Valery Viktorovych Shiryaev (; born 28 August 1963) is a retired

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

player who played in the

Soviet Hockey League The Soviet Hockey Championship () 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, instead the more popular form of hockey was bandy. Foll ...

. He played for

Sokil Kyiv Hockey Club Sokil Kyiv (; ), commonly known as Sokil Kyiv, HC Sokil, or HC Sokol Kiev, is a Ukrainian professional ice hockey team based in Kyiv. While their home arena is located in the city, the team also plays out of Brovary, still within th ...

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 bes ...

for the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Later, he played for

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

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 (; Gosiute dialect, Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; ; Shoshoni language, Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), were an international wi ...

. 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) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

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 Ice hockey players 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