By Kyle Cantlon – Yahoo.com
Team ‘Olympic Athletes From Russia’ has transformed into team ‘Olympic Boozehounds From Russia’ awfully quickly, and the bender isn’t over yet.
Less than a week out of the PyeongChang Games where a group of Russians captured men’s hockey gold, playoffs in the country’s top league are set to begin. Two of the clubs comprising the majority of Team OAR in South Korea — CKSA Moscow and SKA Saint Petersburg — are slotted to face off against Sparktak and Severstal, respectively, in the opening round, but the KHL is reportedly postponing the start of both series.
For a very legitimate reason – if you ask me.
#KHL has postponed the first playoff games for SKA St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow from March 3rd to March 4th in order to give the players who won the Olympic gold medal for OAR more time to drink and celebrate. #Olympics2018 #PyeongChang2018
— Pekka Jalonen (@PekkaJalonen) February 28, 2018
Powerhouse No. 1 overall seed SKA Saint Petersburg, which went 47-5-4 during the KHL’s regular season, featured 15 players on Russia’s Olympic team, including former NHL All-Stars Ilya Kovalchuk and Pavel Datsyuk, and gold-medal game hero Nikita Gusev.
Second ranked CSKA Moscow boasted eight players on OAR’s gold-winning squad, including Nikita Nesterov, Alexey Marchenko, Mikhail Grigorenko, and Kirill Kaprizov — who potted the OT winner against Germany in the final game.
Both behemoths are on a collision course to the KHL finals, so why not delay the inevitable in the name of a good hangover.
