OHL Alumni Central

It’s always a horrible tragedy when a commercial jetliner goes down. When Air France flight 447 crashed in 2009, enroute from Brazil to France, 228 lives were immediately lost. The impact would have been devastating to the family, friend and co-workers of each and every one of those souls.

Josef Vasicek as a member of the Czech Republic National Team.

When the charter carrying the members of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of Russia’s KHL crashed this past week, 43 lives were lost. Of course, most of the fatalities were not run-of-the-mill individuals. Many were not just known by family and friends but by the populations of whole countries and even continents. A good number of the 140,000,000 in Russia would have at least heard of the players from Yaroslavl and many were known throughout the hockey circles of Europe and North America. The impact is still incomprehensible.

The names of Pavol Demitra and Ruslan Salei would stand out most to the NHL hockey fan. The coaching staff, consisting of Brad McCrimmon, Igor Korolev and Alexander Karpovtsev, were all retired veterans of the National Hockey League.

One player that lost his life played junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League. Josef Vasicek played two seasons with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, 1998-99 and 1999-00. In his final season with the Greyhounds, Vasicek put up great numbers with 26 goals, 46 assists for 72 points in just 54 games. He added another 2o points for Sault Ste. Marie in 17 playoff games.

Josef played for the Czech Republic at the 2000 IIHF World Junior Tournament, helping his team to a Gold Medal. A regular on the Czech national team, he won gold at the 2005 World Hockey Championships and played in the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Vasicek came to the Ontario Hockey League already a prospect of the Carolina Hurricanes. The Canes took him in the fourth round of the 1998 NHL Entry Drat, 91st overall. In total, he played 460 games in the NHL from 2000-01 to 2007-08, mostly with Carolina. He played a half season with the Nashville Predators in 2006-07 and last played in the NHL with the New York Islanders in 2007-08.

Josef went to the Stanley Cup finals twice in his NHL career, both times with the Hurricanes. In 2002, the team lost to the Detroit Red Wings and in 2006, they were Stanley Cup champions.

2011-12 was to be Vasicek’s fourth season with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. In his first season, the team made it to the finals before losing in seven games to Ak Bars Kazan. The past two seasons, Yaroslavl has been beaten in the Western Coference finals. This past playoffs saw Josef lead the league in assists (15) and points (22) despite not making the finals.

He has played in the KHL All-Star game for the past two seasons and wore the ‘A’ on his jersey with Lokomotiv.

Josef and the rest of the players from Lokomotiv Yaroslavl will be sadly missed throughout the hockey world.

Evgeny Korolev played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1995-96 to 1997-98. Korolev played his first two and half years with the Peterborough Petes before moving to the London Knights for the last half of his final season in the OHL. He was brought in at the trade deadline to help the West Division winning Knights, only two seasons removed from their CHL record breaking season of futility, make a run at the Robertson Cup. London made it to the OHL semi-finals before being swept by the Ottawa 67′s.

Evgeny was drafted by the New York Islanders in the NHL Entry Draft not once but twice. He was selected in the eighth round of the 1996 draft, 192nd overall and again in the seventh round of the 1998 draft, 182nd overall. Over three seasons with the Islanders, from 1999-00 to 2001-02, Korolev played a total of 42 games with New York while spending most of his time in the American Hockey League.

For the 2002-03 season, the Moscow native returned to Russia to play in the Russian Super League. The RSL/KHL has been Korolev’s home ever since. He began this season with Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod, a team he played with last season as well, but has been picked up by Dynamo Moscow. He played a season for Dynamo in 2005-06, as well.

Check out Evgeny Korolev’s profile page on the KHL official website.

Looking for a good hockey read? Check out the new book review page at OHL Alumni Central.

Maxim Rybin is now in his tenth season of play in Russia’s RSL/KHL since graduating from the Ontario Hockey League. Add that to the three partial season that Rybin played in the RSL before playing in the OHL and you have a 29 year old veteran of professional hockey with twelve seasons under his belt. Before coming to the OHL, Rybin was named the RSL Rookie Forward of the Year for the 1998-99 season.

Rybin played two seasons with the Sarnia Sting, 1999-00 and 2000-01. In his first season with Sarnia, Maxim was second on the team in points and goals to Jeff Heerema with 56 points and 29 goals. In his final season, he led the Sting in goals with 34 and was second to Eric Himelfarb in points with 70.

Maxim was taken by the Anaheim Ducks in the fifth round of the 1999 NHL Entry Draft, 141st overall. He never played a single game of professional hockey in North America, instead returning immediately to Russia.

