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WJC gold medal winning Russian team parties too hard, gets booted from NY flight

russiancelebration

James O’Brien

Take one look at the Russian junior national team’s on-ice celebration of their stunning gold medal victory and there are three basic thoughts that might go through your head:


  • “Wow, those kids are having a lot of fun.”
  • “Boy, I bet they’re going to do some drinking tonight.”
  • And “Wait, are they already hammered?”

Well, in what might be today’s least surprising news, the Russian team apparently unleashed their inner Andrew W.K.'s and partied far too hard to fly back home this morning.

The Associated Press reports that a 30-member group were asked to leave a Delta flight in New York and were forced to take what must have been an extensive amount of baggage (figurative, not literal) with them. One can only imagine the unsettling morning it must have been for the passengers briefly sitting next to this dude.

“To ensure the safe operation of the flight, the crew of Flight 1266 denied boarding to 30 passengers who were traveling together and displaying unruly behavior,” Delta spokeswoman Susan Chana Elliott said. “The passengers are being rebooked on a future flight.”

Some might view this as a shameful moment, yet there are probably more than a handful of people who are giving them the rock star treatment. For those of you unaware of the rock star treatment, it goes as such: destroying a hotel room goes from an incredibly irresponsible act to a display of reckless anti-authoritarian awesomeness if it’s done by someone who can muster three minute long guitar solos.

Surely the Russians will return home with plenty of stories and the adoration of the hockey-loving public in their native country, so it’s doubtful that this will be much more than an amusing (if somewhat shameful) speed bump.