The hockey world has received another devastating blow as news of a terrible plane crash killing the entire KHL Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team has made its way from Russia. The crash happened just after the teams private jet left Yaroslavl (which is about 150 miles northeast of Moscow) for Minsk, Belarus to open the season against Dynamo. Amongst those on board was Canadian coach and former NHLer Brad McCrimmon, NHL vets Josef Vasicek, Karlis Skrastins, and Pavol Demitra, and a slew of other North American and European hockey players. Of the 43 people killed, 36 were from the team. There are reports of two survivors, one being a player, but they are listed in grave condition as of late Wednesday evening.
Since the news was reported this morning here in the US, I’m not going to try and reinvent the wheel and “report” on it. Since I am in fact Hockey Gal Milwaukee, I did write an article for the Milwaukee Examiner about former Admirals Karlis Skrastins and Robert Dietrich being killed in the crash. You can read it here.
I’m not going to lie to you. I found out the news from a media friend early this morning, and then was forwarded Russian news footage once I got to my desk at my day job. I cried right in front of my coworkers. I saw what bit of that plane was left burning in the river and lost it.
I’m going on my 5th season of covering the Admirals, so I didn’t have the pleasure of ever covering Skrastins, but I was able to get to know Robert during his two seasons in Milwaukee.
I’m a hockey fan at heart, so even to this day I am starstruck when I meet the players. To break the ice, I always try and do something to throw them off. Like when I met Ryan Maki for the first time. I looked up some random business fact that you’d likely only see on a 400 level economics exam and asked him. Why? He went to Harvard. Well, when I first met Robert, I introduced myself in German. I thought, hey, he’ll get a kick out of it because he’s german too. Instead of saying hi back or replying in German, he corrected me. Apparently he was a stickler for grammar, and shame on me for assigning the wrong gender to my noun (at this time, I invite you to reference your 7th grade Kaleidoskop german textbook to figure out what the hell I’m talking about). From then on, I was quizzed whenever I interviewed him.
I’ll never forget that.
There has been a lot of excellent coverage of the tragedy, as well as some great articles about memories people have with those who were killed today. Below are links to some of the articles that I came across today while trying to find out the answer “why?”:
NEW Aaron Sims, Milwaukee Admirals Play-by-Play Announcer
Darkest Day in the History of Our Sport
From Associated Press, tsn.ca
Canadian coach McCrimmon among 43 dead in Russian Plane Crash
From Dirk Hoag, ontheforecheck.com
Wednesday Afternoon Notes: “the darkest day in the history of our sport”
From Ken Campbell, thn.com
Campbell: Lokomotiv coach Brad McCrimmon was working towards becoming NHL coach
From Greg Wyshynski, Yahoo Sports
Plane crash kills “majority” of KHL team Lokomotiv
In an offseason that has been riddled with tragedy all over the hockey world, I send my deepest sympathy, prayers, and all my love to everyone affected by today’s horrific crash. The pictures and video footage of the remains of the accident are enough to shake you to your core and make you realize just how short life really is.
