Lokomotiv Yaroslavl

Lore & Background

The team has been known previously by several different names: YaMZ Yaroslavl (1959–1963), Trud Yaroslavl (1963–1964), Motor Yaroslavl (1964–1965), Torpedo Yaroslavl (1965–2000), and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (2000–present). During the Soviet era, the team generally played in the Second League of Class 'A', being promoted to the First League for the 1983–84 season. Known as Torpedo Yaroslavl at that time, the team enjoyed moderate success under head coach Sergei Alekseyevich Nikolaev. Never a powerful club during the Soviet era, the team became a consistent winner with the creation of the Russian Superleague (RSL) following the collapse of the Soviet Union, winning its first RSL championship in 1997 under coach Petr Vorobiev. The club moved from Avtodizel Arena to the new Arena 2000 early in the 2001–02 season, and won consecutive league championships in 2002 and 2003 under Czech head coach Vladimír Vujtek, Sr. Vujtek left the club after the 2002–03 season for a contract offer from rival Ak Bars Kazan. Lokomotiv has not been able to replicate its success since that time, but has remained a perennial contender in the RSL and then the later KHL.

On 7 September 2011, nearly the entire team perished in a plane crash. The team's flight to a game in Minsk crashed during takeoff, killing all of the team's roster (except forward Maxim Zyuzyakin, who was not on the flight), all coaching staff (except goaltending coach Jorma Valtonen, not on the flight) and four players from the Loko 9 juniors squad of the Minor Hockey League (MHL). The tragedy forced Lokomotiv Yaroslavl to cancel their participation in the 2011–12 KHL season. In the aftermath, the team announced its intention not to participate in the 2011–2012 KHL season, opting to play in the Supreme Hockey League (VHL) for one season before returning to the KHL. Former coach Petr Vorobiev returned as head coach for the VHL season. Since the disaster, Lokomotiv's jerseys have featured a memorial patch depicting a black ribbon inscribed with the date of the crash.

For the 2012–13 KHL season, Lokomotiv added former NHL players Viktor Kozlov, Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall, Curtis Sanford, Sami Lepistö and Vitaly Vishnevskiy. In their 16th season in the KHL in 2024–25, Lokomotiv captured the Gagarin Cup, their first in franchise history.

Reader's Guide

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl's significance is defined by two contrasting chapters: its rise as a consistent contender in the Russian Superleague and KHL, and its tragic near-destruction in the 2011 plane crash. The club won three RSL championships (1997, 2002, 2003) under coaches Petr Vorobiev and Vladimír Vujtek, Sr., establishing itself as a perennial contender. The 2011 crash, which killed all but one player and one coach not on the flight, forced the team to sit out the 2011–12 KHL season and play in the VHL. The club's return to the KHL in 2012–13 saw it rebuild with former NHL players. Its legacy culminated in the 2024–25 season, when Lokomotiv won its first Gagarin Cup in its 16th KHL season. The club's jerseys permanently bear a memorial patch for the crash victims. The disaster also prompted a KHL disaster draft and special allowances for the club's future roster construction. Lokomotiv's story is one of resilience, from tragedy to championship, while remaining a fixture in Yaroslavl and the KHL.

Did You Know?

• The team's name derives from its owner, Russian Railways, the national railroad operator.
• On 7 September 2011, a plane crash killed nearly the entire Lokomotiv roster and coaching staff; only forward Maxim Zyuzyakin and goaltending coach Jorma Valtonen were not on the flight.
• Lokomotiv won its first Gagarin Cup in the 2024–25 season, its 16th in the KHL.
• The club previously played as Torpedo Yaroslavl from 1965 to 2000.

