Almost immediately after the tragedy on September 7, there was talk that Lokomotiv should be revived immediately. The conversations turned into trust: already on September 8, Alexander Medvedev, then president of the KHL, said: “The leadership of the league regrets the tragedy and believes that Lokomotiv should be preserved and restored. And the Yaroslavl club will be revived!”
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Reactivation options and application to the VHL
The KHL offered to finance the team, but it was necessary to get the players from somewhere. There were two options: to form a team from our own youth and to hold a draft in which each KHL club would transfer one player to Yaroslavl. Both options were rejected, as was the immediate return to the KHL. In Yaroslavl, they decided not to force things and spend a year in the VHL: “We at the club firmly decided that we would create a team according to the same principles that we preached before. In addition to the playing qualities of each hockey player, the human qualities of the guys are of great importance to us. We will also pay a lot of attention to young people: both students of the club and those who come from other teams. This season we are made up exclusively of young people. Until January 1, we can invite one hockey player under 22 from any KHL club. I would like to emphasize that every player comes to us voluntarily, without the slightest hint of pressure,” said club president Yuri Yakovlev in late November 2011.
Pyotr Vorobyov was appointed coach and the team was formed mainly from his own youth – the specialist knew them very well. There were also several new recruits. Many of them became adopted children of the Yaroslavl team and greatly contributed to the revival of the railway workers.
Lokomotiv players from the 2012/2013 season who joined the team immediately after the tragedy:Egor Yakovlev, Vladislav Kartaev, Emil Galimov, Daniil Apalkov, Alexey Kruchinin, Oleg Yashin.
Yaroslavl students who played for Lokomotiv in the 2012/2013 season:Arthur Amirov, Pavel Lukin, Semyon Varlamov, Dmitry Kulikov, Artyom Anisimov.
The team was very young: the average age was under 21, only three players were 22 years old. The invited volunteers immediately became the leaders of the Yaroslavl team in the VHL (the team debuted on December 12, 2011). Oleg Yashin, together with Rafael Akhmetov, became the top scorers, but they did not stay long in Yaroslav: they were good in the VHL, but did not reach the level of a top KHL club.
Alexey Kruchinin has earned the recognition of fans, at the end of the season he became the captain of the team and showed himself especially brilliantly in the playoffs. He will play three more incomplete seasons at Lokomotiv, after which he will be transferred to Traktor for Petri Kontiola. After that, Alexey managed to play in his native SKA, Salavat Yulaev, Kunlun, Sibir, Torpedo and now he is a player of Severstal.
Vladislav Kartaev stayed in Yaroslavl for eight years and only returned to his native Salavat Yulaev in 2019. Kartaev has been playing in the VHL for the past two years. No one expected him to set a goal-scoring record, but he wrote his name in Lokomotiv history not only by being at the origins of the team’s revival, but also by scoring a goal in overtime in the second match of the series with SKA (“Lokomotiv tied the score in the series and then won 4-2).
Emil Galimov from Neftekhimik played for the team for six years. Even in the VHL he was considered one of the main hopes of the team; his performance in Yaroslav earned him several calls to the national team. In 2017, the forward returned to Tatarstan, where he played for Neftekhimik and Ak Bars, and now he is playing for SKA for the fifth season.
Egor Yakovlev was the first newcomer to Lokomotiv. Although he spent only four years in the team, during this time he became one of the main defenders, became a world champion, and then a silver medalist with the Russian national team. After that, Yakovlev spent several years at SKA, won the Gagarin Cup, Olympic gold, went to the NHL for a year, and now he returned to his homeland, to Magnitogorsk, which he led as captain a few months ago to the Gagarin Cup.
Egor Yakovlev
Photo: Yuri Kuzmin, foto.khl.ru
Of those newcomers, Daniil Apalkov stayed the longest in Yaroslavl – as many as nine years. Groovy, with a fighting character, a fan favorite, but his career was eventually affected by gambling addiction. Daniil did not play in the KHL for several years, trying to overcome it, he lost a lot, including financially, but now he returned to the league and plays for Barys.
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The following season, a lockout began in the NHL, and Florida defenseman Dmitry Kulikov, Columbus forward Artyom Anisimov and Colorado goaltender Semyon Varlamov came from abroad to their home team and spent half a season in the KHL. Kulikov ended up traveling a lot around the NHL and eventually returned to where he started – the Panthers, with whom he won the Stanley Cup this summer. Anisimov managed to play with Panarin in Chicago and returned to the KHL for another year, naturally to Yaroslavl, but for the last few years he has not stopped trying to play in the United States – only in the AHL. Varlamov is one of the most successful Russian goaltenders in NHL history, ranking fourth in games and fifth in wins. He has been playing for the Islanders for the last few years.
Return to the KHL
Lokomotiv assembled its KHL roster in the spring, signing contracts with free agents. Here they have already selected not only youngsters for growth, but also experienced hockey players with a name: Kalyuzhny, Kolesnik, Kozlov. Staffan Kronwall, who came from Severstal, was the team captain for a long time, broke the club’s scoring record among foreign players, and in 2020 he retired.
Staffan Kronwall
Photo: Yaroslav Neelov, photo.khl.ru
In addition, Alexey Kalyuzhny, Vitaly Vishnevsky, Petrov and Chernikov, who played together for a long time, Viktor Kozlov, now the head coach of Salavat Yulaev, and Alexander Guskov, now an expert and commentator in the KHL, have already hung on their skates.
Lokomotiv signings in spring and summer 2012: Vitaly Vishnevsky, Dmitry Korobov, Victor Kozlov, Vitaly Kolesnik, Alexey Kalyuzhny, Egor Averin, Mikelis Redlihs, Roman Lyuduchin, Sergey Plotnikov, Dmitry Klopov, Yuri Petrov, Alexander Chernikov, Mikhail Pashnin, Evgeny Korolev, Maxim Trunev, Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall , Curtis Sanford, Sami Lepiste, Mark Flood.
Sergei Plotnikov came from Amur and was one of the main heroes of Lokomotiv for several years, especially in the 2014 playoffs. In 2015, he left for the NHL for one season and, returning to Russia, won the Gagarin Cup three times (with SKA and twice with CSKA). Egor Averin has become closer to Lokomotiv and is the club’s best sniper and scorer in the KHL. After 12 years in Yaroslavl, he said goodbye to the team.
Lokomotiv in the 2012/2013 season.
Photo: Yaroslav Neelov, photo.khl.ru
Here are the memories of one of the first foreign players of the new Lokomotiv, Staffan Kronwall: “The tragedy affected all the new players, this is inevitable. Newcomers ask which plane they will fly on, which route, from which airport, the same one or not. Many guys live in apartments where Lokomotiv players lived. At first the feelings were strange; I didn’t even want to know who lived here before. Nobody will forget this tragedy, but for the common good we must move on. The best thing we can do to honour the memory of Lokomotiv is to win. We will do everything possible for that.”
One day Lokomotiv will definitely do it.
