The two survivors of the plane crash that decimated an elite Russian hockey team have been transferred to Moscow for treatment, but are said to still be in grave condition.
Alexander Galimov, the sole player on the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team to survive the crash, and crew member Alexander Sizov were flown the 240 kilometres from the town of Yaroslavl to Moscow on Thursday.
The crash killed 43 people. Thirty-six staff and players from the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team are among the dead, including the team's Canadian coach and six former NHL players.
Kontinental Hockey League chief Alexander Medvedev said Thursday that the team would be quickly rebuilt as he called on all the league's teams to contribute two or three players to a new squad. That would free up 40 to 45 players for the team to choose from, with the intention of forming a new squad as soon as next week, when the now-delayed KHL season begins again.
TSN's Gino Reda said the league is making a concerted effort to stay strong in the midst of the tragedy.
"That team was very, very important to the community, very important to the league and it's very important to everyone involved in the league and in hockey in general that the team gets back on its legs," Reda told Canada AM.
"Everyone's thinking 'we're survivors, we're hockey players, somehow we're going to get through this as a community and we're going to carry on.'"
Czech Republic players Jan Marek, Josef Vasicek and Karel Rachunek were killed in the crash. Others confirmed dead include Latvian defenceman Karlis Skrastins, Belarusian defenceman Ruslan Salehi and Slovakian national team captain Pavol Demitra, who had played for the St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks.
Saskatchewan native McCrimmon, 52, was also an NHL veteran who took the coaching job with Yaroslavl's KHL team in May.
Aviation Safety
On Thursday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the stretch of the Volga River where the plane crashed shortly after taking off from Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow.
Medvedev laid flowers at the crash site and met with officials while investigators attempted to raise the tail section of the plane, which contains one of the plane's flight recorders.
Then, with world attention newly focused on Russia's poor air safety record, lax government standards, substandard pilot training and older planes, Medvedev called for major changes to aviation safety procedures.
As a start, all Yak-42 jets have been grounded and Medvedev said the number of airlines operating in the country needs to be reduced.
"The number of air companies should be radically reduced and it's necessary to do this within the shortest time," Medvedev said in comments broadcast on Russian television. He didn't specify how that could be done, however.
Norman Hermant, a journalist with the Australian Broadcast Corporation based in Moscow, said it isn't yet clear what caused the crash but it appears the plane lost power as it began to take-off.
"There are a number of reasons that could account for that. It could have been pilot error, but Russian media is speculating that faulty fuel is to blame for the plane not having enough power and hitting some sort of antenna at the end of the runway before it crashed," Hermant told CTV's Canada AM.
He said the plane was built in 1993, and was relatively young compared to many in Russia's fleet. One of the jet's three engines was replaced a month ago, according to reports on Thursday.
It was not immediately clear what measures the government could take to cut the number of air carriers in Russia, many of which are small, regional operations.
There are about 130 air carriers throughout Russia, but 85 per cent of passengers are carried by just 10 companies, Transport Minister Igor Levitin said on Thursday.
With files from The Associated Press
