Dallas Stars to honour KHL Plane Crash victim Karlis Skrastins with No. 37 helmet decal –NHL Update
Dallas Stars lost former veteran player, Karlis Skrastins, in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) plane crash, a tragic incident which occurred on September 7, 2011, and also took the lives of 43 other players, all part of the KHL’s Yaroslavl Lokomotiv
team.
Many National Hockey League (NHL) franchises lost some of the former players and coaching staff in the horrific even but Dallas has planned on honouring the 37-year-old player throughout the upcoming 2011-2012 regular season by wearing a no. 37 decal on
the back of their helmets.
"It's just a tough situation to talk about, knowing he was here four or five months ago", Dallas Stars captain Brenden Morrow said. "It (the decal) is just something that we'll wear to honor him and keep him in our memory and his family in our thoughts and
prayers".
It certainly is a hard time for people who knew him, may it have been a day or many years, especially his family members who remember Skrastins as a loving person and father.
"To be honest, that's probably the least you can do to honor a guy that went in such a sad way. You just feel for his family", Burish said. "You feel for his wife and feel for his kids, just absolute sadness to lose a guy like that. I'm sitting next to him
in the locker room for a year”.
Karlis Skrastins was drafted as the 230th overall pick of Nashville Predators during round-nine of the 1998 NHL Entry Draft and played with his original draft team for five straight seasons before joining Colorado Avalanche for another three and
a half seasons. In 2008, he was traded to Florida Panthers, with whom he played another season before finally joining Dallas Stars up until last season.
The Riga, Latvia native, played a total of 832 NHL matchups and potted a total of 136 points (32 goals, 104 assists) and indeed was a very valuable defenseman for Dallas Stars.
Skrastins left the NHL to play in Russia after his two-year contract expired earlier in July but had his career cut short in one of the most shocking events in ice hockey history.
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