Record-holder and KHL goaltender Alexei Murygin passes away at 39 after years-long cancer battle
Photo credit: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Alexei Murygin died on Friday at 39, and his final round of cancer treatment was paid for by a public fundraiser.
The Khabarovsk native made more than 300 KHL appearances across a dozen seasons, including 168 for his hometown Amur.
His signature mark came with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in 2015-16, when he went 302 minutes and 11 seconds without conceding, a KHL shutout record later broken by Timur Bilyalov.
SKA were among the clubs posting condolences on Friday, though Murygin never suited up for them.
The 2019 diagnosis that never really ended
Murygin was diagnosed in February 2019 with squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil, and he later said he was told the illness did not qualify as a work injury.
Amur's position was that the club had no legal right to fund treatment abroad, so he pursued care in Germany himself.
By then the tumour had grown around his carotid artery, and surgeons put the odds of a successful operation at roughly fifty percent.
He beat it anyway, and Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod signed him in August 2021. He called them the only club that reached out so he would not have to retire.
He returned to the ice that September against SKA, playing the third period.
What a fundraiser says about the league
The cancer came back this year, and after a third recurrence with metastases Amur opened a donation drive that closed only last week.
NHL players sit under two layers of disability coverage negotiated with the NHLPA for career-ending injury or sickness.
The KHL has no players' association with that kind of bargaining power, so whether a club pays turns on a classification nobody argues about until someone is already sick.
Murygin spent his final years coaching goaltenders after retiring in 2023, and is survived by his wife Ksenia and daughters Melitina, Varvara and Anisia.
That belongs in this story alongside the record.
Also read on House Of Hockey :
Sidney Crosby loses his longtime team member to the Maple Leafs
Sidney Crosby loses his longtime team member to the Maple Leafs
| POLL | ||
3 HOURS AGO|8 ANSWERS Record-holder and KHL goaltender Alexei Murygin passes away at 39 after years-long cancer battle Rest in peace | ||