Russian hockey great Krutov dies at 52
Vladimir Krutov, one of the Soviet Union's all-time great ice hockey players and part of the national team's formidable KLM Line, has died at age 52.
Krutov died Wednesday, according to the Russian Hockey Federation. A cause of death wasn't given, but the ITAR-Tass news agency said he'd been taken to a hospital several days earlier for stomach bleeding.
Krutov led the Soviet Union to a gold medal in the 1984 and '88 Olympics.
"Volodya was such a dependable and steadfast man that I would have gone anywhere with him -- to war, to espionage, into peril," federation president and former Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretyak told the Sport-Express newspaper. "There are fewer and fewer guys like him in every generation of hockey players."
Born in Moscow, Krutov CSKA teammates Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov formed one of the most potent scoring lines in the history of the sport. In addition to capturing gold in '84 and '88, he was on the team that lost to the United States at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.
He also was one of the first Russian players to play in the NHL, but spent one season with the Vancouver Canucks.
