The Sports Corner

Putting up points: Burke taking pressure off winless Leafs

It’s back, and just like Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke, it could be genius or it could be disastrous. It’s another edition of Putting up Points.

• As if anyone cares about a Toronto-based sports team, the Maple Leafs are in Vancouver to tackle the Vancouver Canucks [Saturday] night at General Motors Place.

This game has all the makings of a snoozer because, let’s face it, the Leafs aren’t that good. But this game has certainly got a lot of hype for absolutely nothing that has to do with what happens on the ice.

For the Leafs, who have yet to win a game in this young season, this might be the best thing to happen to them. Burke has taken some of the pressure off his team by indirectly pushing this whole tampering thing in the Vancouver media this week to go along comments made on the Maple Leafs website regarding a trade involving the Sedins last June and then Kevin Bieksa and Alex Burrows for the second-overall pick in this year’s draft.And because of this, we haven’t heard squat from the Leafs about tonight’s game. Rather than face the questions about being winless this far into the season and their struggles at every end of the rink, the Leafs have been able to go about their business since arriving in Vancouver late this week.

Now, just because it became all about Burkie, which the Leafs GM seems to enjoy, doesn’t mean the Leafs will win tonight.

But Burke has certainly allowed his team the leverage to just go out and play hockey, and Canucks fans know all about that.

• After a brutal start to the 2009-10 season, in which there were massive expectations for Vancouver, the Canucks can get back to the .500 mark with a win tonight over the Leafs.

And what a chance they have to get back into things in the Northwest Division. But here’s the scary part. It’s a game against the winless, inept Leafs and the Canucks haven’t necessarily shown that killer instinct this season, or in years past against teams that they should, in theory, run out of the rink.

• And finally, after years of controversy and failure at various football ventures, Casey Printers will make his first start for the B.C. Lions [Saturday] against the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Can he be as brilliant as he was in 2004? That year he won the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player and secured B.C. as a spot in the Grey Cup that season before head coach and GM Wally Buono gave the start in the championship game to Dave Dickenson. The Lions lost, Printers ended up with the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL and sputtered.

After two miserable years in Hamilton with the Tiger Cats, Printers left with his tail between his legs and was sitting at home when this year’s CFL regular season began.

Then Buono, who admitted in The Province this week that he “prayed” on the matter of bringing Printers back, called up the enigmatic pivot.

After a few weeks on the practice roster and two weeks on the sidelines due to injuries to Buck Pierce and Jarious Jackson, Printers will now make the start in Regina in a game the Lions can move ahead of the Roughriders into second place in the CFL’s West Division with a win.

It seems like destiny. That sounds cliché, but think about it. Printers ate his fair share of humble pie and media pundits in Vancouver badgered Buono about bringing him back for the better part of the winter in order to boost the depth at the QB position.

And after all that, Printers is in the game. Something about this seems like it’s got ‘win’ all over it.