Rybin is teammates with another Ontario Hockey League grad, Alexei Semenov. Semenov played three seasons with the Sudbury Wolves from 1998-99 to 2000-01. The two players were featured in yesterday’s post at OHL Alumni Central, naming the eleven players that will be playing for the five teams competing against Team Canada at the 2010 Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland.

St. Petersburg has competed in the Spengler on several occasions in the past and were champions three times. The team is home to former NHL stars Maxim Afinogenov and Alexei Yashin. The team currently sits third in their conference in the KHL standings.

Check out Maxim Rybin’s profile page at the SKA St. Petersburg official website.

Alexander Buturlin played two seasons in the Ontario Hockey League, 1999-00 and 2000-01, both with the Sarnia Sting. Over the two seasons, he averaged more than a point per game with 112 points in 104 games.

Twice during his junior career, Buturlin appeared on the world stage, representing his homeland, Russia. Both times, 1999 Under -18 IIHF World Championship and 2001 IIHF Under-20 World Championship, Russia was left off the podium.

Buturlin was taken by the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the 1999 NHL draft, 39th overall. Other than his two seasons with the Sting, Alexander has only played in the Russian Super League/Kontinental Hockey League. This includes two seasons before his Ontario Hockey League days when he played in the RSL with CSKA Moscow as a 16 and 17 year old.

Not including those two partial seasons before playing in the Ontario Hockey League, Buturlin is now entering his tenth season in the Russian elite league. After 16 games with HC Spartak Moskva, he has been traded to Traktor Chelyabinsk. Ironically, Spartak sits in tenth position in the KHL’s Western Conference and Chelyabinsk sits in tenth in the Eastern.

Alexander leaves the company of two Ontario Hockey League grads in Moscow. Branko Radivojevic and Stefan Ruzicka remain members of HC Spartak and have very recently been featured at OHL Alumni Central (click names to go to articles).

Buturlin also appears in an earlier post at OHL Alumni Central featuring the Sarnia Sting grads that were still active in professional hockey during the 2009-10 season. Click here to read the article.

Check out Alexander Buturlin’s profile page on the KHL official website (in English).

Alexander Buturlin and 650+ Ontario Hockey League grads can be found on the OHL Alumni Central Big List.

For the second day in a row, we’re featuring a Slovakian-born Ontario Hockey League alumnus currently playing for HC Spartak Moskva (Moscow) of Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. Yesterday it was Stefan Ruzicka. Today it’s Branko Radivojevic.

Radivojevic played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1998-99 to 2000-01, all with the Belleville Bulls. In his rookie season, he provided the Bulls with 24 points in 21 playoff games as Belleville won the Robertson Cup as the OHL’s playoff champion with a victory over the London Knights. This previous post features the 14 graduates from that 1999 Robertson Cup winning team that were still active in professional hockey during the 2009-10 season.

In his final season with the Bulls, Radivojevic’s 34 goals and 70 assists for 104 regular season points placed him third in the league behind teammate Kyle Wellwood and Jason Spezza. He was named to the OHL’s first team all-star squad and won the Jim Mahon Trophy as the OHL’s top scoring right winger.

Branko was taken by the Colorado Avalanche in the third round of the 1999 NHL draft, 93rd overall. He never played for the Avalanche but before leaving for the KHL, Radivojevic had put in 399 regular season NHL games with the Phoenix Coyotes, Philadelphia Flyers and Minnesota Wild.

Radivojevic has represented Slovakia on the world stage on six occasions to date. He competed in the 2000 IIHF Under-20 World Junior Hockey Championships. He has appeared in four IIHF World Hockey Championships, winning a bronze medal in 2003. Most recently, Branko skated in Vancouver for Slovakia at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. This previous post features the Ontario Hockey League grads that played for Slovakia at the 2010 Olympic Games.

Branko first returned to European hockey during the NHL strike year of 2004-05. He split his season between HC Vsetin of the Czech Republic’s Extraliga and Luleå of Sweden’s Eliteserien. He has entered his third season with HC Spartak Moskva and after wearing the ‘A’ on his jersey last season, Branko is the team’s captain for 2010-11. He has been a KHL all-star in each of his two previous seasons with Moscow and led the team in scoring both years with 45 points in 49 games in 2008-09 and 54 points in 56 games in 2009-10. He is under contract with the team until the end of the 2011-12 season.

Check out Branko Radivojevic’s profile page on the HC Spartak Moskva official website.

Track Branko and 650+ Ontario Hockey League grads on the OHL Alumni Big List.