As I have watched the momentum shifts in the various hockey games at the Olympic Winter Games, I find myself waiting for an enforcer to come off one team’s bench and attempt to regain the momentum for his side. . . . If you have been watching the Olympic hockey, you will be aware that no one has had a better couple of weeks than play-by-play man extraordinaire Jim Hughson. . . .
Some of Sochi’s stray dogs have been adopted by Olympic athletes. As blogger T.C. Chong wrote: “One American is bringing home a dog, and has already named it Sochi. A British guy wants to adopt one as well. Name? Eddie the Beagle, of course.” . . . According to Chong, retired American figure skater Johnny Weir, who has been working for NBC-TV at the Olympics, badly wants to meet Don Cherry. “Weir wants to ask him what he does with his old clothes,” Chong reports. . . .
Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the gold medal in ice dancing at the Olympic Winter Games, with Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir taking silver. Both pairs have the same coach, Marina Zoueva. Somewhere Scotty Bowman is thinking: “Why didn’t I think of that?” . . . “I've devoted more time in the last five minutes to ice dancing than my entire life to date,” Ray Ratto of CSNBayArea.com wrote during the final of the Olympic figure-skating event. “I just want to see what an actual fix is like.” . . .
“Saskatchewan skip Brad Heidt told the CBC that curlers get frustrated because they can't vent anger like NHL players,” writes RJ Currie of SportsDeke.com. “True, but if that changes, I want Ryan Harnden as my enforcer.” . . . One more from Currie: “I think we can all agree that the perimeter of a curling rock is round. So how can you corner freeze to it?” . . .
Headline at SportsPickle.com: Kurt Russell begs Team USA to win hockey gold so he can maybe get another acting job. . . . Headline at the Onion.com: Richie Incognito Disappointed Wells Report Left Out Best Stuff He Did To Jonathan Martin. . . . Judging by his reaction to a bit of a nosebleed during a Thursday night game, there isn’t any hockey player in LeBron James. For a minute, it looked as though they were going to have to give him a stretcher ride to the dressing room. Yes, The King is soft. . . .
During a Toronto Maple Leafs game prior to the Olympics, a wedding proposal was shown on the Kiss Cam. After which Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press noted: “First time anybody’s got a ring there since 1967.” . . . Congrats to Kibwe Johnson, who will be inducted into the Gwinnett County, Ga., Sports Hall of Fame on May 9. Johnson, one of the United States’ top hammer throwers, lives and trains in Kamloops. He is one of three Americans to have broken the 80-metre barrier in his sport. . . .
You will recall that one of the five Olympic rings didn’t light up during the Winter Games’ opening ceremony. As Seattle Times reader Bill Littlejohn explained: “Rings have a way of disappearing when Vladimir Putin is around, said Robert Kraft.” . . . A San Francisco radio station apparently left the Olympic hockey game between the U.S. and Russia before the game ended in a shootout. Littlejohn noted: “The show that it picked up was called Hooked on Golf. In this week's show, the golf pro gives lessons to a girl named Heidi.” . . .
Here’s Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, with a Winter Olympics-related tidbit: “I have been told there is one actual sport, biathlon, that involves both cross-country skiing and shooting guns. That happens to be a very popular sport in Miami, but without the cross-country skiing part.” . . . Someone asked the great Charles Barkley about curling. His response: “It’s dusting.” . . . Comedian Erik Rolfsen, after Derek Jeter announced that 2014 would be his last season as a pro baseballer: “Derek Jeter has played in more post-season games than the Cubs and White Sox franchises combined. He's also broken more hearts than the Cubbies.” . . .
Social note: Julianne Hough, who visited Splitsville with Ryan Seacrest just last year, now is being seen out and about with Brooks Laich, a former WHLer who plays for the NHL’s Washington Capitals. You‘re right, Laich has come a long, long way from Wawota, Sask. . . . Here’s Janice Hough, aka the Left Coast Sports Babe, who isn’t related to Julianne: “The Clowns of America president says that membership numbers are plummeting because the younger generation isn’t going into the profession, and that the country may be facing a clown shortage. Well, we can always borrow some from Congress.” . . . Gee, there might even be a Canadian senator or three available. . . .
If you missed it, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the non-profit organization known as the NFL, was paid US $44.2 million in 2013. Someone broke it down to approximately $850,000 per week, or $170,000 per day, or $21,000 per hour. . . . And then there’s swimmer Jaring Timmerman of Winnipeg, who has worked through injuries, including torn shoulder ligaments, suffered in his younger days to set age-group records. “That’s what they call a swimmer’s shoulder,” Timmerman, who is 104, told CBC News. “I got that when I was about 100.”
(Gregg Drinnan is a former sports editor of the Regina Leader-Post and the late Kamloops Daily News. He is at gdrinnan.blogspot.ca and twitter.com/gdrinnan. Keeping Score appears here on weekends, except when it doesn’t.)
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