Columnist Ron Kantowski: Is the ice for hockey or a Margarita?

Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004 | 10:48 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

As former Las Vegas Thunder coach Butch Goring used to say, give the Wranglers, our city's reincarnation of professional hockey, "full marks" for trying.

In what almost certainly will be a vain attempt to provide one of its chief sponsors with free publicity, the Wranglers are referring to the upcoming ECHL hockey season as "the 2004-05 season presented by TahitiPetey."

I swear on Toe Blake's grave that this is the last time you'll see TahitiPetey mentioned in conjunction with our minor league hockey team in this space.

For inquiring or vapid minds that want to know, TahitiPetey is not the guy who can hook you up on your way to Bora Bora, but an online travel agency/club. It also has sponsorship deals (according to its Web site) with the Las Vegas Gladiators, Las Vegas 51s and UNLV.

But if the Wranglers really wanted to get their new business partner some priceless publicity, they should just rename the franchise the Las Vegas TahitiPeteys. That way, media outlets such as this one would have no choice but to mention the sponsor.

I mean, why let Georgetown have all the publicity when it comes to obscure mascots?

And wouldn't it be cool to watch a hockey team skate onto the ice dressed like Jimmy Buffett?

In search of round bacon

One way to be detained at the Canadian border is attempting to sneak a philodendron into Vancouver. Another is telling the Mountie you used to cover the short-lived Las Vegas Posse of the Canadian Football League.

When I mentioned that in passing on a recent vacation -- er, holiday -- I thought the authorities were going to perform a strip search looking for fourth down.

Actually, the Mountie was so enthralled to be speaking to a CFL "celebrity" that by the time we stopped talking about the Roughriders (Saskatchewan) and Rough Riders (Ottawa, although the reborn franchise in the Canadian capital is known as the Renegades) the line to enter picturesque British Columbia was backed up to around Bellingham, Wash.

That's a slight exaggeration, although our conversation did last longer than the Posse, which folded after its one and only CFL season in 1994.

No fair

One of my favorite Posse alums was Tamarick Vanover, who before becoming a kick return whiz for the Kansas City Chiefs called for a fair catch in the Posse's CFL debut against British Columbia, then let the ball roll into the end zone unattended ... where the Lions fell on it for a gift touchdown.

There are no fair catches or touchbacks in the CFL, a fact the Posse coaches must have reminded Vanover of at least a thousand times, the last being just as the Lions lined up to punt.

B.C. Place erupted in laughter.

One of the Posse's best players was a rookie quarterback from Utah State named Anthony Cavillo, who, as I discovered in Vancouver, is still completing passes on second-and-long against 12-man defenses. In fact, after he led the Montreal Alouettes to their first Grey Cup championship in 25 years, the Pittsburgh Steelers brought in Calvillo for a workout last year, hoping he would prove to be the next Joe Theismann, Warren Moon, Jeff Garcia or Doug Flutie.

But Calvillo, who was embroiled in a contract dispute with the Alouettes at that time, ultimately re-signed with Montreal, where I hear the Quebecois at the Marche Bonsecours still treat him to croissants and mineral water, even if he is an American citizen.

Scull session

If, like me, you really don't have a life and were tuned into the Olympic rowing competition over the weekend, you might have noted a familiar sounding voice describing the action in women's double sculls. Or was it the men's eight?

It belonged to Randy Rosenbloom, who began his broadcasting career as the play-by-play voice of the Rebels in the mid-1980s.

This is actually Rosenbloom's third Olympics. He called volleyball for NBC at Atlanta in 1996 and cycling at the 1992 games in Barcelona.

Farther away

A friend from Poland said if the United States was serious about winning the gold medal in basketball, it should allow NBA teams to play zone defense in one quarter of every game. Just so, you know, it wouldn't blow our players' minds when a bunch of 6-foot-11 guys named Sergei began standing around in the paint with their hands in the air. I can think of worse ideas -- such as sending a bunch of pros with fat wallets, whose jump shots have about as much range as a Daisy air rifle, to Athens to represent our country. ... If Olympic gymnast Paul Hamm really wanted to remain a star and/or Olympic hero long after he can no longer reach the high bar, he should give back his all-around gold medal to the kid from South Korea who earned it. It would make Hamm more famous than that bear from the Land of Sky Blue Water. ... If poker had been considered a sport when