This Bid to Save NHL Season Is No Bluff

Does Gary Bettman know an inside straight from a royal flush? Does Bob Goodenow?

With each side in hockey’s labor dispute having rejected the other’s proposals and no new negotiations in sight, the prospects for a settlement anytime soon look remote, much to the dismay of NHL fans.

But the season might yet be salvaged if Bettman, the NHL commissioner, and Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players’ Assn., play their cards right.

The two have been challenged to settle their differences “like men -- in a game of winner-take-all Texas hold ‘em.”

The challenge, sent by registered letters this week to Bettman and Goodenow, comes from PokerRoom.com, an online poker gaming site, whose “casino boss,” Patrick Selin, says the pair can resolve the impasse without even leaving their respective offices in New York and Toronto.

It’ll never happen, but it’s possibly the only way the NHL will ever see another full house this season.

Trivia time: Harold Sakata, who won a silver medal in weightlifting at the 1948 London Olympics, became far more famous 16 years later. How?

The ground game: The Seattle Seahawks are 0-9 against the Jets and Giants at East Rutherford, N.J., since 1983, the latest loss coming Sunday to the Jets. That sorry state of affairs brought a wry observation from Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Whether for Jimmy Hoffa or the Seahawks,” Thiel wrote, “the Meadowlands remains, as ever, the same old graveyard.”

A tired cliche: Oklahoma State set a school record with 15 three-point baskets in a 92-35 rout of Northwestern Oklahoma on Tuesday night, with three players making four three-pointers.

Said the Cowboys’ JamesOn Curry, who made four of six: “I guess it’s like a sneeze or a yawn. If one person yawns, everybody starts yawning.”

Up for grabs: Indianapolis Colt quarterback Peyton Manning is one touchdown shy of Dan Marino’s NFL record of 48 in a season, but Greg Cote of the Miami Herald argues the case for perspective.

“Marino’s record is not hallowed, not revered as a magic number that exceeds the boundary of the sport,” Cote said. “Football doesn’t do hallowed numbers. Baseball does. Roger Maris’ 61 was hallowed. Marino’s 48? Not hallowed.”

Humbug: Dallas Cowboy fullback Darian Barnes dislikes Christmas. So much so, Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times reports, that when Barnes was asked whether he was Scrooge, he answered: “No, but I applaud his efforts.”

Trivia answer: Sakata appeared memorably as Oddjob, James Bond’s troublesome foe, in the 1964 film “Goldfinger.”

And finally: The arrest of pitcher Denny Neagle of the Colorado Rockies on a charge of soliciting a prostitute has caused two Colorado towns to reconsider naming ball fields after him. “Possible remedies,” says the Seattle Times’ Dwight Perry, “range from removing Neagle’s name completely to restricting those fields to pickup games only.”