I wish my first post at the new home could have been a happier one, but happy thoughts are hard to come by these days. As a hockey fan I’m still in shock and upset and incredibly sad about yesterday’s tragedy in Russia, where a planecrash ended 43 lifes. Among them almost the complete team and staff of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, one of the top hockey clubs in the KHL (Kontinetal Hockey League).
My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families and friends who have lost a loved one in that tragedy yesterday. Special thoughts and prayers go out to the two surviors, a service member and the player Alexander Galimov. Galimov is in critical conditions with burns over 90% (!!) of his body.
I don’t know what we hockey fans (and players) did to piss off the Universe (or Karma or whatever super natural force) this year, but there were too many sad and upsetting news in our global hockey community already! In the last four months three NHL hockey players were found dead. All of them seemed to have battled with depression or a similar illness, which ultimatively lead to their deaths (suicide, accidental overdose…). And now almost a complete team and all of their coaching staff was killed in this horrible plane crash. I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it.
Player and coaching staff were from nine different hockey nations but I’m sure not just hockey fans in these nations but all around the world will mourn the loss of these hockey guys. In Germany we mourn Robert Dietrich who had transfered to Russia only a few months ago. Robert had never played for one of the teams I’m rooting for, so I basically only knew him from the national hockey team, where he was a key player and such a nice guy in interviews and obviously all around. He was 25 years old and sometimes he seemed even younger! He was just a kid and definitely too young to die!
R.I.P. Robert Dietrich.