Belorussian hockey factoids

Originally published on IIHF.com in 2002

By Lucas Aykroyd

Here are some interesting facts about Belorussian hockey:

Sergei Fedorov, the all-star forward of the Detroit Red Wings and Team Russia’s leading scorer, trained at the famous “Yunost” hockey school in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

In the early 20th century, Wayne Gretzky’s grandfather emigrated from a Belorussian town called Mogilev to Canada.

In the late 1980’s, several players from Dynamo Minsk, the top club in Belarus, were invited to play for the Soviet Union at the annual Izvestia tournament against international opposition. Some of those players included current Olympic team members Andrei Kovalev, Oleg Mikulchik and Aleksandr Andrievsky.

The top club teams from Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine have participated since the 1990’s in the East European Hockey League.

Vladimir Tsyplakov is the highest-scoring Belorussian in NHL history. The 32-year-old native of Inta scored 69 goals and 101 assists for 170 points in 331 NHL games with the Los Angeles Kings and Buffalo Sabres from 1995-96 to 2000-01. He currently plays for AK Bars Kazan of the Russian Superleague.

Belarus’s Ruslan Salei was the first NHLer to play in the 1998 Olympics. He was free to join his country for the Preliminary Round because he was suspended for a hit on Mike Modano.

Playing Canada marks the first time Belarus has made it to the Olympic semi-finals. Its previous best was a 4-1 quarter-finals loss to Russia in 1998.

Belarus’s 4-3 victory over Sweden in this year’s quarter-finals is being widely acknowledged as the third-biggest upset in Olympic history, after the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” and Great Britain’s 2-1 win over Canada in the 1936 gold medal game.