Kaspars Astašenko
Kaspars Astašenko ( born February 7, 1975 in Riga, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union, † November 20, 2012 ) was a Latvian ice hockey player.
Career
Kaspars Astašenko began his career as a hockey player with Vandenieki, for which he made his debut in the Latvian Hockey League in the 1991/92 season. Then the defender played for three years for Pārdaugava Riga in the Russian Super League, where he spent much of the 1993/94 season at Hokeja Centrs, with whom he was Latvian champion. From 1995 to 1998 he was at HK CSKA Moscow in the Super League under contract, then the Lette went to America, where he played in the 1998/99 season with the Cincinnati Cyclones of the International Hockey League and the Dayton Bombers of the ECHL. He was then selected in the NHL Entry Draft in 1999 in the fifth round as the 127th overall player of the Tampa Bay Lightning. For Tampa Bay, he was in the next two years a total of 23 times in the National Hockey League on the ice and was able to score a goal and give two templates. However, the majority of the time he spent in the IHL Detroit Vipers farm teams and Long Beach Ice Dogs.
After Astašenko the 2001/02 season at the new farm team of the Lightning, with the Springfield Falcons of the American Hockey League began, he was transferred to the Carolina Hurricanes on 28 December 2001 in exchange for Harlan Pratt. However, over the next eighteen years he played exclusively for their AHL farm team Lowell Lock Monsters. For the season 2003/ 04 he returned to Europe and in 2000 began the season at HK Riga in Latvia his hometown, before they finished at Ilves Tampere in the Finnish SM- liiga. In the following three years he remained only in the short term in its clubs and played for EfB Ishockey in the Danish AL-Bank Ligaen, ASK / Ogre in Latvia, Chimik Woskressensk in Wysschaja League, the second Russian league, the HPK Hämeenlinna, with the he was in season 2005/ 06 Finnish champion, as well as the HC Slovan Bratislava in the Slovak Extraliga.
From 2007 to 2009 Astašenko ran in the Italian Serie A1 for Ritten Sport. Then he paused for a year with the Hockey before he signed a contract with HK Beibarys Atyrau of the Kazakh Hockey Championship for the 2010/11 season. In early February 2011 Astašenko, committed just before the trade deadline, the Belfast Giants in the Elite Ice Hockey League.
Internationally
For Latvia Astašenko took part in the junior level at the Junior C World Championships in 1994 and 1995. In the senior level, he stood in his country's squad at the World Championships in 2001 and 2006 and at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.