idk i feel like just yeeting iihf would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, people affected by this aren't asking for some major reckoning on geopolitics they just don't want to see the explicit imagery/iconography of a government that is hurting and killing their people right now, i think just saying "no one can have countries anymore" would be an overreaction

speaking from the point of view of being 8 seasons into a narrative, having to fictionalize everything to be in some fantasy country would have been a damper on benign elements of the story and make things really really complicated, and could put off new users who want to write about their player in a certain country.

@PremierBromanov you mentioned players wanting to create as more obscure nations, I can't speak for them but I know @eddiesnothere has done some pretty fantastic media with a Vietnamese player coming to North America. I think if users are going to make players from those countries we can let them figure out how to approach the stories and see where they go with it.

With only a representation of the top division in the real-world international hockey sphere without lower tiers, we're never going to be able to give every single country create a national team to play on and I think it's fine to leave that decision in the users' hands to adapt to being online.

EDIT TO ADD: not to mention the "vague geographical definitions" would probably lead to federations like Finland/Sweden/Denmark/Norway or Germany/Switzerland/France that become very oversized.