KHL Goalie Attacked by Fan, 'Could Have Been Dead'

The KHL, Russia's answer to the NHL, has had incidents with fan behavior before. Their latest almost proved to be deadly.

On March 14, Avtomobilist Ekaterinburg was hosting Salavat Yulaev Ufa as part of an opening-round playoff series. Toward the end of the game, a fan jumped over the protective glass boards, grabbed the stick from visiting Ufa's backup goalie Vitaly Kolesnik and attacked him with it. Kolesnik suffered a deep cut but wasn't injured seriously. Though it was close.

"I guess I was lucky," he said. "Doctors who treated me said if the hit was just a centimeter or two to the side, I could have been dead or left paralyzed."

A Russian language video of the incident is below.

His coach, Igor Zakharkin, said, "It looked like that mad guy kept hitting our player with a baseball bat. The blood was all over the place. We're still in shock. Most of our players didn't feel like playing after what had happened and our foreign players were literally scared, but we were told the game must go on. The game didn't seem important any more. No wonder we lost."

Ufa originally asked that the league suspend the arena for one game and have the teams play in front of no crowd as punishment. The KHL instead fined Avtomobilist Ekaterinburg 1 million rubles (or $34,000) for "failing to provide adequate security." When the two teams met again a day later, there was an increased police and security presence.

In America, the incident is reminiscent of the attack on Kansas City Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa by William Ligue Jr. and his teenage son in 2002.