Russia wants immediate suspensions for athletes found to have taken banned substances without awaiting the results of back-up tests, deputy sports minister Yury Nagornykh said Tuesday.
The aim is to avoid a repeat of the situation that allowed hockey player Maxim Rybin of the SKA St. Petersburg team to play 16 games after failing a drugs test in February, Nagornykh said.
"From the moment a forbidden substance is found to the end of the investigation the athlete will be absent from competition," he said.
The ministry is to meet with Russia's anti-doping watchdog RUSADA and teams from the KHL hockey league to hammer out the new rules on May 23, Nagornykh said.
Rybin is a 30-year-old forward who was a fifth-round draft pick for the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in 1999.
Russian website allsportinfo.ru reported that he failed a test in February, before the Russian national team's Euro Hockey Tour game against Sweden.
Rybin withdrew from that game, in Helsinki, at the last minute, citing family circumstances.
He has not played for the national team since but helped SKA reach the KHL's Western Conference final, where they were thrashed 4-0 in the series by eventual champion Dynamo Moscow.
Nagornykh, meanwhile, praised the decision of Avangard Omsk to withdraw Anton Belov from last month's Gagarin Cup final series against Dynamo immediately after the Russian tested positive for a banned stimulant.
"Although Avangard had the chance to pull a maneuver" and allow Belov to continue, "it took the right decision. We will eliminate this maneuver," Nagornykh said.
Belov was removed after the fourth game of the final series with his team leading 3-1, and Dynamo won three games straight to steal the title in dramatic fashion.
Nagornykh said 120 athletes of all levels were caught doping in 2011.
