Entire KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl killed in plane crash

Lokomotiv officials said the entire team was on the plane, on their way to Minsk for a game against Dynamo.

Jesus. That's awful. What a blow for the entire hockey world -- I'm sure all those guys are friends with so many other NHLers.

Alexander Galimov survived apparently.

dchesnokov Dmitry Chesnokov
Lokomotiv forward Alexander Galimov survived the crash, his agent confirmed to Sovetsky Sport.

According to Wikipedia Rachunek is playing for Dynamo Moscow (not Dynamo Minsk which the Lokomotiv were flying to play).

Edit: He played for Dynamo up to 2008-09 and is listed on the Lokomotiv site as being part of their roster.

Potentially Salei wasn't on the flight according to some rumours.

EDIT: he was.

Death toll has been raised to 44. There were earlier reports that there were 37 members of the team plus 8 crew. Other reports said the total number of people aboard was 44. Very hard to draw conclusions.

Terribly sad news. I wish their families and friends the best through this awful time.

Karlis Skrastins former Star, Panther, Av, and Predator, and Latvian defensive stalwart signed with Lokomtiv Yaroslavl this past summer. He hasn't been mentioned in reports I've seen, hopefully he wasn't on the plane.

43 people passed, not 37. http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=375297

2 survivors.

This is awful news. Sad day.

Absolutely terrible.

The guys on TGOR talked about it briefly, and I've often wondered…the number of flights that pro sports teams take, something like this is bound to happen eventually. Really tragic. It's like one giant extended family being wiped out.

I never wanted to believe that this day would ever arrive. I'm crushed about this....this is tragedy at its worst. I can deal with the personal demons and suicides and overdoses but this is beyond words....speechless. Sad day for hockey.

can you imagine if this happened to the Sens plane? What the hell would we do?

Galimov (one of the survivors) has burns on 80% of his body and is not expected to survive.

Some reports are saying the plane was carrying more than its allowed weight. It failed to reach require altitude on takeoff and hit a communication tower.

Big Ev wrote:can you imagine if this happened to the Sens plane? What the hell would we do?

Are we talking the entire organization, or just the NHL players? If it's just the NHL players, the guys from Bingo would have to step into big roles, plus Murray would have to sign a glut of remaining UFAs like Stillman, Nylander, Samsonov, Dumont (who I think Murray might sign anyway) etc. etc. etc.

As Tim mentioned, with the amount of travel teams do, this was unfortunately bound to happen at some point. Such a sad day...

wprager wrote:Galimov (one of the survivors) has burns on 80% of his body and is not expected to survive.

Some reports are saying the plane was carrying more than its allowed weight. It failed to reach require altitude on takeoff and hit a communication tower.

My heart goes out to Galimov, it really does. He's got to be in horrendous pain right now.