STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

Fast & Furious

1 – AVENUE TO PLAY – If the Western Hockey League is committed to playing in a bubble, why don’t they just send everyone to North Dakota?  Canadian businesses leave this country all the time because we have governments that are, simply, not friendly enough to allow them to apply their trade in a manner that allows them to be successful and we’ve reached the point with major junior hockey that these leagues really should just uproot and go south.  While the Saskatchewan government lolly gags further on whether or not they deem it safe enough, make plans to take the 7 teams to North Dakota and play out of one rink and allow fans to attend and tell the government to pound sand if they don’t place any value on major junior hockey.  The time to negotiate is over.  Minot can put 1300 fans in the rink and we can’t figure out a way to have 15 U12s on the ice together with parents watching.  

2 – COMPETITION FOR PLAYERS – If you are a parent and have a special player as a son on the brink of being chosen in the WHL Bantam Draft, why would you, as a family, commit to a WHL team at this point?  It’s not the fault of the Western Hockey League, but rather the fault of various governments preventing the WHL from moving forward. If you are lucky enough to have been a kid who opted for the NAHL or the USHL, you are playing hockey today and further developing.  While nobody can say they ever thought we’d end up in a pandemic like we have, you can bet there are people who will be thinking about it going forward and they will protect themselves from a potentially restrictive government that tries to take their livelihood away and for families that have a hockey player in the house that will mean going to play junior in the United States, where you don’t have to worry about this nonsense and the league just continues to get better with players stepping directly into the NHL from there.  Jack Hughes went number one overall last year playing for the US National Development Team in the USHL.  Or, how about Alex Newhook, a Canadian, who went in the first round to Colorado last year from the BCHL.  He’s playing in the NCAA today while players his age who opted for the WHL are not.  You don’t think that has families looking more closely at American options?

3 – BANTAM DRAFT – The WHL is the only major junior league in Canada that drafts kids at 15 as opposed to 16.  Swift Current’s Shawn Mullin feels, and I agree, that this is the year where the WHL should cancel the Bantam Draft and push everybody back and then draft 16 year-olds next year.  From a practical standpoint, drafting 16 year olds allows you to be more accurate in your picking and it also helps the teams coming off bad years to have something to market to their fans as that player is eligible to step right into your line-up as opposed to waiting a year.  It’s a great idea and I don’t know if there is an appetite for it or not but it’s the right thing to do for this year and it makes sense as the right thing to do going forward.  I understand the notion of wanting to secure rights to these kids as soon as possible to guard against a possible NCAA defection, but that is going to be even more of a challenge now because of reasons outlined in my previous point.  If you have families not confident in your league’s ability to play in the event of a crisis, they aren’t signing with you at 15 or 16 or ever. 

4 – LAINE BENCHING – You never heard anything of the sort from Winnipeg media, but you do have to wonder if there isn’t more to the story than what we know to the Patrik Laine exodus.  Laine was benched this week for cussing out an assistant coach on the Columbus bench.  Is this the first time Laine has ever done such a thing?  Maybe.  But, four games into his tenure with a new team, it wouldn’t shock me to hear he’s had respect issues in the past.  My number one question to that would be if he did, why didn’t the Jets ever bench him?  I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t like the trade as far as the return goes especially when you consider Jack Roslovic has 7 points in his last 5 games and is now the Jackets’ number one centre but there is no denying the fact Winnipeg has played better since Laine left town and that was before Pierre Luc Dubois dressed for a game.

5 – GOALTENDING – I feel like it’s stating the obvious, but I’ll still get a few that will argue with me on it.  If you have bad goaltending it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your team is, you will not be successful.  If you have good goaltending, you have a chance to win each and every night no matter how bad the rest of the team is.  Case in point, the Chicago Blackhawks.  Kevin Lankinen has provided, up until now, as good a netminding as any team in the league.  Their roster is a dumpster fire with Jonathan Toews and Kirby Dach on long term IR and several others were on the Covid list for a week or more and yet they find a way to win games despite having nearly nothing of note beyond Patrick Kane.  Meanwhile, Vancouver is a shipwreck because they haven’t gotten a save.  The rest of their roster is one of envy.  Edmonton hasn’t been much better because poor Miko Koskinen just isn’t a number one goalie but has been asked to play every single game, pretty near, because their options after him are even worse (Mike Smith was on IR but he’s not the answer either).  How do you have the two best players in the entire league and you can’t figure out a way to make the playoffs?  Goaltending.

