Russian hockey team plane crash.

[canuck]

Sad news this morning of a plane crash involving a hockey team with one Wings prospect goalie and a former Wings coach;

http://m.yahoo.com/w/sports/home/blo...tl=US&.lang=en

[Downriviera]

This is tragic. Huge local impact with former players, coaches and prospects most likely on the plane. Sad day.

[gnome]

horrid news, sad.

[401don]

Just listening to the Fan radio station here in Toronto, they said many players are concerned about playing over there because the accident rate for passenger aircraft is 13 times higher than North America.

[Wingnatic]

In addition to Wings former assistant coach and player Brad McCrimmon , former Wings D Ruslan Salei was killed [[ I didn't see him listed in that article) He just had a baby girl this last season playing for us . I remember coach Babcock giving him a few days off to go home and be with his wife .
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=587792
http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=375297

[Whitehouse]

Announcement after five minutes of play during a differnent match. Needless to say that the match was cancelled after that. Very emotional. I come from a country where ice hockey [[yes, we over here make a distinction between field and ice hockey) where the sport is not that popular, though my province has at least one professional team. But when I imagine a top flight football team crashing, I really understand the impact it has for the sport. In 1958 a plane carrying the first team of Manchester United crashed in Munich. It took ten years for them to rebuild the team. Likewise AS Torino, Turin in Italy who's plane crashed on the flanks of the Superga hill, mere miles from home.

Sad news is also that the sole survivor of the team, Alexander Gilimov, sustained sever burns of up to 80% of his body. His life is hanging by a thread. The other survivor is one member of the flight crew. His condition is unknown.

A tragic day for the sport Hockey and sport in general.

[Thruster315]

Tragic in epic proportions. My heart goes out to their families, friends and fans.

[Steve bennet]

Not to get far off topic, but I don't understand how The Red Wings can still use that stupid 90's marketing slogan "Hockeytown".

This is probably going to go down as the worst tradgedy in professional hockey. On top of that, 2 recent former Red Wings were killed. Our all sports station 97.1 mentioned it during updates, but none of the shows addressed or talked about it. Great Hockeytown we have here.

[Steve bennet]

It was embarrassing that Valenti and Foster opened their show with Lions and Tigers talk instead of the plane crash. By the time they hit the air after the Tigers game, this was the top story on all national news networks.

[Whitehouse]

Sad news today. It was to be expected.

Alexander Gilimov, the only surviving member of the team, lost his fight.