Keeping Score

The Kurtenblog,in the Vancouver Province, asks: “Is there a cooler name in the anchor-person industry than Lisa LaFlamme? A name like that shouldn’t be working for CTV. Lisa LaFlamme should be fighting evil mutants with Wolverine and Professor X.” . . . LaFlamme is one of CTV’s anchors during the Olympic Winter Games. . . . Cam Hutchinson, in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix: “Isn’t (Mike) Milbury criticizing an NHL general manager like Don Taylor of Sportsnet criticizing a barber?” . . . Michelle Pye, who lives on the Left Coast now after growing up in Kamloops and starting her soccer officiating career here, has been selected to referee at the CONCACAF women’s U-17 championship in Costa Rica next month. . . .

“I think they are pushing it a little too much. To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we’re crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives.” That was luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg of Australia, the day before Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed on the Olympic track in Whistler. . . . If you didn’t get a lump in your throat watching Alexandre Bilodeau get his gold medal on Monday evening, perhaps you should try breathing on a mirror. . . . Sheesh, the security bill for the Games is somewhere around $1 billion and they put The Great One in the back of a pickup truck for a security-free trip around downtown Vancouver. Gotta wonder why they didn’t use the Popemobile. . . . Hey, Brian Williams, one more time: How many Olympics Games have you covered? . . .
The Left Coast Sports Babe opines: “Now that the Saints have won the Super Bowl, those paper bags that fans used to wear over their heads are gone for good. But in a humanitarian gesture, folks in New Orleans are sending their unused bags to Air Canada Centre.” . . . So now we know a couple of things about Tiger Woods: 1. He can read words written by somebody else; and, 2. He’s sorry that he got caught. . . . So what else is new? . . . Boston Bruins winger Mark Recchi scored the tying goal and the shootout winner in a 3-2 victory over the Florida Panthers a week ago and Hockey Night in Canada spelled it R-E-I-C-H-I. Maybe if he plays another season, HINC will get it right. . . . So which is it: The Norwegian men’s curling team either lost a bet, or it’s doing children’s birthday parties in its spare time in Vancouver? . . .

Charles Barkley, an NBA analyst on TNT, doesn’t seem to like the Boston Celtics’ chances of winning a title. As he told The Associated Press: “People keep waiting on them to get healthy. I mean no disrespect, but old people don’t get healthy. They die.” . . . Former Kamloops Blazers defenceman Nolan Baumgartner and the Vancouver Canucks completed an 18-day eight-game road swing Sunday in St. Paul, Minn. After the game, Baumgartner was assigned to the AHL’s Manitoba Moose. Uhh, the Moose left Monday morning at 9 o’clock on a six-day road trip. By the time he is done, Baumgartner will have played 15 straight road games with two teams. . . .

Jeff Passan, at Yahoo! Sports: “The opening rounds of women’s hockey at the Winter Olympics are not sport. They are ritual slaughter. The sport’s beasts – all two of them – put such savage, severe beatings on their feckless opponents that taking the sport seriously becomes impossible.” . . . If you sat down and watched both Olympic hockey games on Thursday night, you received a real treat. As entertaining as Canada-Switzerland was, Russia-Slovkia was even better. . . . Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Shaun (The Flying Tomato) White reigned as the halfpipe snowboard champion, allowing him to maintain his title as King of all Slackers. Is he getting a little old to spend his life on skateboards and snowboards? Yeah, but he’ll never have to get a real job now.” . . . It says here that White’s show was one of the best in the Games to this point. . . .

Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “I love the idea that people are wondering about Mikhail Prokhorov getting the Nets, and getting into the NBA. Are they kidding? What, our rich guys are more noble than Russian rich guys? Besides, with the state of the current economy in the NBA, a member of the Gambino family could get a team.” . . . One more from Lupica: “When does Michael Phelps swim in Vancouver?” . . . American figure skater Johnny Weir, who is a Second World War buff, was asked this week who he would rather have been — Churchill, Roosevelt or Stalin. He replied: “I would have been Lady Gaga.” . . . After host Minnesota blasted the Vancouver Canucks and Canadian Olympic team goaltender Roberto Luongo on Sunday, Wild forward Guillaume Latendresse offered: “I hope we didn’t ruin his confidence.” . . .

Hey, Kamloops Blazers fans, the good news is that you didn’t finish last in the Tri-City Herald’s Best of the West poll that was published on Sunday. The bad news is that fans of the Prince George Cougars finished ahead of you. . . . Jim Swanson, the sports editor of the Prince George Citizen, points out that Prince George has one more athlete competing in the Winter Games — biathlete Megan Tandy — than all of Vancouver Island and Kamloops. “Hey,” Swanson writes, “that’s not something that would happen often, so I say we take every single chance we have to lord it over the Islanders and Kamloopsians.” . . . That settles it. We surrender. Prince George has better winter sports athletes and better hockey fans. . . . But let’s not forget that Prince George was home to — do I dare mention it? — Battle of the Hockey Enforcers. . . . And how did that go? . . . ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel has been watching the Olympics. As he put it, “Skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating, these are not sports. They’re vacation activities. I feel like I’m watching someone’s home movies.”

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca and gdrinnan.blogspot.com. Keeping Score returns March 6.