September 7, 2011 should have been a day of celebration for the fans and players of the Kontinental Hockey League’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. It was, after all, the day the team would travel to Belarus to begin their season.

Shortly after the team boarded their plane to make the trip, the plane encountered difficulties and crashed, killing 44 people, including every member of the hockey club, turning the day to tragedy.

One year later, the 2012-13 KHL season has begun, but there were no games scheduled for September 7, as the league, it’s players and the entire hockey community used that day to remember those who were lost in the terrible accident.

In addition to the tributes and remembrances that took place on the anniversary of the crash, Russia Today put together a documentary about the team. It’s one of the more moving sports documentaries that you’ll ever witness, a tribute to the sons and fathers that were lost on that day in Yaroslavl.

In the aftermath of the crash, Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported that Investigative Committee’s spokesman, Vladimir Markin, informed them that the crew should not have been allowed to fly the plane:

"By putting the crew in the air (Vadim) Timofeev (former deputy director of Yak Service Airlines) broke the rules of air transport operations. At the moment of the disaster, that crew wasn’t entitled to fly. Timofeev had allowed the captain to fly based on falsified documents, and the co-pilot hadn’t finished his training on the Yak-42 plane and had no right to be in air."

Timofeev has been charged in connection with the crash.

Lokomotiv returned to the KHL this year with a number of former NHL players suiting up for the team, such as Curtis Sanford, Vitaly Vishnevsky, Victor Kozlov, Sami Lepisto, Niklas Hagman and Staffan Kronwall.

The team opened the 2012-13 season by winning their first two games.