Blake Hall
Sure, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is petulant, lazy and irrational. And okay, once in a while he takes off his shirt when it should be kept on and rides in submarines to prove that he’s probably some sort of humanoid cowboy Poseidon.
Oh, right.
He also attaches tracking devices to polar bears’ necks and has his people plant ancient artifacts in the Black Sea for him to “discover” and shoots whales with crossbows and flies with Siberian white cranes and drives Formula One race cars and chills with Steven Seagal.
But he wouldn’t stoop to assembling some of the very best professional hockey players on the planet (Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Vyacheslav Fetisov and Pavel Bure — all Russian) add himself to the star-studded roster then organize a real-deal hockey game where his dream team plays little kids — and runs up the score on them, would he?
He would. And he did.
To the tune of 9-5, according to Russian news reports.
The kids were student players from the Sirius academy for gifted children, and they “participated” in the match versus the 63-year-old Putin and company at the Shaiba arena in Sochi — one of the hockey venues for last year’s Winter Olympics.
The former Soviet Union’s fearless leader even managed to score twice in the lopsided affair.
How do you like them яблоки?