Belarus honors a hockey team

A somber on-ice ceremony in Minsk tonight included an orchestra, singers, candles, tears, cheers and the president of the Republic of Belarus making a speech while on skates. The Lokomotiv team from Yaroslavl in Russia was flying to Minsk for a game when its plane crashed Wednesday, killing all but one member of the hockey club. As part of tonight's ceremony, each Minsk player knelt at a photo of a deceased counterpart, then skated a solitary puck the length of the ice until the goal net was full of pucks. My Belarusian is weak, but it seemed the crowd's biggest ovation was for Ruslan Salei, the former Duck from Orange County who was a Belarus citizen. The video below shows most of the half-hour ceremony.