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[PortBeach13]

Canadian Press



7/1/2004

ZURICH (CP) - Star goaltender Evgeni Nabokov of the NHL's San Jose Sharks has been cleared to play for Russia in any future Olympics or world championships.



The International Ice Hockey Federation executive committee made the decision Thursday after a request from the Russian Ice Hockey Federation to make the Kazakhstan-born Nabokov eligible to play for Russia in IIHF competitions.



This decision means Nabokov is eligible to represent Russia at the 2005 world championship in Austria and in the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy.



Even without the IIHF decision, Nabokov would have been eligible to play for Russia in the upcoming 2004 World Cup of Hockey, which is a NHL-NHLPA governed tournament where IIHF eligibility rules don't apply.



Nabokov, 29, was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in the Kazakhstan republic of the former Soviet Union.



He represented Kazakhstan at the 1994 C pool world championship at the age of 18 and therefore became, under the old IIHF rules, ineligible to play for any other country.



During the 2003 general congress, the IIHF adopted a new eligibility rule which says that a player can change his national eligibility, providing he has played for at least four consecutive years in the national competition of his new country where he is a citizen.



Nabokov became, due to political circumstances out of his control, a border case, having played two years in Ust-Kamenogorsk while it belonged to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) before transferring to Dynamo Moscow of the Russian league where he played for three seasons.



After he was drafted by the Sharks, Nabokov left Russia in 1997 to play for the Sharks' AHL affiliate.



``We took on a flexible attitude towards the request of the player and the Russian federation to switch the player's national eligibility,'' IIHF general secretary Jan-Ake Edvinsson said in a statement. ``It became very clear that Mr. Nabokov was a victim of historic circumstances which were totally out of his control and that it would be unfair to him not to approve the request.''