At the IIHF World Championships, essentially hockey’s equivalent of the World Cup, not every nation is on even footing.
There are the Canadas and Finlands at the top of the standings, and then there are teams like Italy, which do in fact play hockey, but not competitively on the world stage.
In fact, Washington Capitals stars Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitry Orlov helped Russia scrub Italy 10-0 earlier in this year’s tournament.
Kuznetsov was asked about that matchup, and he gave a classic Kuznetsovian response.
“We must play, although you understand teams’ levels are not equal,” he said.