Valeri Nichushkin claims his absence from the 2023 Western Conference Quaterfinals was injury-related, contradicting comments made by head coach Jared Bednar

Before failing a drug test in May and getting suspended for six months, Colorado Avalanche forward Valeri Nichushkin opened up in an exclusive interview with Russian YouTuber Mikhail Cherkasov regarding a much-publicized incident from 2023.

Nichushkin, who is currently Phase 3 of the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program and is ineligible to play until at least November, left the team once before Game 3 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals against the Seattle Kraken and didn’t return for the remainder of the series. The Avalanche ultimately lost in seven games in that 2023 series, failing to defend their Stanley Cup championship.

Head coach Jared Bednar consistently stated Nichushkin’s issue was personal in nature. However, released to and posted by 9News there was a 911 call body-camera footage from officers who performed an involuntary hold on an intoxicated woman found in his hotel room.

Avalanche team physician Bradley Changstrom, who called for EMS, also appeared in the video. Portions of the content in which Changstrom discusses Nichushkin were redacted by the Seattle Police Department because Washington has an open records law that protects medical and mental health information. In the video, an off-duty Denver Police officer, Lt. Todd Fuller, who was traveling with the team as a security guard, told the Seattle Police officer there was no crime, and the situation was “more of a detox issue.”

Nichushkin, in a sense, has thrown the entire team under the bus — again.

“It was the most difficult season; there were a lot of injuries in the team all season. I missed two 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,” Nichushkin stated in translated comments via Colorado Hockey Now.

He continued, “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.”

So, there’s a lot to digest here. The NHL is usually secretive about injuries, but they are announced as “lower-body injuries” or “upper-body injuries.” From my knowledge, there hasn’t been a “personal issue” that turned out to be an injury or vice versa.

Changstrom confirmed to the police, “He had a girl in his room,” albeit Nichushkin claimed in the video the woman had nothing to do with him. Why was she there? How did she get there? What wrong decision was he talking about? We hung out with them? Who’s we? Were there other teammates involved? Was the woman a part of this group? There are way too many holes here that need to be addressed.

The woman, who told an officer she was born in Ukraine but is from Russia, also claimed someone stole her passport and other documents is a bad person, but never identified who the individual was.

“This person took my passport, everything, he put me here,” she stated. “You shouldn’t believe this person. He’s crazy.”

And to make matters even more confusing, Nichushkin would go on to fail a drug test in 2024 shortly after this interview was conducted. As a result, the 29-year-old, who signed a eight-year, $49 million contract two years ago, will be suspended without pay for at least six months and then will be eligible to apply for reinstatement.

Something isn’t adding up here, folks. And if this was your $6 million per year player, would you want him on your team going forward? How much longer will the Avalanche be willing to put up with this?