Goodbye, Alexei

Alexei Cherepanov dead at 19

TSN has a pretty sketchy story about this kid's death. Click the link if you're interested in reading one of the more ambiguous articles to date.

However, Газета.Ru has the scoop.

Teammate Jaromir Jagr and Alexei went in for a 2-on-1 scoring opportunity, then changed on the fly. They skated back to the bench, Alexei sat down, and his heart just stopped. There were 3 minutes remaining in the game. He was given a shot of adrenaline in his heart, had his thorax massaged, and they were performing CPR the entire time. At one point, he had a faint heartbeat, but then they lost it. During the whole episode, Jagr was near him, pleading in grief, "Leshka please wake up." However, his heart had been stopped for 15 minutes. They got him to hospital, and everyone seems to have conflicting reports that he kept struggling to breathe once he was in hospital, and I think they're claiming he actually died in hospital, not in the arena or in transit.

Autopsy results are pending, however there is a lot of criticism being directed towards the KHL and the teams in general for not having the proper equipment on hand for such an emergency, such as defibrillators, where was the ambulance, etc. They point to the NHL's standard of safety for its players and it seems that Cherepanov's death is going to be a horribly sad cautionary tale that will hopefully get the point across that emergency equipment is needed anywhere hockey is played.

Rest in Peace, Leshka.