Known as Torpedo Yaroslavl at that time, the team enjoyed moderate success under head coach Sergei Alekseyevich Nikolaev.

[citation needed] On 7 September 2011, the Lokomotiv club was to travel to Minsk for its first game of the 2011–12 KHL season when the airplane that was carrying the team crashed following a botched take-off from Tunoshna Airport.

[4] 26-year-old Lokomotiv forward Alexander Galimov, who had been with the team since 2004, was pulled out of the crash alive and conscious, but had burns to 80 percent of his body and died five days later in a hospital in Moscow.

In the aftermath of the crash, KHL president Alexander Medvedev announced that a disaster draft would be held to allow Lokomotiv Yaroslavl to ice a team for the 2011–12 season.

For the 2012–13 KHL season, Lokomotiv added former NHL players Viktor Kozlov, Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall, Curtis Sanford, Sami Lepistö and Vitaly Vishnevskiy.