Avalanche’s Varlamov could have played with doomed Lokomotiv team this season

The Denver Post/John Leyba On Sept. 2, 1998, David Aebischer took a flight from his native Switzerland to New York, where from there he’d take a short flight to Harrisburg, Pa., for the start of Avalanche rookie training camp the next day in nearby Hershey. The flight, from Geneva to New York, went smoothly, as did the flight to Harrisburg. The people getting back on that same Swissair airplane, from New York back to Geneva on Swissair flight 111, would soon perish. Because of a fire cause from flammable material on board, the plane went down into the Atlantic ocean near Nova Scotia, killing all 229 aboard. Aebischer was lucky. Now, another Avalanche goalie, Semyon Varlamov, also is lucky. If Varlamov hadn’t been traded by the Washington Capitals to the Avs this summer, there is a chance – how much of one, we may never know – that he would have played for the same Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Russian hockey team whose chartered plane crashed yesterday, killing 43 peo...