TVER – Russian hockey player Ilya Kovalchuk, who celebrates his fortieth birthday today, spent 13 seasons in the Canadian-American NHL, played for Spartak Moscow, Barsk Kazan in Russia, and played for SKA St. Petersburg and Avangard Omsk in the Continental Hockey League.
Among other things, he is a three-time winner of the Gagarin Cup, a two-time world champion and an Olympic champion from Pyeongchang. Only the Stanley Cup is missing from the big trophies in his collection.
The native of Kalinin started in 1999 as a seventeen-year-old in Spartak Moscow, but soon left for the NHL, where he wore the Atlanta Thrashers jersey for the most time – eight seasons – but also played for New Jersey, Los Angeles, Montreal and ended his overseas career in the 2019 season/ 20 in the Washington Capitals.
In the NHL, Kovaľčuk played 926 games, in which he scored 876 points, but he never managed to achieve an overall victory in the most famous hockey competition in the world. In contrast to the KHL, where as a player of St. Petersburg (2015 and 2017) and Omsk (2021) he could lift the Gagarin Cup above his head.
Support of the national team
Kovalchuk was one of the mainstays of the Russian national team, in the 2000/2001 season he played at the Under-18 World Championship in Finland, where the Russians won, a year earlier he brought bronze from Switzerland. He was a member of the bronze Russian team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, in 2018 he won Olympic gold in Korea.
He has a complete collection of medals from world championships – three bronze, two silver and two gold. He became world champion for the first time in 2008 in Canada and defended the title a year later in Switzerland.
He ended his playing career two years ago in Omsk and then became the manager of the Russian national team for the Olympic tournament in Beijing 2022. At it, the Russians tried to defend the gold, but lost to the Finnish team in the final.
- Author: © List
- Source: CTK
