10 WEEKEND THINGS

Taking shots …

1 – WEEK 1 CFL CHATTER: Aside from the four teams who lost, the CFL should be pretty happy with Week 1 of the 2022 season. Two games came down to the final minute, two marquee quarterbacks didn’t finish games (Bo Levi Mitchell and Zach Collaros) but the injuries reportedly weren’t deemed serious enough for them to miss Week 2, and the BC Lions lead the CFL in attendance (34,082). … In case you missed it, the scores were Calgary 30-Winnipeg 27, Winnipeg 19-Ottawa 17, Saskatchewan 30-Hamilton 13 and BC 59-Edmonton 15. … It feels great to have CFL football back!

2 – MORE CFL CHATTER: If anybody’s waiting to get on the back of Saskatchewan quarterback Cody Fajardo – and for the life of me, I still can’t see why – they’re going to have to wait another week. The God-fearing, 30-year old, pearly white-smiling pivot from Brea, CA threw for a tidy 311 yards, 1 TD and 0 interceptions against the Ticats, plus rushed for 42 yards and a major. Keep the hate and criticism coming; he thrives on it. … Same goes for Bo Levi Mitchell and I see the criticism directed at the Calgary QB from the league’s TV and radio broadcasters on a weekly basis. Yet he keeps going out and winning. If you really want to slow Bo down, you might want to pump his head up. Meh, forget it. You’ll figure it out for yourself. … The Ticats did not look like back-t0-back East Division champs. Blah. … Only one thing to say about Simoni Lawrence: “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” …. With Edmonton getting shellacked 59-15 in BC in the first game of the Chris Jones 2.0 Era, I caught a sense of deja vu. Jones has taken over a team which went 3-11 last year. In 2016 Jones inherited a Saskatchewan Roughriders team coming off a 3-15 season. The next year he guided Sask to a 5-13 record. If history repeats itself, which it always does, I don’t expect a huge jump in wins for Edmonton this year. BC’s a year (or two) ahead in their rebuild and they will be challenging for third in the West this year, rather than fifth which is where Edmonton will finish. Pity, but Jones inherited a trainwreck.

3 – STILL MORE CFL CHATTER: The Week 2 sked looks like this – Thursday: Montreal at Toronto, Friday: Winnipeg at Ottawa, Saturday: Calgary at Hamilton & Sask at Edmonton. … There’s a large contingent of us Chris Jones associates & CFL Alumni living in South Florida who greatly appreciate the CFL sending out a news release this week detailing all CFL game broadcasts on ESPN networks this summer. If all else fails, just remember ALL CFL games are on ESPN+. … These fellas really enjoy the CFL talk on The Rod Pedersen Show daily. … Former Argonauts & Blue Bombers receiver Matt Dubuc is the head coach of Cardinal Gibbons High School here in Fort Lauderdale, FL and on Tuesday night they received their 4A State Championship rings. Matt was on The RP Show in the winter time. Unfortunately I was unable to attend Tuesday’s dinner but a good time was reportedly had by all.

4 – STANLEY CUP FINAL: Kudos to whomever predicted a Colorado-Tampa Bay Stanley Cup Final! I did not. This is a tremendous match-up featuring a Colorado team which hasn’t made the league final since 2001 and a Tampa Bay squad which is trying to become just the fourth NHL franchise to win 3 Stanley cups in a row, or more. Toronto, Montreal and the NY Islanders are the others. … The Lightning have five players on their roster whom have never won a Stanley Cup before: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Brian Elliott, Brandon Hagel, Riley Nash & Nick Paul. … Tampa Bay’s Corey Perry is just the second player in NHL history to appear in three straight Stanley Cup Finals with three different teams (Dallas, Montreal & Tampa Bay). The other is Marian Hossa. … This series pits two Norris Trophy Finalists head-to-head: Cale Makar vs Victor Hedman. … Game 1 is Wednesday in Denver.

Gary Bettman and Wayne Gretzky both say hockey is exploding in Florida. Works for me.

5 – TOM BRADY/MIAMI DOLPHINS: Do you believe where there’s smoke, there’s fire? I sure do. And this week news broke that Tom Brady almost became a Miami Dolphin in January, confirming all those rumours from five months ago. ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio laid it all out on WQAM Miami sports radio this week saying Dolphins owner Stephen Ross had a trade lined up to acquire Brady from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and also land Sean Payton, whom he covets, as head coach. This explains why the popular Brian Flores was fired as head coach in December, sparking outrage amongst Dolphins fans. Just one problem with the plan however; Flores caught wind of it and that’s what sparked his discrimination lawsuit against the Dolphins and the NFL, and tanking allegations against the owner, Ross. Ka-flooey.

6 – THE INSIDER GAME: You’ve gotta hand it to Florio. He’s made a great living out of ProFootballTalk.com publishing all kinds of rumours and buzz, and even parlayed it into a spot on NBC’s Football Night In America on Sundays. I just could never quite figure out the insider game. I had current and former CFL – and MLSE – staff giving me the goods months ago on the XFL/CFL talks. That never ended up happening either, just like the Brady/Miami trade, yet I get flamed for my reports and Florio looks like the second coming of Peter King. I don’t get it, but I don’t have to anymore! The insider game isn’t for me. The talk show host gig, is. Big time.

