A Russian jet carrying a local hockey team crashed Wednesday while taking off in western Russia, killing 43 people and leaving two others critically injured, officials said. It was one of the worst crashes ever involving a sports team.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said the Yak-42 plane crashed in sunny weather immediately after leaving an airport near the city of Yaroslavl, on the Volga River about 240 kilometres northeast of Moscow.
Many sources now reporting that the one player who survived the crash has died in hospital. Lokomotiv officials have said that the entire first-choice squad, plus 4 youth players were on the plane.
The former NHL players on the list include Pavol Demitra, Karlis Skrastins, Josef Vasicek, Karel Rachunek, assistant coach Igor Korolev, and head coach Brad McCrimmon.
Ruslan Salei was also on the team, but there are conflicting reports about whether or not he was actually on the plane. Attempts to reach him via cellphone have failed, but he wasn't on the initial list of passengers that was released.
Terrible news. It sounds eerily similar to the Superga plane crash (en.wikipedia.org)I read about recently. It's truly been a rough off-season for hockey fans.
I thought that Belfour went in for surgery when the lockout started and had about a year or so to recover from it so that he wouldn't have nearly as bad back problems when they started playing again. I swear I read it somewhere last year...
#
#
