Death of a Soviet Netminder

Recently it was announced, almost as a hockey footnote, that Russian goalie Sergei Mylnikov had died at age 58, another of the Soviet stars of the 1970s and 1980s to meet with premature death.

The goalie had left the Soviet Union and appeared in ten forgettable games for a historically bad Quebec Nordiques during the 1989-90 season, never to tend an NHL crease again. He played some more back in the Soviet Union after that, and then in Sweden, his career coming to an end in the mid-1990s. I assume the news of his death was broadcast at all primarily because of Mylnikov’s role in the 1987 Canada Cup series, the drama of which remains peerless in hockey history. This