Hockey, and a little more

The morning links -- or should that be, link, and a few linkettes:

It's Team Canada against the Czechs today, and after yesterday's rather emphatic gold medal win by the women, a strong effort by the guys would go a long way to restoring some comfort zone for them and the fans here at home. A smattering of the storylines from the Olympic tournament:

Wayne Gretzky wants the kids to step up. (All together now: Duh!).

By how much is Hayley Wickenheiser the best woman playing hockey in the world? Moments after winning the gold medal yesterday, she revealed she played the final three games of the Olympic tournament with a broken hand, and still led everyone in scoring.

Good catch from James Mirtle: The Swedes might be playing at a little less than full intensity today. Oh, all right, they may be tanking it.

Some other stuff:

The Argos signed former Bomber Keith Stokes, which has incumbent return man Bashir Levingston in a snit.

R.I.P., Curt Gowdy.

As Real Madrid and Arsenal make ready to resume the Champions League, Ronaldo rips his home fans and rips 'em some more: "I have never felt at home at the Bernabeu."

Top Klass performance

The morning links, quick and painless as we clear the decks for today's gold-medal hockey game live texter:

Cindy Klassen is living up to the hype at the Turin Olympics, with more to come -- the same couldn't be said for the CBC yesterday. Team Canada's hockeyists, male division, are not.

LeBron James is the NBA All-Star MVP, which we'll all have forgotten by tomorrow -- except maybe for Chris Bosh. (Oh, dear. Controversy in the slam-dunk.)

Ricky Williams tests positive.

Bad weekend for broken footballers: Alan Smith and Francesco Totti.

It's a Champions League week, with Chelsea-Barcelona the best matchup from among the final 16.

Barry Bonds says he's retiring at the end of the season. Er, maybe not.

Take me out to the bobble game

I've combined the morning links and the Friday afternoon roundup. Think of it as Friday brunch as we clean out our desks before this afternoon's live texter:

One Two last read(s): It has to be Turin, right? Yes! Sort of. Juventus beat Inter in a fine Serie A game on Sunday, aging Del Piero coming on as a sub and scoring the winner on a swerving free kick.

ALBERTO RAMELLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Del Piero and Mutu: Nothing like a good soccer cuddle to end the week.

Rob Hughes delivers some great old-timey sportswriting to mark the moment (you rarely read this kind of stuff anymore, attitude having conquered content. Besides, as e-mailer Martin Gouda put it during Thursday's live texter: "Reading is for old people."):

"It was a touch of class that left the Inter goalkeeper, Julio Cesar, dumbstruck, and left little doubt that The Old Lady of Turin, as Juventus is known, would retain her crown as champion of Italy.
Del Piero made it look as if he were shelling peas."

And the other: why do Olympic athletes bite their medals? (and I have one for 'em - is it true that these Turin medals can be popped into a CD player?)

One Two last look(s): With baseball starting up, these two -- Autograph and Dodgers -- fit the times perfectly, and besides, if you've hung around here for any length of time at all you know that bobbleheads are kind of our thing (From the delightful archive of PES, link via Beware of the Blog).

One last listen: Saudi Arabia's team song for this summer's World Cup.

Breaking news: Italian newspapers report that Juve manager Fabio Capello has been offered the England job. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, although frankly, the England FA doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Not so breaking news: Not exactly breaking, but a couple of lists, 'cuz I like lists: First, Slam Magazine is revisiting the 1996 draft in their latest issue -- and redrafting it "based on the player's career to date". Here's their version of how one of the best drafts ever should have gone with the actual '96 draft slot in brackets (I can't begin to sort out the chicken wings and beer arguments this one could provoke, starting from the basic premise that '96 was the best -- I'll take '84 -- and their complete dissing of Moochie Norris, a steal at 33rd overall):

1. Allen Iverson (Taken 1st overall)
2. Kobe Bryant (13th)
3. Ray Allen (5th)
4. Stephon Marbury (4th)
5. Steve Nash (15th)
6. Jermaine O’Neal (17th)
7. Antoine Walker (6th)
8. Shareef Abdur-Rahim (3rd)
9. Peja Stojakovic (14th)
10. Marcus Camby (2nd)

The other list comes from Sports Illustrated's Ian Thomsen: Team-by-team cost per victory in the NBA this season, and here is one place where the Knicks can truly be said to be in a league of their own. Thanks to Mark Freedman for stopping by with this link.

