STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS
1 – CFL SEASON DONE – Justin Dunk and Dave Naylor broke the story on Sunday the federal government is not going to give the Canadian Football League a $30-million loan which would have gone towards helping the league salvage a shortened season. On the surface, I’d love to roast Justin Trudeau for this. After all, he lines the pockets of himself and his friends to the tune of hundreds of millions so $30-million hardly seems like a major ask in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider the money is to be paid back. Trudeau and his friends don’t return any of what they steal from us. Yet, at the same time I have to look at this objectively and I don’t blame the feds for turning them down. I never got the sense there was a whole lot of passion from the teams’ ownership or the league office to play a season. Everything seemed very disjointed and it wouldn’t surprise me if a couple of the heavy hitters whispered to the government that it’s okay to turn this down. The losers here are the fans, of course. Fans always lose. I feel horribly for the players. Their careers have been, needlessly, sabotaged. Then there are the staffs of each of these teams who don’t make a wad of cash to begin with and now their futures are extremely uncertain. No Covid cases in the CFL though! Big success. Just thousands of other casualties in the forms of job loss and economic ruin but I know we don’t care about that.
2 – RASK/LINDBLOM CONTRAST – Saturday morning, Boston Bruins goaltender Tuuka Rask left the NHL bubble and went home citing ‘family is more important’. The Bruins released a statement saying Rask and his family are healthy and there were no immediate concerns and this appears to be a precautionary measure the Bruins netminder is taking. One day earlier Rask commented that playing in the bubble was like, “playing an exhibition game”. Nevertheless, I’m not going to criticize him for leaving. After all, this virus wreaks havoc on young, healthy professional athletes (none have been hospitalized let alone seen the ICU or died) but maybe some of the players have signed in their grandparents to be part of the bubble, so it’s best he keeps everyone safe. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Flyers forward Oskar Lindblom is in the bubble despite spending the last year undergoing treatment for cancer. He can’t play so there is really no point in him risking his health. While not a health expert, my guess is that someone recovering from cancer probably doesn’t have the best immune system. Lindblom says being around teammates is what’s healthy for him. Interesting contrast.
3 – RASK RETIRE? – Everyone is saying the right things when it comes to Rask because the politically correct crowd is small but extremely loud so you don’t dare say something negative about him leaving. Yet, I wonder if we haven’t seen the last of Rask in an NHL uniform. Not many organizations want a goaltender on their team that isn’t fully engaged. That position is hard enough to fill as it is, and while a team could survive if their top centre sleepwalks through a playoff series because there are other skaters who may step up, you can’t afford to have a goalie go in the tank with his play. It also wouldn’t surprise me that after Rask’s comments about it feeling like an exhibition game, if the Bruins didn’t just approach him and tell him to leave if his heart wasn’t in it.
4 – NHL PLAY-IN – The National Hockey League is saying fans shouldn’t get used to the 24 team playoff format, which is too bad. I’ve loved it. Even the top four playing a round-robin that decides seeding in the round of 16 is great. It doesn’t diminish from the regular season at all and I’m somewhat surprised analytical nerds haven’t picked up on something like this. I’d say have a 75 game regular season that determines seeding for the play-in and round robin. The top four teams are the top four teams, but what you may find is that a team in the top four feasted on the lesser clubs and didn’t do so well against other top teams so how good are they really? That round robin puts top team against top team and, I think, allows the real top team to be the number one seed. However, assuming the round robin of the top four is the real reason why you can’t have 24 in the playoffs then I would still advocate for a best of three between the 7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th seeds with the higher seed getting all the home games. You could do this over five days and then start the round of 16 one week from the completion of the regular season. Teams shouldn’t be rusty having a 7 day break.
5 – ALEX SMITH BACK – Washington NFL Team quarterback Alex Smith has been cleared for football activities nearly two years after he almost died from complications sustained from a broken leg. Smith, if you are unfamiliar with the situation, broke his leg during a game November 18, 2018 in a gruesome fashion. He underwent surgery only to end up with an infection akin to flesh-eating disease. Smith was septic and doctors told Smith’s family the priority was to save his life anyway possible but it could mean amputating his leg. Anything beyond saving his life and his leg would be considered a medical miracle. Doctors ended up removing muscle from Smith’s left leg to his right leg (Smith refused to allow them to perform a safer surgery using his lat because he needs his arm to throw) and cautioned it may not work and if that was the case, he’d need to amputate his right leg and his left leg would also be weakened. Still, Smith okayed the surgery and he was officially cleared and activated for duty this past Saturday. Should he successfully appear in an NFL game I hope there are fans there to see it and I get a bit teary myself just thinking about this possibility and I don’t even know the guy.
6 – GRACE A DINGBAT – Former Chicago Cubs first baseman and current color analyst Mark Grace has been removed from Cubs broadcasts for the next week after he told a story on-air about his ex-wife parking in MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s spot in Milwaukee. The problem wasn’t the story, but rather Grace’s referral to Archie Bunker and calling his ex a dingbat three times while relaying the story. He never said the woman’s real name so unless you are really good with Google, chances are you will never know who he’s actually talking about. None of that matters, though, as the audience was deeply hurt at the insinuation that all ex-wives are dingbats or maybe it was the notion that Grace doesn’t think fondly of his ex-wife. Who knows. It’s 2020 and unless you are blowing smoke up someone’s back end, you run the risk of being cancelled.
7 – NEW MLB RULE – Jon Heyman was the first to report this on Sunday, but it appears as though Major League Baseball will allow players who test positive for the virus to apply for reinstatement after 10 days even if they continue to test positive. MLB may or may not give approval on the 10th day but the consensus is that after 14 days the player will be reinstated because ‘contagiousness dissipates’. This is the first sign of a chink in the armour of Covid Warriors who want to shut everything down at the mere site of a sneeze. It’s also a clear indicator the overwhelming majority of these positive virus cases are a nothing burger and they aren’t the least bit sick.
8 – SJHL RETURN TO PLAY – The SJHL’s regular season will begin October 9th pending approval from the Sask Health Authority. As I mentioned last week, I hope the current virus situation in each community is taken into account. Officially, there are no cases at all in 10 of the league’s 12 centres. Wilcox is listed in the Regina area but a source from the community says there are also 0 cases in Wilcox itself. That would mean the only other centre with cases is Kindersley and that’s in the single digits and may not necessarily be in the town but rather a nearby communal living setting.
9 – ALLOWING FANS – It’s not getting a lot of press, but a few countries are allowing fans back into their sports venues. Even in Canada, there have been organized events where thousands have congregated without disaster. In the United States mass gatherings are allowed in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and parts of Utah. It’s difficult to gauge the success or failure of this as all of these states have a higher caseload per capita than any Canadian province but there aren’t people dead in the streets either. The time has come to open up sports and allow fans to attend in some number. What that is can be debated, but for it to still be zero is just another in what has been a long list of overreactions with this virus.
10 – JUSTIN FIELDS WANTS TO PLAY – Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Justin Fields has launched a petition to the Big Ten to reconsider having a season and he has 175,000 signatures on it to back him up. Now, 175-thousand just isn’t very many (unless you are talking Covid deaths, then it’s an astronomical figure that can be spun politically for disgusting power gain by left wing radicals). I applaud this university student for stepping up and refusing to surrender his right to make his own choices. I see people everywhere in a hurry to just let governments tell them when to go to the bathroom and it’s actually somewhat hopeful for me to see a young man like this take the bull by the horns and refuse to give up as easily as everyone else. Fields says every single player on the Buckeyes wants to play and they understand the risks. There are players on other teams starting to come out of the woodwork now as well.
(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)
