KHL coach mocks referee by offering him bribe from wallet (Video)

Raimo Summanen of the KHL’s Avengard is one of our favorite coaches because he’s basically John Tortorella with an impulse control problem. Let that sink in for a moment.

There was the time Summanen challenged Jaromir Jagr to a fight during a playoff series, when Jagr was playing on his team. Most recently, he took one of his players’ sticks and waved it at the referees to argue that they missed a spearing penalty.

One really, really gets the notion that Summanen has a slight lack of respect for on-ice officials, and his actions in a KHL playoff game on Thursday did nothing to dispel this.

In an elimination game against Ak Bars, Summanen watched his team go down 1-0 on an Oscar Moeller goal. His shot hit goalie Konstantin Barulin’s right pad and appeared to trickle through him a second before an onrushing Petr Vrana made contact with the goalie just outside of his crease.

The referees allowed the goal. Summanen … disagreed.

He stood inside the open door to the bench and waved over referee Alexei Belov, yelling at the official as he arrived. When Belov skated away following their intellectual discourse, Summanen screamed out “HEY!” to recapture his attention and then stuck his hand inside his jacket to pull out his wallet, with some money visibly sticking out from it – “enough for a light snack from the snack machine,” according to the game report.

Summanen held his wallet on top of his game sheet for the cameras to see, and again showed it off to the referees as he watched them from the bench. Alas, they didn’t take the financial incentive, and Avengard was eliminated from the postseason in a 2-0 loss.

What was Summanen thinking? Did he really expect Belov to become the first Russian official ever to take a bribe? (Ahem...)

When asked by SovSport about the stunt, he said (translated):

"I have all the time in the pocket wallet, I always use it - sometimes it falls. I've got two pens, wallet, keys and hockey book. I always use it."

Frankly, if this were the regular season, we’d like to think Summanen would have just taken out his wallet and made it rain on the ice. But everyone’s on their best behavior in the playoffs, apparently. Even him.

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