Sports around town: At 19-3 in league play, York's women's team shares the OUA's best record with Brock, are 10th ranked in the country and open their playoff season Tuesday night at home (8 p.m.). (U of T men close out their regular seasons tonight at the Sports Gym against dear old Rye High, while the Blues women have a home playoff on Wednesday next week.)

Watching: NBA Rookies vs Sophomores game, Friday, 9 p.m., Sportsnet. I've said this before, at the late (*sniff*, *choked sob*) Hockey Page -- when the NHL gets back to playing all-star games, they could do a lot worse than copying this format, which actually can make for a real game (okay, almost). I mean, who wants to lose to the rookies? And if you're a rook, how often do you get a chance like this?

Not watching: Daytona 500, Sunday, 1:30 p.m., NBC. After the Olympics got slaughtered by American Idol, how much are the rings going to lose to this one by? My approach to auto racing: PVR it, then watch it at triple speed. Like the real thing, only slightly blurrier.

Brainwaves, Bertuzzi and more

It's Thursday. That means it's time for the all-blogger edition of the morning links, and a big 'un it is:

Raptors finish before the all-star break with a loss in New York, where the Knicks have been beset by the latest Isiah Thomas brainwave (and from a couple days back, but too good not to mention: Intercepted from Bosh's Blackberry).

So long, Sammy Sosa. Unless someone comes along with $5 million, anyway.

Steve Moore wins the good timing award, dropping a lawsuit on Todd Bertuzzi just as Thug o' My Heart plays a fine game for Team Canada. Andy Grabia at Sports Matters has it here, with some equally good comments.

Eric McErlain calls in a crisis P.R. man to break down Wayne Gretzky's options:

  This is not a publicity tour -- it is about stopping attackers who are bent on disgracing your hard-earned reputation. And at the end of the day, it is what the public thinks that counts -- not the county DA and not the newspaper columnist guild.

Joe Clark gets his Freakanomics on and asks the question: "If being in the NHL is good enough to get men into the Olympics, is being in the Olympics good enough to get women into the NHL?"

Across the pond, Ken Owen riffs on a link included here regarding the Times' campaign to (as if!) end soccer diving: "Unnecessary violence is the real scourge of sport," he concludes.

Maisonneuve has an old coot in a cabin on James Bay blogging the Olympics. Sort of like Red Green meets late period Hunter Thompson (thanks to regular visitor JLo for the pointer here). Don't ask, just read, including this curling primer from a visitor:

“First things first,” he said, as he downed his can of Old Vienna. “We’ve got to mark the sheet.” Then he walked out to the middle of the stream, whipped it out, and pissed a strategic yellow arc, turning as he did. When he had come around 360 degrees, he stopped, stepped back, and let a few drops fall right in the middle of the circle. He looked at me, ‘marker’ in hand.
"Now it's your turn..."

More 'lympics, back after a two-year absence: A blog of last-place finishers in each sport. Best part is it's not snarky at all. (A bow to the very fine Now That's Amateur for the link).

The latest on wok racing. Sort of like skeleton or bobsled, only in a wok.

With pitchers and catchers reporting, the Soxaholix are back (and yeah, that Steinbrenner story had my gag reflex going too).

From multimediafriendly J.E. Skeets' new home, a Valentine card.

Via Deadspin, funniest thing I've read all week file: momentous world events covered by the blogosphere's favourite ESPN.com punching bag.

Tim Farrell has a couple of lookalike pairs. Hey, what's a chock-a-blog Thursday without lookalikes?

From dog to Darko

We're late today. Apologies all around, work got in the way, and these aren't even morning links anymore. They're more like cold sausages in congealed grease:

The other night I was watching the Raptors game and switched over during the ads to the Westminster dog show -- at which one of our two dogs (the stupid one, as opposed to the less-stupid one), immediately perked up, jumping down on to the carpet and bouncing happily up to the front of the TV set, where she stood up on her back legs and waved as the toy group went through their paces.

