September 25, 2021

Remembering Yaroslavl's Lost Hockey Team


Remembering Yaroslavl's Lost Hockey Team
Yaroslavl Memorial at Arena-2000. Via Kremlin.ru

Ten years ago this month, Yaroslavl's entire Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) team was wiped out in one freak airplane accident.

Dubbed Lokomotiv (locomotive, or train), the team has been around since 1959 and has gone by five names in its history.

On September 7, 2011, a Yak-Service flight headed from Yaroslavl to Minsk, Belarus, for a game against Dinamo Minsk plunged to the earth only seconds after takeoff. Everyone died except for one aircraft mechanic onboard. One player survived the crash but, with burns on 80% of his body, died in the hospital five days later. Perhaps the most famous players lost were Czech former NHLer Pavol Demitra and Belarusian former NHLer Ruslan Salei. Also killed was former NHLer and team coach Igor Korolev.

Yak-Service was a regional Russian airline out of Moscow with which the team routinely traveled. After the 2011 crash, it had its license revoked. The plane could not gain altitude after taking off. The accident was attributed to crew error, but it was later revealed that the pilot had falsified documents in order to gain permission to fly the Yak-42 aircraft for which he was not trained.

With no players and little front office staff, Lokomotiv sat out the 2011-2012 season and rejoined the following season with a whole new set of players.

About 100,000 people attended the farewell ceremony at Lokomotiv's arena in 2011. The city had a population of less than 600,000. Putin was among the mourners. Even the NHL in North America played several games in memory of the Yaroslavl team, wearing special patches.

Oddly enough, the Lokomotiv crash was not even the first fatal plane crash of a Russian hockey team. In 1950, most of the Soviet Air Force team, VVS Moscow, was killed in a crash landing at the airport in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg).

Ruslan Salei gravesite
Ruslan Salei gravesite in Minsk. / Wikimedia Commons user Gruszecki

 

You Might Also Like

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey
  • February 28, 2021

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey

Moscow's stunning Museum of Hockey and Hockey Hall of Fame is a hidden gem with new investors ready to keep it going – hopefully for a long time to come.
KHL Victor Crowned
  • May 23, 2021

KHL Victor Crowned

Omsk Avangard clinches Russian hockey's Gagarin Cup with some famous NHL faces.
Holier Hockey
  • September 20, 2021

Holier Hockey

In which a Russian priest becomes a hockey referee and begins to transform the sport. 
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
At the Circus (bilingual)

At the Circus (bilingual)

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955