Valery Viktorovych Shiryaev ( uk, Вале́рій Ві́кторович Ширя́єв; born 28 August 1963) is a retired

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

player who played in the

Soviet Hockey League The Soviet Hockey Championship (russian: Чемпионат СССР по хоккею) was the highest level ice hockey league in the Soviet Union, running from 1946 to 1992. Before the 1940s the game of ice hockey was not cultivated in Russia, i ...

. He played for

Sokil Kyiv Hockey Club Sokil Kyiv ( uk, ХК Сокіл Київ; en, Falcon Hockey Club), commonly known as Sokil Kyiv or HC Sokil, is a Ukrainian Professional Hockey League team based in Kyiv. While their home arena is located in the city, the team also ...

and was named top defenceman in the Soviet League in 1990 and 1991. He won a gold medal in the

1989 World Ice Hockey Championships The 1989 Ice Hockey World Championships took place in Sweden from 15 April – 1 May. The games were played in Södertälje and Stockholm, in the newly built arena Globen. Eight teams took part, and each team played each other once. The four be ...

for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Later, he played for

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

in several

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

and at the

2002 Winter Olympics The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), was an internation ...

. He was named best defenceman at the 1995 C1 Pool World Championships. He was inducted into the

Russian and Soviet Hockey Hall of Fame Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and pe ...

in 1989.

External links

Russian and Soviet Hockey Hall of Fame bio
* 1963 births EHC Biel players EV Zug players Genève-Servette HC players HC Davos players HC La Chaux-de-Fonds players Ice hockey players at the 2002 Winter Olympics Olympic ice hockey players for Ukraine Living people SC Bern players SCL Tigers players Sportspeople from Kharkiv Soviet ice hockey defencemen Ukrainian ice hockey defencemen Ukrainian ice hockey coaches Sokil Kyiv players Honoured Masters of Sport of the USSR {{Ukraine-icehockey-bio-stub