Barys Gathers Strength for a Jump

Apart from the Astana Team in cycling, one of the most widely recognized Kazakh sports brands is Astana’s Barys hockey club, a member of the Continental Hockey League established three years ago. The CHL has already become the strongest hockey league in Europe and the second in the world after the NHL. The popularity of the championship involving teams from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Latvia is rapidly growing. In the near future not only clubs from the Eastern, but also Western Europe are going to join the league. The Kazakh team tries its best to justify expectations of its supporters’ throughout the country. In the year of their debut the capital’s “leopards” (which is what barys means in Kazakh) showed a good play and were admitted to the play-offs for the Gagarin Cup. Unfortunately, at this stage of the elimination game, the Astana team had to face a formidable rival, Kazan’s Ak Bars, a club from Russia’s republic of Tatarstan. It has already won Russia’s championship four times, was a three times silver winner, while in 2007 it won the European Сhampions’ Cup, and in 2008, the Continental Cup. Barys, however, was not a whipping boy either, setting from the start a few records on individual scores. The Kazakh team’s captain, a Canadian Kevin Dallman, has twice in the season been awarded the title of the League’s best defender, beating the record set back in the Soviet times by Viacheslav Fetissov. The best troika of forwards of the first season, Spiridonov – Shtumpel – Glazachev – was also from the Kazakh club. And what’s interesting, the “leopards” are leading in this characteristic in this season, too, with Bochensky – Navotny – Kashpar. The Barys team has made another achievement. Before the best goalkeeper Dominik Haљek, who is already 45, came to the league this year, the oldest player of CHL was Barys’s Alexander Koreshkov. He has ended his career as a forward this year at the age of 41, but not before winning CHL’s trophy for the faithfulness to the game. Individual results speak for the team’s scores. These days, Barys is taking part in the play-offs. Unlike in the previous years, the majority of the team consists of local trainees, whereas earlier they constituted only a third of the players. This year, the players of Kazakhstan’s main club will be playing in the 7th Winter Asian Games for their nation, where they hope to win gold. By Askar Sultan