Five former Artemi Panarin teammates have now told The Post that they have never heard of the allegations of sexual assault against the Rangers’ star winger by their former KHL coach.
Andrei Nazarov, who coached the Vityaz team from 2011-12, recently told a Russian tabloid that Panarin beat up an 18-year-old Latvian girl after a road loss in December 2011.
Maxim Sitnikov, who only played two games with Vityaz in 2011-12 but said he practiced regularly with the active squad during that season, told The Post he had never heard of a physical altercation between his teammate and a woman in a hotel bar in Riga, Latvia.
“There was no such thing!” said Sitnikov, who now coaches 12-year-olds in Yaroslavl, Russia, after The Post reached out to him via Facebook Messenger.
[Artemi] Panarin is a good person, friend and teammate! [Artemi] is now a high-level star and the fiercer he plays, the more bad guys will stick sticks in his wheels and say all kinds of nonsense! “
The former Russian forward also played alongside Panarin in the MKHL’s Russian Knights, which appears to be the Vityaz farm team.
Sitnikov, who retired from hockey due to a shoulder injury, said people like Panarin “can be counted on one hand.”
“The New York Rangers are very lucky with such a player,” he said.
28-year-old Sitnikov is Panarin’s last former teammate during that 2011-12 KHL season, when Nazarov claims the alleged altercation took place, telling The Post he had never heard of such an incident.
Another teammate, Mikhail Ansin, told Russian outlet Sports-Express on Wednesday that there was an incident in Riga, Latvia in 2011 involving Panarin, but it didn’t play out as Nazarov had portrayed.
“Artemi didn’t beat anyone, maybe pushed a girl a bit, that’s all,” Ansin told Sports-Express.
Ansin also said the police had come to the team hotel but left after establishing the incident and not justifying charges. He also disputed Nazarov’s claim that the police were being paid off, noting that the players did not have that kind of money at the time.
Jon Mirasty, reached by phone on Tuesday, called his former coach’s allegations “fishy” in the wake of Panarin’s outspokenness against the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Panarin also publicly supported Russian opposition Alexei Navalny last month.
Nazarov, who made the accusation in an interview with Russian publication Komsomolskaya Pravda, is a Putin loyalist and has called for Russian players to be jailed if they speak out against the country.
“I’m pretty sure I would have heard something like that, you know, as one of the older veteran players out there,” Mirasty, a former Canadian winger, told The Post. “I’ve never heard anything like it, so I was kind of blown away. I’m clearly not saying it didn’t happen, but if I guess, [it didn’t happen]And why is it coming out ten years later? “
In a statement to ESPN, KHL said it “was not aware of or received a complaint regarding any incident involving Panarin in December 2011.”
The league also said that if it received a complaint, it would have investigated “as we take all allegations of misconduct incredibly seriously,” ESPN said.
Kip Brennan, a Canadian winger who spent parts of five seasons in the NHL and played three games for the Islanders in 2007-08, told The Post via Facebook Messenger that he “did not know or hear anything like this ever happened.”
“He was a great guy, he was hilarious in the locker room,” said Brennan. “He always worked on his English with the North American guys and was a very talented young player.”
Two other former Vityaz teammates, who asked to remain anonymous, agreed with Mirasty and Brennan’s views on the situation.