7 – NLL: As of Sunday morning, the National Lacrosse League’s official website hadn’t been updated with a game story on Game 2 of the Championship Series however at least we were able to glean from the scoreboard that the Colorado Mammoth beat the Buffalo Bandits 11-8 Saturday night to tie up the Best-of-3 series at 1-1, forcing a winner-take-all showdown next Saturday at KeyBank Center in Buffalo. Game 1 drew over 14,000 fans in the Home of the Buffalo Sabres, and Bandits. … Meanwhile the NLL announced this weekend that the expansion draft for the Las Vegas Desert Dogs will be held July 7 and teams must have their rosters submitted by June 23. I’ve been around MANY expansion drafts over the years and 99% of players DON’T want to be selected in them. Methinks however that won’t be the case with the NLL’s Las Vegas franchise, which will play out of the MGM.

8 – MAJOR JUNIOR PLAYOFFS: What a renaissance we are experiencing in Canadian major junior hockey! TSN is televising the Western Hockey League championship series which has gone to a Game 6 following Seattle’s 3-2, come-from-behind win on Saturday at Edmonton. Game 6 will go Monday night at Rogers Centre. Whomever wins this series advances to the Memorial Cup in Saint John, NB later this month. … Shawinigan has advanced to the Memmer out of the QMJHL after finishing off Charlottetown and the OHL Final is tied 2-2 between Hamilton and Windsor.

9 – CEBL: This is an incredibly tough time, I would think, to be firing up a fledgling pro sports league but the Canadian Elite Basketball League is doing just that. In fact, they’re in Year 4. Are they on your radar at all? They’re on mine big time but that’s largely because the CEBL Commissioner is close friend Mike Morreale. Anyway, on Saturday the Guelph Nighthawks beat the Montreal Alliance 86-84. The league is doing NBA-worthy media relations but the media just doesn’t seem to be grabbing onto it. Maybe they are out East.

There are a pair of games on Sunday with Hamilton at Newfoundland and Saskatchewan at Niagara. You can watch them on CEBL+ or the CBC Gem app. Will you be watching? Will you buy tickets and go?? Which leads me to …

10 – RANDOM THOUGHTS: I had somebody say to me this week that they’d rather spend $1000 on a pair of Oilers tickets for ONE game than buy junior hockey season tickets, or WCBL, CEBL, NLL, SJHL, etc. To that, I have nothing to say. Sports fans are buying into the hype and Hollywood stuff of Connor McDavid, Matthew Tkachuk, Mark Scheifele et al. That’s totally fine but it’s also why I say it’s gotta be tough to be a sports operator in any league that isn’t NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL these days. … As long as people are willing to spend $3000 on an Oilers playoff ticket on a Monday, please don’t complain to me about gas prices, weekday games, Covid hangover and blah, blah, blah. … One reader/viewer got upset at me and said my stance on this is getting annoying and that it’s simply too expensive to travel to, and attend, a Rider game. I suppose there’s a very fine line between an excuse and a reason. I looked at Tampa Bay Lightning playoff tickets and deemed $250US a pop to be too expensive. Is that an excuse or a reason? Either way, I didn’t go. But a sellout crowd did. At some point you need to draw a line. … Still waiting to hear the result of the CJHL Presidents vote on going to full shields/cages in 2022-23. These leagues have no clue the value of solid PR/Media Relations! … Over 7,600 Florida hockey fans packed the Hertz Arena near Naples to watch the Florida Everblades capture the ECHL’s Kelly Cup in Game 5 against the Toledo Walleye. Go look it up for yourself on the ‘Blades IG page. A full hockey house, in June, here in Florida. I shit you not. … The best streaming show right now is Winning Time on HBO Max, chronicling the rise of the NBA’s L.A. Lakers under Jerry Buss. It’s truly a must-watch, especially if you really want to see the inner-workings of a sports team. They’re pretty much all the same. My takeaway is that greedy, egotistical owners aren’t new. In fact Jerry Buss may have been the pioneer. In a way it’s skeezy that a sleezeball like that won so many championships but in a lot of ways, he did things the right way; hired the right people and gave them the resources to be successful. It’s not as easy as it looks or else everyone would do it. …. Lakers great Jerry West has the best lines in the show like, “He doesn’t know his dick from a doorknob!” and, “You can’t teach a pig to paint!” Watch the series today! … I feel like they should bundle all these streaming services together and call it cable TV. … In case you missed it, The Rod Pedersen Show now airs four hours daily on Game+ TV across all 10 provinces and 31 United States. We announced it this week, along with parent company Anthem Sports. The show airs live Monday to Friday at 12 pm ET on Game+ TV and is replayed nightly at 10 pm PT on cable television. It’s a tremendous boon for our sponsors and introduces our program to an entirely different demographic of viewers. Check it out if you haven’t done so already! … #LG

Y’er welcome,
RP
@rodpedersen