Two Years Later, We Pause To Remember….

Two years ago today, the sport of hockey went through the biggest tragedy it has ever seen. It was the darkest moment in a memorably dark summer for the sport.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL was preparing to open up their regular season schedule, which was slated to begin on the road. The team boarded their flight and got ready for their long flight to Minsk in Belarus. Sadly, this flight didn’t last long, as shortly after take off to team’s Yak-42 plane crashed in the nearby Volga River Bank, killing all the players and the coaching staff.

An entire team, with roots throughout the hockey world, was taken from us far too early. Players who were heroes in the KHL, and players who were familiar to NHL fans from years of contribution. Tragically taken from us and their families at far too young ages. It truly is one of the worst tragedies we have seen in a long time, and it’s heartbreaking even two years later.

I remember the morning. It was a cool and rainy day in Boston and I woke up for work to see the news of the crash.A few names in particular stood out to me. Pavol Demitra, Ruslan Salei and Karlis Skrastins were the big three, but New Jersey prospect Alexander Vasyunov was the one that really stuck with me.

The Devils AHL team had been in Lowell, which was two towns over from me, and I had watched him develop for a few seasons with the team. I was in New Jersey at the game he scored his first NHL goal in as well, and remembered keeping tabs on him as a player when he headed for Europe just a few months before this awful event.

It’s a shocking and sad reminder of how precious life truly is. It’s been two years, but it’s important to me to write this small article, but I don’t want the hockey world to ever forget Lokomotiv and the tragedy of that early September day.

You may or may not be the praying type, but if you are, keep the names of those we lost in your prayers tonight, and every year on this awful day. Lokomotiv will never be forgotten.

We remember those that the hockey world lost:

Vitaly Anikeyenko, Mikhail Balandin, Gennady Churilov, Pavol Demitra, Robert Dietrich, Alexander Galimov, Marat Kalimulin, Alexander Kalyanin, Andrei Kiryukhin, Nikita Klyukin, Stefan Liv, Jan Marek, Sergei Ostapchuk, Karel Rachunek, Ruslan Salei, Maxim Shuvalov, Karlis Skrastins, Pavel Snurnitsyn, Daniil Sobchenko, Ivan Tkachenko, Pavel Trakhanov, Yuri Urychev, Josef Vasicek, Alexander Vasyunov, Alexander Vyukhin, Artem Yarchuk, Head Coach: Brad McCrimmon, staff: Alexander Karpovtsev, Igor Korolev, Aleksandr Belyaev, Yuri Bakhvalov.