Not sure I need to explain why this wonderful FanPost has been bumped to the front page. Things like this make me proud of the community we have in this little corner of the Internet. - Travis
ESPN aired their tribute to athletes who have died in 2011.
Not a single hockey player was mentioned.
So, here, I would like to pay tribute to those players of the sport (whether active in 2011 or not) and any dedicated staff members who passed away. The crew killed on the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash is included as well.
Mention anyone who is missed, and they will be added.
Remember those who were lost. They are part of our world as hockey players. ESPN forgets, but we will not.
January
6 - Tom Cavanagh
17 - Vernon "Tex" Kaiser
25 - Arto Javanainen
February
10 - Fred Speck
22 - Jerome "Jud" McAtee
March
10 - Mikolaj "Nick" Harbaruk
13 - Rick Martin
19 - Peter Laframboise
22 - Jean-Guy Morissette
April
3 - Mandi Schwartz
7 - E. J. McGuire
29 - Jim Cunningham
May
3 - Paul Ackerley
7 - Eilert Määttä
13 - Derek Boogaard
24 - Barry Potomski
June
22 - Harley Hotchkiss
26 - Barry Wilkins
July
11 - Jaroslav Jiřík
August
10 - Oldřich Machač
15 - Rick Rypien
Joseph Ronan
22 - Thomas Syme
31 - Wade Belak
September
7 - Vitaly Anikeyenko
Yury Bakhvalov
Aleksandr Belyayev
Mikhail Balandin
Aleksandr Vasyunov
Josef Vasicek
Aleksandr Vyukhin
Robert Dietrich
Pavol Demitra
Andrei Zimin
Marat Kalimulin
Aleksandr Karpovtsev
Aleksandr Kalyanin
Andrei Kiryukhin
Nikita Klyukin
Igor Korolyov
Nikolai Krivonosov
Yevgeny Kunnov
Vyacheslav Kuznetsov
Stefan Liv
Jan Marek
Brad McCrimmon
Sergey Ostapchuk
Vladimir Piskunov
Karel Rachunek
Evgeny Sidorov
Karlis Skrastins
Ruslan Salei
Pavel Snurnitsyn
Daniil Sobchenko
Ivan Tkachenko
Pavel Trakhanov
Igor Urychev
Gennady Churilov
Maksim Shuvalov
Artyom Yarchuk
Andrey Solontsev
Igor Zhevelov
Sergei Zhuravlev
Vladimir Matyushkin
Yelena Sarmatova
Nadezhda Maksumova
Yelena Shavina
12 - Aleksandr Galimov
16 - Roger Belanger
18 - Earl Cook
October
5 - Peter Jaks
20 - Ronald Amess
30 - Serge Aubry
31 - Sven Tumba
November
5 - Hannu Haapalainen
9 - Roger Christian
Patrick Steel
13 - Kyle Fundytus
16 - Eddy Palchak
19 - Pete Leichnitz
25 - Fred Etcher
December
5 - Gregg Madill
12 - Heinrich "Heini" Lohrer
23 - Bill Klatt
27 - Johnny Wilson
27 - Tyson Sievert
"We know that hockey is where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games." - Fred Shero