ORLANDO, FLA – According to reports from several sources, the Kontinental Hockey League will delay the opening of its season to next week and the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team will be rebuilt to compete this season.
The news comes one day after 27 Lokomotiv players along with its coaching staff and others were killed in a horrific plane crash minutes after takeoff from the airport in Yaroslavl, approximately 150 miles northeast of Moscow. The team was heading to Minsk for what would have been its season opener Thursday night.
Both NHL.com and Yahoo! Sports reported Thursday that KHL president Alexander Medvedev and chairman of the KHL board of directors Vyacheslav Fetisov made the decision to delay the start of the 2011-2012 season until September 12 in the wake of the crash.
Medvedev told Atlant Mystichi hockey club’s press service that each of the league’s 24 teams have been asked to volunteer up to three players each in addition to numerous free agents to be part of a draft pool of 40-45 players from which the new Lokomotiv staff can choose. Lokomotiv is also expected to bring five players up from its youth team to be part of the KHL squad.
“The 18 KHL clubs whose representatives I have managed to speak with have supported this proposal,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev added that up to 35 players, many who have at one time been members of the Lokomotiv roster, have already volunteered to join the Lokomotiv squad. He also said that because Lokomotiv will be honoring the contracts of the players and staff who lost their lives, one idea to help the team financially would be to have the players’ salaries underwritten by their current team for this year. Although it has not been officially approved, Medvedev said that he has gotten a great deal of support for the plan.
“This is still an unofficial decision but it has been supported by everybody and many are putting this idea forward themselves,” he said.
Reports are that a new coach has already been selected to lead the rebirth. Pyotr Vorobyov, who is currently the coach of Lokomotiv’s junior team in the MHL, will likely take the position – one that he is very familiar with. He was the coach of the Lokomotiv team that captured the Russian SuperLeague championship in 1997.
The lone surviving player from the crash, Alexander Galimov, continues to fight for his life despite having burns over 80 percent of his body. He and a flight crew member who also survived were transported to Moscow where doctors said that Galimov had regained consciousness and was able to speak to his father.
A memorial service for the victims of the crash will be held Saturday at Arena-2000-Lokomotiv stadium in Yaroslavl where more than 3,000 people gathered Wednesday night in the hours after news of the tragedy spread. At that time, Yaroslavl governor Sergei Vakhrukov promised the crowd that the team would be rebuilt. KHL-TV will show the memorial service as well as running past Lokomotiv games until the new season begins next week as a tribute.
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