Who is going to break the 1000-game milestone?
KHL.ru talks about the players who can play their 1000th game in the league and remembers the KHL and Russian championship’s leaders for games played.
Salavat Yulaev defenseman Evgeny Biryukov has held the top spot in the League for quite some time – after 15 seasons, he has 968 games under his belt. If he skates in every game of the new season, the 1000th anniversary meeting will fall on Nov 18: the Ufa side will play away against Ak Bars. Biryukov himself said in an interview with KHL.ru that he is more than ready to reach the 1,000-game milestone.
Another contender to reach 1,000 games in the new season is Ak Bars’ forward Vadim Shipachyov. He currently has 920 games, so if he reaches the milestone, it will be in the playoffs. And it doesn’t look like an impossible task as Shipachyov played 92 matches last season.
As for the other players, they still have to play more than one season to reach their 1,000th game in the league. In addition to Biryukov and Shipachyov, the top five active KHL players by games played include Ilya Kablukov, Sergei Plotnikov, and Andrei Stas.
If looking at the Russian championship stats, Biryukov is currently in seventh place, but he may well become second – 64 games separate him from Vitaly Atyushov. Moreover, Biryukov is the only active hockey player in the top ten, while the rest have already finished their careers. The record belongs to Danis Zaripov, with 1,324 games. In the upcoming season, Panin (998) and Kablukov (976) can surely reach the 1,000-game mark in Russian championships, and Yakov Rylov (944), Shipachyov (935), Anton Belov and Sergei Shirokov (both 920) can also reach this figure.
