Pavol Demitra, other NHLers and prospects, die in crash

[LisaM]

This doesn't seem to be making the news, but there has been a terrible plane crash involving members of a KHL team.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2011/09/jet-carrying-russian-hockey-team-crashes-killing-43.html

[joeybee12]

1. I saw that...43 people died...

Probably the whole team...very sad.

[LisaM]

2. It ranks up there as one of the worst sports tragedies

and it's getting zero coverage. Well, the Detroit papers are covering it - they lost an ex coach and a prospect - but I'm listening to a national sports show right now and it's not being covered.

[joeybee12]

3. Just did a quick search...on the front page of MSNBC and CNN...

downplayed on ESPN and NY Times.

[mmonk]

4. Josef Vasicek who I have met when he played for the Canes died

in the crash. Sad.

[mmonk]

5. Remembering Josef Vasicek, 1980-2011

Looking back, I guess the only advantage I had over Josef Vasicek was that I spoke better English. We were both rookies in the fall of 2000, him in the NHL and me covering the NHL, both feeling our way through all the usual blind corners and dark alleys.

Joe was once like me -- six years younger that fall, but learning his job just as I was learning mine. He left the Hurricanes in 2007; I left the Hurricanes' beat in 2008. When he was traded back to Carolina at the trade deadline in 2007, I reached him on the phone that night.

His first words to me? “I was so happy,” he said. “To come back to a place that I know, it’s great to be coming home.”

Vasicek, who died in the plane crash Wednesday that claimed his entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team only five days short of his 31st birthday, was unfailingly cheerful, a good guy by the standards of the game of hockey and the game of life.

-snip-


Read more: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/canes/remembering-josef-vasicek-1980-2011#ixzz1XInCj3zq

[Swede]

6. It's been a bad year for the NHL.

Tough guys Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak all died this summer,now this.

[mmonk]

7. Yes, it has.

[a la izquierda]

8. How awful.

I've been a lifelong hockey fan.