Dog TV. It's incredible. As anyone who has watched Best in Show knows. Joe Garagiola might be gone from the broadcast, but Westminster lives on, with a new top dog crowned last night:

... In the end, best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog show went to a breed that hasn't won since 1918: a Colored Bull Terrier.
His owners, Tom and Barbara Bishop of Homedale, N.J., screamed, wept and all but collapsed in the stands when the tall dapper Canadian judge walked toward their dog Rufus bearing the coveted purple and gold ribbon and silver trophy.
''This is like having Lance Armstrong for a son,'' said Tom, a 50-year-old chemical plant maintenance supervisor in a corduroy jacket.

(With those details and that touch of snooty irony, this report almost seems like it came straight out of Best in Show).

Also today, Darko Mlicic appears to be on the verge of coming out from hiding in an Auburn Hills bunker and being traded to Orlando (Does this mean the blog has to be renamed "Darko Freed"?)

There's a sidenote to this that will at least temporarily make any Raptors fan toss off a novenna or two: If the Raps had have won a slightly better ping-pong ball nearly three years ago -- if they had have selected third higher than fourth, in other words -- they were all set to take Darko and leave Chris Bosh out there. Instead they ended up in the No. 4 slot. Now, can you imagine where this team would be if they had have "done better" in the 2003 lottery -- Nashville, maybe?

Oh, and one other thing. Cato, who is said to be headed to the Pistons, has a pet python named Skippy. Or at least he did.

Tomorrow morning I'll be back with an all-blog edition of the morning links, so if you have a blog post you think deserves consideration, let me know.

And I can hardly wait, but I'll be live-blogging the draw for the Sprewell bobblehead later tomorrow morning, before live-texting the Canada-Germany game on the website in the afternoon. It never stops around here.

Replay, Raptors, Ruggerio

It's the morning links, just happy to be here:

Olympic flagellation update: Yesterday was Wayne Gretzky's big send-off before heading to Turin for another round of the self-fulfilling prophecy of that all-purpose sports media buzzword, "distractions". Meantime, Jeremy Wotherspoon is getting it from all sides, the poor man. And Angela Ruggerio, the American defenceman who is quoted as criticizing Canada's women's team for running up the score, hasn't mentioned any of that yet on her blog (Thanks to James Mirtle for those latter couple of links).

The Raptors win their third in a row, beating the Timberwolves, and they face the plummeting Knicks next, before going on all-star break (and not to put a whammy on 'em or anything, but look at the standings and the p-word is almost in sight).

LotN: Has to be LeBron James' 44 points as the Cavs beat the Spurs.

Coming soon to the CFL: Instant replay, and former White Sox hot prospect Joe Borchard.

Chelsea and Barcelona are a week away from renewing their Champions League rivalry, but it's never too early to let the games begin as Barca moans about the Stamford Bridge pitch. And from the Chelsea-rumoured-to-be-interested-in file, add Samuel Eto'o.

With big swells, ripped sails and a cracked head on a daggerboard, the Volvo Ocean Race is getting interesting.

And finally, a request from e-mailer Rusty Shackleford:

"You know how CBC is using studios here to broadcast coverage of Olympics? Well, last night ... did anybody catch Brian Williams as they came back to him from some spot and he obviously didn't know ? ... He was caught on camera for a couple of seconds practising what I can only surmise was his version of that Gene Simmons guy from KISS ... They quickly went to BLANK and then a commercial ... I wonder if any techos can get copies of this TONGUE WAGGING ... It was hilarious."

The Endulkar of the world as we know it

Dedicated to everyone already sick of the Olympics, here are your morning links -- zero per cent trans fats, low in cholestorol (all but the bad stuff, of which it is stuffed) AND zero per cent citius altius fortius:

Newsflash. Chelsea is calling on Canada's Christine Sinclair and Tiffeny Milbrett of the U.S. to rescue them from relegation. (Chelsea, relegation. There's two words you don't hear next to each other very often).

Going to the World Cup? Don't even think of doing this.

That wiretap of Wayne Gretzky? Chalk it up as another New Jersey police leak to the media that was considerably less than advertised. 

