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A plane crash in Russia has killed 43 members of Russia's Locomotiv hockey team of the KHL. 6 current or former NHL players were killed, including Pavol Demitra, Karlis Skrastins, Ruslan Salei, Brad McCrimmon (a player in the '80s), and others. Demitra played the balance of his career with my hometown St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League, and it's fair to say, he's beloved by Blues fans. If sports is responsible for the expression of some of our current ills, it also brings us into a kind of friendship with people we would not otherwise know. I'm sure that Demitra's line-mates on the Blues' celebrated "Slovak Line" (Michal Handzus and Lubos Bartecko) are mourning today. As we say, "May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace."

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