6 – UNPREDICTABLE POSITION – Goaltending (aside from closer in baseball) is also the hardest position to predict.  There’s no way anyone had Lankinen, Chris Driedger, Jake Oettinger, and Kaapo Kahkonen as being amongst the best in the NHL this season.  The flipside of that is it’s surprising to see how Braden Holtby, Thatcher Demko, Tristan Jarry, Carter Hart, and Matt Murray have either struggled or face planted.  I maintain the Oilers should have just plucked someone off waivers and rolled the dice.  When Montreal’s Charlie Lindgren hit waivers at the start of the year, he would have been a good buy low option.  He’s played some games and looked okay.  What do you have to lose?

7 – AHL – It just dawned on me that with the American Hockey League starting up a week ago that there are five teams that still haven’t played.  Any guesses who they are?  If you would have named Manitoba, Laval, Toronto, Belleville, and Calgary you get the prize.  All the US based teams are going.  Canada?  Nope.  Perhaps it’s worth noting (because mainstream media will never tell you) that we’ve gone from 9000 cases a day as recently as January 8th to 3000 cases a day (February 10th) and the entire country has less than 40,000 active cases and hospital numbers are about ½ of what they were a month ago too…yet we can’t figure out a way to play sports.

8 – QUARTERBACK CAROUSEL – Carson Wentz is expected to be traded any day now by the Philadelphia Eagles with Indianapolis and Chicago being at, or near, the top of the list of destinations for him.  Both the Colts and Bears need starters and both teams are not in a good enough position to draft one this Spring.  San Francisco is an interesting team to watch, as is New England.  While it’s possible the 49ers go one more year with Jimmy G, my guess is they’d rather not.  The Pats have a clear opening with Cam Newton not expected to return.  The back-up that appears to be drawing the most interest is Marcus Mariota, a former top draft pick.  San Francisco did, quietly, resign Josh Rosen this week and he would be someone to keep an eye on in the event San Francisco sticks with the oft-injured Garappolo.  I’m also thinking Ryan Fitzpatrick could end up somewhere and he’s never been on a good team.  He has always been that ‘place holder’ type of QB and I’d like to see what he could do on a team that is a little further along the rebuilding process.  So far Houston is saying Deshaun Watson isn’t available but most people expect him to be traded and Miami looks like the front runner. 

9 – CFL CAN PLAY – I don’t know if the CFL is going to play or not, but I like that they are conducting usual offseason business.  There was, essentially, none of that last year when the pandemic hit and it was quite obvious very early on there wasn’t going to be a season.  Don’t expect TSN (Bell) to inject the league with cash as they are busy chopping hundreds of their employees at the moment.  My guess is that they try to move forward with partial crowds and while there is no reason to prevent between 5,000 and 10,000 fans going to a game anywhere in the country, we’ve seen with hockey that governments just aren’t willing to think clearly when it comes to sports.  Maybe the league does get a loan or a grant and that helps keep them afloat.  It’ll be interesting to see as we get closer and closer to a start date.  I know I’d be already trying to get players here.  With border uncertainty, I’d want my guys in town ASAP.  If the governments aren’t willing to budge, could the CFL find 9 temporary homes in the US?  I’d sure try.  I know this brand of football may not be popular there but if you could get 10,000 to watch down there, that’s better than 0 up here.  At some point, are we going to start to ask ourselves why the science in the US is so different from the science in Canada?  Before you bark at me about the US being a Covid petri dish, I will remind you that North Dakota is registering less than 50 cases a day right now and you don’t have to wear a mask if you don’t want to.

10 – SPORTS MEDIA – I ruffled a few feathers earlier this week when I suggested sports media members who have advocated for pro leagues to just keep the doors closed and not try to play are partly to blame for massive layoffs in the industry this week.  I stand by those comments and if you are a holier than thou sort in Toronto or Winnipeg (or anywhere else for that matter) there are many people who were working in sports a week or so ago that are not any longer.  So if you want your league that you are covering to cancel and are publicly tweeting to that effect, get out of the way and let someone who wants to work in the industry but can’t because they’ve been tossed aside by their employer in the name of profits, take your job.  Fans who are happy to have the NFL, NHL, and NBA back playing would much rather hear from them than you.  And you know who you are.  

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)