Former Canuck Pavol Demitra is among the 43 dead after a jet carrying a Russian hockey team crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday.

Demitra's agent, Matt Keator, confirmed the news for ctvbc.ca, calling the former NHLer "a great teammate and a great friend to everyone he was around."

"He had a lot of energy for hockey and for his family and for life, and it's really tragic, not only for Pavol but for all the families," Keator said.

The 36-year-old left the NHL last year to play for the Lokomotive hockey team in the Eurasian Kontinental Hockey League. The downed Yak-42 aircraft was carrying the team to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, for Thursday's KHL season opener.

The plane crashed into a river just 15 kilometres from the runway in the city of Yaroslavl; the cause has not been determined.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry says the jet was carrying 37 passengers and eight crew, and that all but two were killed. The survivors' names have not been confirmed, but officials say they were critically injured.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has sent his transport minister to the site of the crash.

The KHL has confirmed that Canadian-born coach Brad McCrimmon was also among the fatalities.

McCrimmon, a Saskatchewan native, played defence for six NHL teams, including Calgary, Detroit and Boston, from 1979 to 1997. He played 1,222 regular season NHL games, scoring 81 goals and earning 322 assists.

Six other former NHLers are on the Lokomotive, including Karel Rachunek, Josef Vasicek and Jan Marek, all of whom are believed to have been killed.

There has been no confirmation about whether Sweden's Stefan Liv, who is also on the team's roster, was onboard.

Demitra joined the NHL in 1993, playing with the Ottawa Senators, Los Angeles Kings and Minnesota Wild among others.

The Czech player signed a two-year contract with the Canucks in 2008, scoring 20 goals in his first season but missing 47 games of his second due to shoulder surgery. He returned to the team in early 2010, just months before signing with the Lokomotive.

Former Canuck Geoff Courtnall played with Demitra for two years in St. Louis, and described him as "a really great, happy-go-lucky kid who had amazing skill."

Courtnall said he's had two uneasy flying experiences in Russia, and that travel safety has long been a concern among the KHL players he's talked to.

"I'm that'll be something that everyone in that league, and players who are thinking about leaving North America to go play there, will think about now," Courtnall said.

The short- and medium-range Yak-42 has been in service since 1980 and dozens are still in service with Russian and other airlines.

In June, another Russian passenger jet crashed in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk, killing 47 people. The crash of that Tu-134 plane has been blamed on pilot error.

President Dmitry Medvedev has announced plans to take aging Soviet-built planes out of service starting next year.

The KHL is a league that includes players from several Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl is a top team in the league and came third in the KHL last year.

With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press