Valeri Nichushkin breaks his silence on the hotel incident in the 2023 playoffs

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Julien Trekker
July 8, 2024 (9:29)

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The controversial Colorado Avalanche forward Valeri Nichushkin broke his silence on the Seattle hotel room incident during the 2023 playoffs in a recent interview.

Currently serving a six-month suspension for entering the third stage of the Player Assistance Program, Nichushkin opened up in an interview about another incident: the one in the 2023 playoffs.

He shared his side of the story, which revealed that he could've got back on the ice for the second round if the Avalanche had beaten the Seattle Kraken in the first round.

According to him, the Avs' medical staff's struggled to determine whether or not he should get a surgery for a shoulder injury played an important role in the deterioration of his mental state, which led to his bad decision,

Here's the full interview, translated from Russian:

"It was the most difficult season, there were a lot of injuries in the team all season. I missed 2 months due to bursitis. I also had a shoulder injury, which constantly bothered me. I always had problems sleeping, but because of the pain in my shoulder, the situation with my sleep got worse.

They did an MRI and they couldn't decide whether to have surgery or not. In the end, they decided not to do it and gave me injections in my shoulder. These injections stopped helping and they decided to inject me with another drug.

When we flew to Seattle, they decided that I would not play the match due to a shoulder injury, because I needed to not bother my shoulder for a while until the drug starts working and everyone on the team knew that I would not play until the end of the round. It put a lot of pressure on the psyche and was very annoying.

I had friends in Seattle at that moment and I made the wrong decision, we hung out with them at night and in the morning I flew to Denver. This girl in my room has nothing to do with me.

The club advised me not to give any comments, and I myself was not emotionally ready to explain all this. This was probably the wrong decision and it was necessary to tell the whole situation right away so that there weren't a bunch of different rumors. If we had made it to the second round, I would have been ready to play."

Watch the interview in the video below:

Nichushkin could return to the ice in November, and the Avs already mentionned that he's still a part of the team's plans going forward, despite his suspension.

More to come.

Source: Colorado Hockey Now
Nichushkin Discusses Seattle Incident In Russian Interview