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