Ice hockey world in mourning after stars killed in Russian plane crash

Many international ice hockey stars were among the dead, leaving the whole sport stunned.

The triple-engined Yak-42 aircraft was carrying 37 passengers and eight crew to Minsk in Belarus when it crashed a few miles from the airport at Tunoshna, 150 miles north of Moscow.

It was carrying members of Lokomotiv – a leading Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) hockey team based in Yaroslavl – to a match in Minsk.

Among the dead were Czech world champions Karel Rachu-nek, Jan Marek and Josef Vasicek, Swedish national team goalkeeper Stefan Liv, Slovak great Pavol Demitra, Canadian coach Brad McCrimmon and Latvian defenceman Karlis Skrastins. Only Russian player Alexander Galimov survived, along with a crew member.

“This is the darkest day in the history of our sport. This is not only a Russian tragedy; the Lokomotiv roster included players and coaches from ten nations,” said Rene Fasel, president of the international Ice Hockey Federation. “This is a terrible tragedy for the global ice hockey community.”

Several hundred mourning fans wearing jerseys and scarves gathered last night at the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv stadium to pay their respects.

In recent years, Russia and the other former Soviet republics have had some of the world’s worst air traffic safety records. Experts blame that on the age of the aircraft, weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality.

The plane that crashed was built in 1993 and belonged to a small Moscow-based company.

Swarms of police and rescue crews rushed to the crash site near Tunoshna, a village on the banks of the Volga River. One of the plane’s engines could be seen poking out of the river and a flotilla of boats combed the water for bodies. Divers struggled to lift the bodies of large, strong athletes in stretchers up the muddy, steep riverbank.

Irina Prakhova saw the plane going down, then heard a loud bang and saw a plume of smoke.

“It was wobbling in flight. It was clear something was wrong,” she said. “I saw them pulling bodies to the shore, some still in their seats with seatbelts on.”

Andrei Gorshkov, 16, from Tunoshna, said: “I heard a big bang and then a louder one ten seconds later. Flames shot high and a column of black smoke rose into the air.”

He said he had seen the plane over the village, its nose pointing at a downward angle, then lost sight of it as it fell.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl is a leading force in Russian hockey and came third last year in the KHL – a league that pits together teams from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia. Lokomotiv won the Russian League in 1997, 2002 and 2003.

Czech ice hockey association president Tomas Kral was shocked by the Czech players’ deaths. “Jan Marek, Karel Rachu-nek and Josef Vasicek contributed greatly to the best successes of our ice hockey in recent years, first of all to the golden medals at the world championships in 2005 and 2010,” he said. “They were excellent players, but also great friends and personalities.”

The crash was the third major one in Russia in little over a year. In June, a Tupolev Tu-134 crashed in fog in Petrozavodsk, killing 45 people. In April 2010, Polish president Lech Kaczynski’s Russian-built plane crashed near Smolensk in a thick fog, killing him and all 95 others on board.