Hockey is back in Yaroslavl. One month after the devastating air disaster which wiped out Lokomotiv’s first team squad, fans in the city gathered to support the club’s youth team – Loko – in its first home games in the MHL youth league season. And for once, so rare in modern-day sport, the result of the weekend’s games was far less important than the fact that they went ahead at all.

The city of Yaroslavl traces its history back 1,000 years to a legendary fight between Yaroslav Mudry (the wise) and a rampaging bear. But in modern times the Volga town has been best known for its hockey team. Lokomotiv was a feared opponent in the Russian Superleague and KHL, and Yaroslavl itself gained a reputation as a breeding ground for on-ice talent and a city with a passion for the sport.

The tragedy on September 7, when the Lokomotiv squad was killed in a plane crash en route to its opening match of the season in Minsk, shocked the hockey-playing world. With 10 different nationalities represented on the roster, the news was a hammer blow across the world. Yet it was also an intensely local disaster: many of those who died were Yaroslavl-born and raised, they learned their hockey here and grew up dreaming of donning the red uniforms of their local club. One month on, as the MHL schedule brought hockey back to the town, raw emotion was never far from the surface.

Around town, the small posters on streetlamps and walls drum home the same message: “Pomnim, Lyubim, Skorbim” (We remember, We love, We mourn). In the central square, flowers still lie at the base of the Lenin statue, while a team photo bears the message “Thanks for the game”. With Lokomotiv’s Arena 2000 out of action until next Sunday, when a memorial ceremony marks the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period, the hockey action switched to the smaller, 800-capacity Torpedo rink as Chelyabinsk’s Beliye Medvedi and Omsikye Yastreby came to town on Oct. 7 and 9.

First steps

More than 800 people came for the first game, as the city’s hockey lovers sought a catharsis from the game’s return to home ice. And that put extra pressure on the team, which had performed commendably in a run of away games. Captain Maxim Zyuzyakin admitted before the game that the focus was more intense than ever, for fear of letting down their supporters.

“The people of Yaroslavl experienced this tragedy together,” he said. “Now they are doing everything to create a good, supportive atmosphere. People here lived for their team – it’s a real hockey town and there aren’t many of those in Russia.”

Among those fans, most believed that it was better to put the focus on the youth team, rather than rush to create a team in the KHL immediately. Yury, a veteran who had followed the club for the past 10 years, said that he had been shocked by suggestions that Lokomotiv would compete in the KHL within a few days of the disaster.

“I understand that everybody wanted to help us,” he said. “But it was the wrong time. To build a team in a week and to call that Lokomotiv, it wouldn’t have been right. How would teams play against us? It’s a sport, not a charity. Better to focus on the youngsters, to build our own team again and compete when we are ready – in a proper competition.”

The young team on the ice had already impressed him in games in Nizhny Novgorod, with Zyuzyakin and leading goalscorer Alexei Shubin catching the eye. Goaltender Nikita Lozhkin, something of an MHL veteran at the age of 19, has also won praise this season, improving his stats from the previous two campaigns. “This is our future,” Yury said. “It will take time to get them to the top level, but when we go back to the KHL it will be great to see our youngsters on the roster.”

No fairytale

Conditioned by Hollywood tales of the plucky underdog winning through adversity, it seemed that the circumstances demanded a home win. Sadly this was not to be. On Friday, against Beliye Medvedi, Loko fought to a standstill before losing an epic shoot-out where the sides traded 16 penalty shots. Then on Sunday Omskiye Yastreby’s goaltender Eduard Reisvikh produced an inspired display, making 40 saves in his team’s 2-0 victory. Coach Pyotr Vorobyov conceded that the team had looked sharper on the road, especially on offense.

“Maybe for some of them the packed stands and the emotions were a bit too much,” he suggested after the Beliye Medvedi game.

Meanwhile there is more hard work to come for Lokomotiv once the club’s senior team returns to the ice on December 12. After initial plans to keep Yaroslavl in this season’s KHL were politely declined by the club, Russia’s hockey authorities worked to give the team a chance to compete in the second-tier VHL.

That competition is already underway, and Lokomotiv’s debut in two month’s time gives them little hope of overhauling their Western Conference rivals in the race to reach the play-offs. Initially it was suggested that Loko should be granted a bye to the post-season contests, but the club felt this would be unfair on the rest of the league. Instead Loko will travel to each Eastern Conference team, host its Western colleagues and qualify – or not – on the basis of the team’s win percentage in the latter half of the season.

The team will be centered on youth: many of the Loko MHL roster will expect to play a part, particularly the likes of Zyuzyakin, Shubin and Lozhkin. Sad circumstances dictate that there are few senior players available to join the new team, even if the FHR has agreed to ease the transfer rules to make it easier to make new signings. But for Yaroslavl’s hockey fans, the key thing is having a team back on the ice after the painful events of last month.

To follow Loko’s MHL progress, go to www.mhl.khl.ru or www.hclokomotiv.ru (both sites in Russian).

ANDY POTTS

This article originally published at http://IIHF.com