The key facts
- The funeral service took place on November 8 at the Church of All Saints in Elektrogorsk, with burial planned at the city cemetery
- Vasilyev was the 1984 Olympic champion, 1983 world champion, and won the USSR championship eight times in a row with CSKA
- The hockey player died on November 5 after a five-year battle with lung cancer
Farewell in Elektrogorsk
On November 8, in Elektrogorsk in the Moscow region, farewells were held for Mikhail Vasilyev, the 1984 Olympic champion in ice hockey. The funeral service for the 64-year-old athlete took place at noon at the Church of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land, reports a TASS correspondent from the scene. According to an earlier statement from St. Petersburg's SKA, after the funeral service the burial was planned at the Elektrogorsk city cemetery.
Playing career
Vasilyev belonged to the famous generation of Soviet hockey players. As a member of the USSR national team, he won gold at the 1984 Olympic Games in Sarajevo and became world champion in 1983; he also has silver from the 1987 world championship and bronze from 1985. A significant part of the forward's career was connected with Moscow's CSKA: from 1981 to 1988 he became USSR champion eight times in a row. Later he played for Yaroslavl's Torpedo, Denmark's Rødovre, and Italian clubs, and with Bolzano he won the Italian championship twice.
Coaching career and illness
After ending his playing career, Vasilyev worked with the youth team of Ufa's Salavat Yulaev — Tolpar — and from 2020 to 2022 he was part of the coaching staff of the main team. He also cooperated with Russia's youth and junior national teams, Belarus's junior national team, Moscow's Krasnaya Armiya, and Neftekamsk's Toros. In recent years, the specialist worked on the staffs of Nizhny Novgorod's Torpedo and St. Petersburg's SKA — together with his former teammate from the USSR national team and CSKA, Igor Larionov.
Circumstances of death
According to Life.ru, Mikhail Vasilyev died on November 5 after a long battle with lung cancer. According to Larionov, the illness lasted five years; in his final days he was at his friend's side in a Moscow hospital. Larionov remembered Vasilyev as a hardworking, decent man and an outstanding hockey player who fought for his life until the very end.
