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Back to Class: A WCHA referee shut down an airport with a “bomb joke”

Salmon Plane

An Alaska Airlines 737-800 featuring a new salmon paint design taxis to the hangar at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012. The new design is about nine feet longer than the previous salmon design on a fish-themed Alaska Airlines plane, and the design was produced in partnership with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The airline said it flew 24 million pounds of seafood last year from Alaska to markets in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It took a crew working around the clock for 27 days at Associated Painters Inc. in Oklahoma City to paint the plane. The plane was unveiled to Alaska Airlines employees Thursday in Anchorage, and will be put into service Friday, Oct. 5, 2012 . (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

AP

We’re taking you “Back To Class” for our roundup of the weekend’s action in college hockey. Look for more college hockey on NBCSN on November 16 as Cornell takes on Harvard.

One of the big trips in college hockey is when teams and officials have to fly the friendly skies for a weekend set in Alaska. For WCHA referee Peter Friesma, he found out that making a joke about a bomb being in a bag while “perhaps an effort to be funny or flirtatious” isn’t cool to do while in an airport as the Anchorage Daily News reports.

“But my friend’s bag has a bomb in it,” the agent remembers him saying, according to a charging document. He recounted it to authorities slightly differently, more to the effect of “what if my friend’s bag has a bomb in it?”

File that away under “failed pick-up lines that could land you in jail for a long time.” At the very least he’ll have an even better story to try and flirt when on the road.

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Upsets of the week: It started on Thursday night with RIT coming back from a 4-2 deficit against No. 3 Michigan to shock the Wolverines 5-4 in overtime. On Friday, it was Rensselaer beating No. 11 Ferris State 3-1, last year’s national championship runner-up, and then tying them 2-2 on Saturday. Finally, Hockey East saw Northeastern upset No. 1 Boston College on Saturday night 3-1.

Welcome to the big leagues: Penn State’s Division I campaign got off to a tough start on Friday losing 3-2 in overtime to lowly American International but things changed for the better on Saturday. The Nittany Lions earned the programs first win with a 4-3 overtime victory in front of a sold out crowd. Coach Guy Gadowsky, the former head man at Princeton, is going to do big things there.

Disappointment of the week: St. Cloud State getting swept on the road by New Hampshire isn’t becoming of a team that has hopes of winning the WCHA and making noise in the tournament. UNH isn’t a bad team and having the home ice advantage helps, but St. Cloud is better than that.