LotN, NBA division: It's all Dwayne Wade, all the (crunch) time as the Heat rally to beat the (now barely) league-leading Pistons. NHL division: Gotta be Jaromir Jagr, first to 40 goals, even if his first of two Saturday against Leafs was a case of failing Belfoursight. (And with the Olympic (oops! sorry!) break upon the NHL, arrivederci, Leafs. I really mean that. Don't hurry back on my account.)

With nothing but away games until March 1, the Raptors said farewell to the ACC with a crushing of the Blazers.

Mike Weir wilts at Pebble Beach, or as it used to be called, the Clambake -- even though no clams were ever harmed in the making of it.

The NFL season is over. Now Shaun Alexander starts on next season.

The Times wants to stop diving, and asked Premier League clubs to support them. All but four clubs said no.

Say it ain't so: India's cricket megastar may be slowing toward the finish line, or as the newspaper headlines are calling it: "Endulkar".

Hair-raising

The morning links, invigorated by a dab of Propecia:

Same as Jose Theodore, matter of fact. Struggling Habs goalie tests positive for hair restorative/masking agent (and looking at that GAA, negative for puck-stopping). Proclaims innocence: "I always like my hair real long and I like to keep it long as long as possible." Dick Pound smirks: "It's amazing how many athletes around the world appear to be worried about losing their hair." The Olympics haven't even started yet, but at this rate it should be a riotous two weeks.

Wayne Gretzky says he didn't do it (bet) and he will do it (go to Turin).

Yeah, Turin. The Olympics opening ceremony goes today.

Bengie Molina checks into town, and has a few choice things to say about his old employers in Anaheim, while the Angels are surprised he's miffed. Shea Hillenbrand signs, too, so the Jays are all set.

Chris Bosh is an all-star.

ML LotN: Quiet night in NBA, so nothing much there. From the NHL, Alexei Kovalev -- hey, he's got some kind of flowing hair -- scores a pair including the OT winner as the Habs beat the Sabres in Buffalo. 

Cottoning to the Raptors' possible interest in Joel Przybilla, some Portland fans are taking it into their own hands (via True Hoop).

Alex McLeish is now officially a lame duck at Rangers, and the search is on for a new manager. Meantime, the English FA is talking about buying British for Sven's replacement, with Martin O'Neill the name candidate.

Bloggers first

(UPDATE: For more on the NHL gambling scandal, including links to this morning's latest update, Damien Cox's new blog, The Spin, is up and running on thestar.com)

The morning links, (Almost) All-Blogger Thursday edition, size XXL:

Detroit-based Beyond Boxscores comes down like a ton of torn tickets on alleged bookmaker Rick Tocchet, making the case for zero tolerance on sports gambling of any kind: "Why do I hold such an anti-gambling stance? I guess it's because I don't want there to be any indication that the sports we watch are contrived. I don't even want to consider the possibility that the miracles of sports history were, perhaps, not quite so miraculous."

Jes Golbez says what's the big deal?: "I don't give a rat's ass. I really don't."  To that, James Mirtle suggests there are 500,000 reasons to give an ass, rat or otherwise.

Down in Carolina, the Acid Queen bounces off Jes, head-fakes Mirtle and goes hard to the net:

"Unless the League does something serious in response to this to distance themselves from the people involved--even Wayne Gretzky, if it comes to that--then I really do think that there will be some serious and potentially irreparable damage done to what little image the NHL has left."

There's tons more out there, and it has Vancouver Canucks OpEd running for cover. Can't blame 'em.

Elsewhere, the Raptors went into overtime last night (again) and lost to the Spurs 125-118 (if nothing else this season, these Raptors are entertaining in their all-offence, no-D approach, the Spurs shooting an unbelievable-in-any-universe-but-the-Raptors' 59 per cent off Tony Parker's slashing setups). I'll take the blog rant lead: as good as Mike James' fourth quarter was (check out the Popcorn Machine's GameFlow -- James had 18 points in the fourth to go with two rebounds, two assists and a steal), his ball-hogging overtime period undermined it all. No Tim Duncan (out with flu), old pal Sean Marks (where'd he get that jump shot?) and Rasho Nesterovic fouled out, and James is still putting his head down and hell-bent driving? No wonder they didn't get a field goal in nine overtime possessions. Oh, one more thing: the just-like-old-times moment came when Antonio Davis missed a triple putback from two feet away late in regulation that would've avoided overtime entirely, but A.D. actually played all right in his 33 minutes, 12 over his season average.

