Robert Dietrich (25 July 1986 – 7 September 2011) was a professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

defenceman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from Goal (ice hockey), scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the la ...

. He was killed in the

2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash On 7 September 2011, YAK-Service Flight 9633, a Yakovlev Yak-42 air charter, charter flight operated by Yak-Service, YAK-Service carrying players and coaching staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl professional ice hockey team, crashed on take-off nea ...

, in which all players and coaches on board the plane from the club perished.

Playing career

Dietrich was drafted 174th overall in the sixth round of the

2007 NHL Entry Draft The 2007 NHL Entry Draft was the 45th NHL Entry Draft. It was hosted at Nationwide Arena in the city of Columbus, Ohio, on June 22, 2007. The draft consisted of seven rounds with rounds two through seven taking place on June 23, 2007. The draft ...

by the

Nashville Predators The Nashville Predators (commonly referred to as the Preds) are a professional ice hockey team based in Nashville, Tennessee. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference, and ha ...

. He played with the DEG Metro Stars of the

DEL Del, or nabla, is an operator used in mathematics (particularly in vector calculus) as a vector differential operator, usually represented by the nabla symbol ∇. When applied to a function defined on a one-dimensional domain, it denotes th ...

from 2005 to the 2008. On 16 July 2007, Dietrich was signed to a three-year entry level contract with the Predators. He was reassigned on loan to the Metro Stars for his first year of the contract, before he spent the final two seasons in North America with the Predators

American Hockey League The American Hockey League (AHL) is a professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary Minor league#Ice hockey, developmental league for the National Hockey League (NHL). Since the 2010–11 AHL se ...

affiliate, the

Milwaukee Admirals The Milwaukee Admirals are a professional ice hockey team in the American Hockey League (AHL). They play in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Panther Arena. They are affiliated with the NHL's Nashvil ...

. In his second year with the Admirals in 2009–10, Dietrich led the team with 43 points for defenseman, but was unable to appear in the NHL with Nashville. On 8 June 2010, Dietrich returned to Germany and signed a two-year contract with Adler Mannheim.

Death

On 7 September 2011, Dietrich was killed when a Yakovlev Yak-42 passenger aircraft, carrying nearly the entire Lokomotiv team, crashed just outside Yaroslavl, Russia. The team was traveling to

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the admi ...

, Belarus to play their opening game of the season, with its coaching staff and prospects. Lokomotiv officials said "everyone from the main roster was on the plane plus four players from the youth team."

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

International

References

External links

* 1986 births 2011 deaths Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Russia Adler Mannheim players DEG Metro Stars players EC Peiting players German ice hockey defencemen Soviet emigrants to Germany German people of Kazakhstani descent Kazakhstani people of German descent Milwaukee Admirals players Nashville Predators draft picks Russian and Soviet-German people Straubing Tigers players Victims of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash Sportspeople from Kaufbeuren Ice hockey people from Bavaria German expatriate ice hockey people German expatriate sportspeople in the United States German expatriate sportspeople in Russia Expatriate ice hockey players in Russia Expatriate ice hockey players in the United States {{Germany-icehockey-bio-stub