Penguins

Third flight’s charm for Penguins’ Larmi

Taylor Haase
Posted on

After several attempts, Penguins goaltending prospect Emil Larmi landed in Pittsburgh on Saturday night to join the Penguins' expanded playoff roster.

Larmi shared his accomplishment, with a Pittsburgh International Airport geotag attached as proof, after landing:

The tweet provided some closure to anyone who was following Larmi's journey as he made several attempts to get from Finland to Pittsburgh this week.

Larmi was first scheduled to fly to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. After chronicling his presumed last morning in Finland on his Instagram with pictures of his last breakfast there and his arrival to the airport, Larmi shared another update:

Larmi was missing some of the necessary documents, and wasn't able to get on his flight.

Larmi took to Twitter after the first attempt, saying, "At least I was at the right airport this time." He was referring to his mishap attempting to fly to Pittsburgh last training camp. Larmi had come to the United States early, and was training with Casey DeSmith and Tristan Jarry in New Hampshire. On the day they were supposed to fly back to Pittsburgh, Jarry drove himself and Larmi to the airport, with both parties assuming they were flying out of the same airport. They were not.

"That was Jarry's fault," Larmi laughed when telling me the story that training camp. "We got to the airport and looked at our flights, his was departing from Boston and mine was departing from Manchester. I took an Uber and made it."

After Larmi missed his first flight, he spent the day at a racetrack in his hometown of Lahti:

Friday rolled around, and Larmi was set to make his second attempt to fly to Pittsburgh. Making fun of his first attempt, he re-shared the same picture of Wednesday's breakfast since he was in the same spot again, and asked his Twitter followers to wish him luck:

Larmi's next tweet was "Hey guys guess what!! I’m still in Finland," and attached another explanation. He didn't have the right documents again:

Since Larmi was planning on making his third attempt to fly out of Finland the next day, he lugged his three bags of goalie equipment to the airport hotel, only to find it was closed:

He followed that tweet up with a picture from the Tom Hanks movie "The Terminal," and a fan turned it into a meme:

Larmi eventually found a nearby hotel, and a pretty nice one at that:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Plan C Preparing for tomorrow.

A post shared by Emil Larmi (@emillarmi) on

Larmi showed up to the airport on Saturday morning for a third attempt, and again wished for luck:

He said it was the most exciting moment of his life, topping his championship win in the Finnish league and his World Junior Championship win:

Finally, they let him on the plane:

... and he splurged on the in-flight wifi so he could share his accomplishment:

Larmi will presumably join the Penguins players for their informal skates at the UPMC Lemieux Complex, where goaltenders DeSmith and Alex D'Orio have already been skating. The three will serve as Black Aces on the Penguins' expanded playoff roster if the NHL season resumes.

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