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Site tracks exploits of Lightning players

February is good for surprises on the calendar every four years, and when Marty Quessenberry saw the Lightning had 15 days between games during the NHL's Olympic hiatus, he thought he'd just enjoy the time off.

"When I noticed the Olympics on the schedule, I was like, "Woo! Two weeks off," said the Lightning's director of Web services, who has managed to stay busy keeping fans updated on the exploits of three players representing their countries in Salt Lake City at tampabaylightning.com.

On Friday afternoon, that was a frustrating task, as NBC interrupted coverage of the final-round hockey opener between Russia and Belarus for live updates on the second gold medal awarded to Canada in pairs figure skating.

Quessenberry was keeping an eye on Lightning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, who gave up two soft goals in a shaky 6-4 win for the Russian team. Later Friday, Pavel Kubina and Juha Ylonen took the ice for the Czech Republic and Finland, respectively.

The trio is as close a local tie to the Olympics as the Tampa area has, and as NBC broadcasts the U.S.-Russia game today at 11:30 p.m., Quessenberry will be updating the site with a closer look at how the Lightning players fared.

"We want to try to Lightning-ize the recaps, put our own flavor on what's happened out there," he said. The site has a picture of the mask Khabibulin will be wearing for the Russians -- red star on the bottom, silver hammer and sickle on the side, with the white-blue-and-red stripes of the Russian Federation flag.

Quessenberry didn't limit his Salt Lake City preview to Tampa's three Olympians -- throughout the season, he interviewed Olympic skaters from opposing NHL teams. The site now has sound bites from U.S. players Mike Modano and Phil Housley and other stars such as Canada's Paul Kariya and Sweden's Mats Sundin.

HARD TO JUDGE: Public opinion in online polls on the skating debacle has been strong -- easily more than 100,000 votes a day at Olympics.com -- but difficult to keep track of during the week.

Initially, about 90 percent of voters thought Canada's David Pelletier and Jamie Sale deserved the pairs figure skating gold. When Olympics.com followed Thursday with a poll asking what the best solution was, 24 percent said to leave the medals alone, with the remaining majority closely split between giving a second gold to the snubbed Canadians or taking the gold from the Russian winners and trading it for Canada's silver.

When the IOC opted Friday to award a second gold, a poll asked whether the right decision had been made, and 88 percent said yes. With the injustice corrected for most, the site moved on to a new question: Who would win the women's gold? Naturally, U.S. skaters had 82 percent of the early votes, with Michelle Kwan leading at 50 percent.

TID-BYTES: A real boxing gold medal from the 1920 Olympics is up for auction at eBay.com, with bidding starting at $4,995. If that doesn't seem a prudent purchase, someone else has 200 copies of the official program from the 1960 Winter Olympics, with bidding starting at $10,000 . . . To see the other side of the figure skating hullabaloo, check the other St. Petersburg Times online at sptimesrussia.com. In Friday's editions, the twice-weekly English newspaper quoted a member of the St. Petersburg Sports Committee as saying, "As far as the Canadian protests, both American and Canadian sports are known for their love of all kinds of protests." . . . Olympics.com has an Athlete Blue Zone that allows competitors to "peruse our extensive music library" and select the accompaniment for their programs online. Here's hoping nobody hacks in and leaves some poor figure skater at center ice when Bootylicious starts up.

- If you have a question or comment about the Olympics and the Internet, e-mail staff writer Greg Auman at auman@sptimes.com.

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