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Ukrainian hockey 3
The players stay with host families and are being cared for, according to a team assistant in the courtroom who declined to give his name.
Pravilov was charged Tuesday with fondling a boy at his Philadelphia apartment as the 14-year-old slept near a teammate. The teammate, also 14, was slapped and threatened by Pravilov for later publicizing the Jan. 3 incident, according to court documents. The allegations reached authorities when a host parent reported it.
The charges come less than a month after Maxim Starchenko, one of Pravilov’s former players, published a book alleging the coach regularly abused team members physically, mentally and sexually.
Pravilov faces six to eight years in prison if convicted of taking a minor over a state line for sexual purposes. He had taken the two teens to his apartment from the home of a host family in Wilmington, Del. A public defender will be appointed for him based on his financial need, the magistrate said.
The website for the coach’s hockey school, Ivan Pravilov’s Unique Hockey School, says it held camps throughout the East Coast last summer.
New Jersey Devils forward Dainius Zubrus is one of his more famous proteges. Zubrus left his native Lithuania as a boy to play for Pravilov in Ukraine and made the NHL by 18, according to his mother, Irene Zubriene. She and her son, now 33, remain close to Pravilov, and the coach uses her Cherry Hill, N.J., home as a mail drop, she said.
Pravilov brings young hockey players to the U.S. for about a month at a time to train, play in tournaments and perhaps catch the eye of a college or NHL scout, Zubriene said Friday. She said she has often had a dozen or more players stay in her downstairs living area, while Pravilov slept in an upstairs bedroom.