With days before teams report to Grand Fork, North Dakota, for the IIHF under-18 world championship, news broke out of Russia that a majority of the players on the inaugural Russian under-18 program team have tested positive for meldonium.
The coach of the team has been fired, and the entire team replaced by the 16-year-old group and elite 15-year-olds such as Andrei Svechnikov (brother of Detroit first-rounder Evgeni Svechnikov).