on Tuesday morning, and said the federation did not expect a boycott from the Finns, Swedes or Czechs if Russia is brought back into international action. The league, meanwhile, has not yet decided what role Russia will have in the 2028 World Cup of Hockey.
The players’ side has already signaled where it leans. NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh said on Tuesday that the union would love to see Russian players back in best-on-best competition, and Ron Hainsey said the mood has shifted since the fall, when the NHLPA surveyed members face-to-face on the issue. Hainsey said several players were quick to say Russia’s participation was not for them then, but added that things have changed in five months and may change again soon.
The NHL’s path forward is still more cautious than celebratory. Russians can skate in the All-Star spotlight in 2027, but the league has not extended that logic to the next true international test, and it will have to decide whether the rest of its showcase calendar can keep moving in one direction while Russia’s status remains unsettled in another. For now, the opening is real, but it stops short of a full return.
