All KHL season openers started with a minute’s silence on Monday, commemorating the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team killed in a plane crash last week. CSKA beat Yugra in the first league game played in Moscow.

­This is the toughest time the young league has ever had to live through as the KHL entered its fourth season in dead silence.

Players remembered in somber tribute their friends at Lokomotiv who were killed in last Wednesday’s crash, as well as brave Aleksandr Galimov who fought for his life in hospital, but passed away on Monday morning.

The fourth KHL season was to start last Thursday, but was postponed in the wake of the tragedy.  

It was CSKA and Yugra who opened the season in the Russian capital.

The Armymen, led by their new coach Julius Supler, got off to a fast and furious start. Just two minutes into the game Sergey Andronov produced a masterpiece move to open the scoring, 1-0.

Yugra pushed forward with some good chances to level, but it was the hosts who scored again.

Ilya Zubov give CSKA a 2-0 lead seconds from the first intermission.

And the Muscovites did not loosen their grip in the second period, with Sergey Shirokov netting the third, late in a powerplay. With the score at 3-0, it was looking like a wipeout for Yugra.

However, the visitors did not give up as a couple of powerplay goals brought them back into the game, 3-2.

But it was not enough to change the outcome and CSKA now start the new season with a win, with both sides clearly playing in the name of their brothers in hockey, who will never touch the ice again.

“Most of us lost friends in this crash. Of course, we send our thoughts to them all the time, think about them every day and we'll miss them for the rest of our lives," Niklas Persson, CSKA forward, said.  

“The best way to honor them is to enjoy the game, especially when I think about Stefan [Liv], who was a friend of mine. I know the way he thought about the game, he loved the game, he loved to play and loved every single day of it. And the way I can honor him is to be proud of what I'm doing and enjoy the game as much as he does… he did. We have to go on and we'll try to do it together,” he added.  

There were six more games played on Monday, including defending champions Salavat Yulaev's victory in the Lokomotiv Cup.

The Ufa team came from three goals down to claim a 5-3 victory over Atlant.

Traktor and Metallurg Novokuznetsk needed a shoot-out to decide the winner, 3-2.

Severtal beat Dynamo Moscow, 3-1 at home. And Torpedo also scored three times against Vityaz, 3-0.

Elsewhere, Dynamo easily defeated Avangard in Minsk, 4-1.

And, finally, Metallurg Magnitogorsk claimed an away win against debutants from Slovakia's Lev Poprad, 4-2.