A year ago today, the hockey world experienced one of its darkest days when a plane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team crashed after failing to gain altitude on takeoff from the Yaroslavl airport in Russia. Forty-three passengers were killed that day, and one player, Alexander Galimov, died later in hospital. There was only one survivor, the flight engineer.
Among those killed were former NHL players Pavol Demitra, Ruslan Salei, Josef Vasicek, Karlis Skrastins, Karel Rachunek, Alexander Karpotsev, Igor Korolev, and the head coach of the team, Brad McCrimmon.
Following are three articles marking the one-year anniversary of the tragedy:
Pain has not faded for McCrimmon family (Craig Custance, ESPN)
Demitra remembered as a fun-loving jokester (Randy Sportak, QMI Agency)
How KHL’s Lokomotiv was reborn, one year after plane crash tragedy (Dmitry Chesnokov, Yahoo! Sports)
Sort of puts the NHL ‘s labor dispute into perspective, doesn’t it?
There are far more important things.