MOSCOW, February 1 Salavat Yulaev forward Danil Alalykin stated that he dedicated his lacrosse-style goal against Lada Togliatti to the memory of former teammate Rodion Amirov, who passed away in August 2023.
The regular season meeting between Salavat Yulaev and Lada took place on Thursday in Ufa and ended with a score of 5:2 in favor of the hosts. Alalykin scored in the 24th minute of the match.
«I tried to do lacrosse many times. I tried in Tolpar, in Toros, but it didn’t work. Finally I succeeded. The initial thought was that if Bashkirov passes the pass behind the goal, then I’ll see according to the situation whether to do lacrosse or no. The goalkeeper dropped a lot, there was a lot of space at the top, but the defenders didn’t move,” the official website of “Salavat Yulaev” quotes Alalykin as saying.
«Yes, (dedicated the celebration to Amirov), this is a goal in Amirov's style, he has already scored like that. I am very glad that I managed to score, I knew that he would help me,» the hockey player added.
Amirov died in August 2023. He was 21 years old. He was buried in the village of Bogdanovka, Ishimbay district in Bashkiria. In February 2022, the Toronto Maple Leafs, who selected the forward in the first round of the 2020 National Hockey League (NHL) draft 15th overall, announced that Amirov had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Amirov became the silver medalist of the 2019 Junior World Championship as a member of the Russian national team, and also managed to play for the main national team, with which he won the Finnish stage of the Euro Hockey Tour — the Karjala Cup — in 2020. He made his debut for Salavat Yulaev in 2019. In total, Amirov took part in 79 matches for the Ufa club, in which he scored 18 points (10 goals + 8 assists).