Three more hoops items I've been holding in the queue: Raptors HQ has their usual excellent Euro roundup; and with Chris Bosh a cinch to be named to the all-star team tonight, here's a Bosh-KG parallelogram from Aaron Miller; and from Raptorblog, Scott Carefoot welcomes back Antonio Davis. (And yeah, it's not a blog, but I'll make an exception for Bill Simmons' latest, for the priceless Vince Carter yarn at No. 11 alone).

From the Morning News: In search of Puppy Bowl II.

And from the non-bloggers out there:

Morning links Lines of the Night are back! In the NBA, we give you Gilbert Arenas, coming to an All-Star Game near you: 45 points, with that 23 of 25 from the line setting a franchise record previously held by Moses Malone. And in the NHL, Flyers rookie Mike Richards steps up in lieu of missing Forsberg and Gagne with three goals on three shots, and Philly keeps pace with the streaking Rangers.

Team Canada update: Jay Bouwmeester in for Scott Neidermayer.

Team Egypt update: Mido -- the man, the moaner.

And finally, a Rome newspaper has come up with a novel approach to counter extremist Ultra fans: hand out copies of Life is Beautiful.

NHL betting scandal

Here they are after a day at the spa (as if!), the morning links:

Lots and lots of stories out there surrounding Operation Slapshot, a New Jersey police gambling sting that yesterday netted Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tocchet, who was the alleged bankroller of the operation. According to authorities its customer base including Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet and a dozen current and former NHL players -- but not J.R., he said:

Los Angeles Kings forward Jeremy Roenick, who in 2004 said he had bet on sports for years but had stopped "cold turkey" after a warning from his former team, the Flyers, yesterday told the Star he was aware of the gambling investigation but insisted he has no involvement.
"I have not been contacted by anyone about this," Roenick said. "I am not a suspect."

Not Gretzky either, as he told the Arizona Republic:

"Absolutely not. I never bet. Anytime there is a spouse involved, that's what people are going to think. She's her own person. I think that had I been involved, I would have gotten a phone call. I'm pretty hard to hide."

The real smoking gun here is not who made bets or how many and on what, with other reports suggesting this involves NHLers at the ownership level as well, the investigation ongoing in five cities. It's the gambling ring's ties to organized crime. That's where this becomes a major, major scandal that's going to drag on, each name like a little drip falling on the head of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman:

The probe is expected to widen, officials said, and is focusing on a number of prominent NHL players and management officials who may have placed illegal bets with the ring.
"It's huge," one official said of the investigation's scope.
(snip)
State police said the New Jersey ring ran a sophisticated operation that handled bets on football and basketball. In one 40-day period, more than 1,000 wagers totaling more than $1.7 million were placed by clients nationwide, officials said.
Some gamblers placed their bets by calling Harney's cellphone while the 40-year-old uniformed trooper patrolled the New Jersey Turnpike in his police cruiser, officials said.
(snip)
Investigators say that Harney is connected to the Bruno-Scarfo Philadelphia crime family, but did not elaborate. In general, people running illegal gambling operations in mob territory are expected to pay "tribute" or a portion of their proceeds, to organized crime members, law enforcement officials said.
When state troopers searched Harney's home in Marlton late Monday, they found $250,000 worth of Rolex watches and nine flat-screen televisions -- two of them in the bathroom, officials said.

Otherwise, some quick links:

Leafs beat the Thrashers, but have perhaps lost Carlo Colaiacovo for the season.

Antonio Davis checks in to Raptors practice, thus ending the latest NBA soap opera.

The Pistons lose to the Hawks. I'll repeat that: The Pistons lose to the Hawks.

Beer leaguers make the NHL cry uncle.

And this from the African Cup of Nations, where Egypt and the Ivory Coast will play in Friday's final: Egyptian Mido's furious touchline demonstration upon being substituted late during the host's semifinal victory has resulted in the Spurs forward being suspended for six months. Sort of takes the shine off the victory parties, doesn't it?