Bruins Captain Zdeno Chara will be among a group of European and Russian hockey players getting together next month for a charity hockey game to honor the memory of the players, coaches and team staff that tragically perished in the Lokomotiv plane crash last fall.
The exhibition game will be played on Aug. 4 in Switzerland and is being called Memory Night while pitting the Swiss Leagues Kolten Flyers against an All-Star team that includes Chara, Evgeni Malkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Bryzgalov, Sergei Gonchar and Alex Semin among others.
Chara was among the NHL players particularly stung by the Lokomotiv accident last September when his friend and Slovakian countryman Pavol Demitra was killed after the Russian passenger plane tragically crashed shortly after take-off. Chara left informal Bruins practices last September to attend Demitras funeral services and was understandably emotional while talking about the untimely death of one of his closest friends in hockey.
Alexei Kovalev, Alex Yashin, Sergei Fedorov and Sandis Ozolinsh are among the retired NHL playerscurrent KHL players that will take part in the exhibition alongside their NHL brethren while former Bruins forward Michael Nylander will be skating for the Kolten Flyers.
Lokomotiv has moved on from the horrible accident and even recently signed former NHL defenseman Niklas Hagman to a contract for next season, but the Memory Night will be a reminder that its truly been a short period of time since the horrible day for hockey that will never be forgotten.