The Final Minutes at Tunoshna

On a clear September morning in 2011, with light winds and a comfortable 18-degree temperature, the Yak-42 rolled down Runway 05/23 at Tunoshna Airport. The aircraft had entered from a taxiway positioned 300 metres short of the threshold, leaving roughly 2,700 metres of usable runway. After receiving clearance, the jet accelerated to an estimated 230 kilometres per hour yet never achieved lift. It overshot the runway end by 400 metres before finally becoming airborne. Almost immediately, the left wingtip clipped an antenna mast standing about 450 metres beyond the pavement. The aircraft pitched up to a 20-degree nose attitude, climbing only five or six metres off the ground before veering left and slamming into the Tunoshonka riverbank, just 200 metres from where that stream meets the Volga. The tail assembly sheared off and landed in the water while the forward fuselage disintegrated on dry land. Witnesses recalled the jet bursting into flames, engines falling silent, and trees being struck along the path. The wreckage came to rest roughly two kilometres from the runway. Notably, the crew had reported no mechanical difficulties to air traffic control before the take-off attempt.

A Franchise at Its Peak

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was far from a minor club when its roster boarded that September flight. Founded in 1959, the team had claimed the Russian Open Championship three times—in 1997, 2002, and 2003—and reached the finals in both 2008 and 2009, while advancing to the third playoff round in four consecutive seasons. In the 2010 and 2011 KHL Western Conference Finals, they fell narrowly to HC MVD and Atlant Moscow Oblast respectively. On 7 September 2011, the squad was en route to Minsk, Belarus, to open the 2011–12 KHL season. Every member of the main roster was aboard except Maxim Zyuzyakin, along with four players from the youth programme. The flight also carried former NHL stars Ruslan Salei and Kārlis Skrastiņš, who were set to make their Lokomotiv debuts, as well as former NHL players Igor Korolev and Brad McCrimmon preparing for their first coaching stints with the club. The disaster would become only the second fatal aviation accident involving a Russian hockey team, following the 1950 VVS Moscow crash near Sverdlovsk.

A Chain of Institutional Failures

The official investigation pointed to a convergence of human and systemic errors rather than a single mechanical fault. The flight crew miscalculated the required take-off speed, and one pilot inadvertently applied wheel braking because his feet were improperly positioned on the pedals. Training deficiencies compounded these mistakes: both crew members lacked adequate preparation to operate the Yak-42 safely. More damning still, the pilot had obtained his flying authorization through falsified documentation. The airline itself, YAK-Service, carried a troubling record. In 2009 the European Commission had scrutinised the carrier over airworthiness and safety concerns, prompting Russian authorities to impose restrictions and subject the company to international-standard ramp inspections. By May 2010 the Russian Ministry of Transport barred YAK-Service from entering European Civil Aviation Conference airspace—a ban lifted the following August—while the Commission separately grounded two of the company's Yak-40s. The accident aircraft, a 1993-built Yak-42D, still had an estimated 60 per cent of its designed 36-year service life remaining, though one engine had been swapped out just a month before the crash and a major overhaul was already scheduled for late 2011.

The One Who Lived and the One Who Did Not

Of the 45 souls aboard, only the aircraft's mechanic, Alexander Sizov, walked away from the wreckage alive. He had been seated in the passenger cabin rather than the cockpit. Player Alexander Galimov was also pulled from the debris conscious and severely burned, but he succumbed to his injuries five days later on 12 September at Moscow's Vishnevsky Institute. Both men had been placed in medically induced comas to ease their suffering during transport. Every other body was recovered from the crash site. The flight crew consisted of Captain Andrei Solomentsev, who logged 6,900 total hours with 1,500 on the Yak-42 type; First Officer Igor Zhevelov, whose 13,500 hours included a mere 614 on that aircraft; and Flight Engineer Sergei Zhuravlev. The disproportionate gap in type-specific experience between the two pilots underscores how thin the margin of competence already was before the day's events unfolded. For a city and a nation that had just lost an entire professional hockey roster in a single afternoon, the fact that one man survived while another lingered for five agonising days before dying made the tragedy feel both impossibly narrow and impossibly vast.