STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – RIDERS BLOWN OUT – A few thoughts from the Riders throw-away game against Montreal: first, the sky is not necessarily falling and Cody Fajardo does not necessarily suck. He was hampered by a knee injury and forced to run for his life on every play. I’ll pass judgment on him more after about the six game mark.  Second, this team is full of mental midgets. They’ve been dogged by an abundance of penalties ever since Craig Dickenson took over in 2019 so, therefore, Dickenson does have to shoulder a lot of the blame because the message isn’t getting through. But, the reality is that the Riders are just too undisciplined to amount to anything that seriously resembles a Grey Cup contender and Dickenson isn’t going anywhere. This issue is chronic so there is no reason to think they’ll figure out the penalty issue at any point this season. Third, Shaq Evans is injury prone. Great talent, but you can’t count on him. I also think it’s fair to question how good he will be when he does come back? Isn’t this his second serious leg injury in as many years? I remember the dynamic DJ Flick, who was one of my favorite players ever, breaking his leg and never being the same.

2 – BOMBERS/TICATS – Overall, this was a pretty good game but not very many witnessed it and that’s too bad. We can blame the rain, I suppose, for the lack of attendance but, eventually, reality will hit when there just isn’t enough money to properly fund these teams. TSN can pretend the stadiums are full by hiding the crowd from camera angles; but even that is going to be too difficult to ignore at some point in the not so distant future. Or, does the league bring in enough sponsorship money that the sparsely populated stadiums aren’t nearly as alarming as we think?

3 – ROURKE HYPE – BC Lions quarterback Nathan Rourke is the talk of the league. He’s a Canadian-born pivot and a pretty darned good one at that. His 436 yards passing this weekend set a CFL single game record for a Canadian.  Hopefully more people realize they could be in the presence of a generational player as BC’s attendance dropped by 20,000 people from the home opener which One Republic headlined.

4 – HOCKEY CANADA – The federal government doesn’t get much right, but freezing funding to Hockey Canada is the right thing to do while an investigation is conducted regarding the attempted sweeping under the rug of a 2018 incident that occurred in London, Ontario that involved members of the World Junior team. The $7.8-million that Trudeau and his cohorts are keeping from Hockey Canada represents 6% of their annual budget. I started writing this on Monday and now that it’s Tuesday, Scotiabank has also pulled funding while Canadian Tire and Telus are backing out of the World Juniors. This has the potential to completely sink Hockey Canada in its present structure and there are some who would tell you privately that’s not entirely a bad thing.  

5 – RATTLERS – For the first time this season, the Saskatchewan Rattlers played a team that is struggling and the Rattlers didn’t disappoint. They led the Montreal Alliance by as much as 21 points and they were up 89-71 going into Elam Time before taking their foot off the pedal and settling on a 98-86 win on Sunday.  Devonte Bandoo scored 28 points while it was midway through the second quarter before Tony Carr and Scottie Lindsey got on the scoresheet. Danish import Sebastian Aris returned from a six game injury layoff to score 12 points and he also drew four charging fouls, which really seemed to frustrate the Alliance. It’s too bad that the game with the biggest attendance (Scarborough) has been, by far, the worst game the Rattlers have played. They’ve got an abundance of weapons and need to be taken seriously as a contender at this point.

6 – RUSH PROTECTED LIST – The Saskatchewan Rush have submitted their protected list for the upcoming Las Vegas expansion draft. The Rush wanted to keep eight defensemen, so that means both netminders Adam Shute and Eric Penney were left exposed. I don’t expect the Rush to lose either of those players, but depending on whether Vegas wants a defensive or offensive player, my assumption is that Jeff Cornwall and Josh Currier would be high on the wish list. The Rush clearly believe the best is yet to come from Marshall Powless, as he was protected. The 22-year-old had 4-goals and 9-assists in 7-games and is poised to take a big step forward.

7 – TROTZ SAYS NO – The Winnipeg Jets will move on to Plan B for a head coach now that Barry Trotz has turned them down. In a lot of circles, former Dallas bench boss Jim Montgomery is considered to be the favorite to get it although the Jets did reach out to Rick Tocchet before Trotz became available. Whomever the Jets hire, it’s expected that coach will be forced to accept Scott Arniel as part of the staff, possibly even as an Associate Coach. This will be the most important decision in franchise history as the Jets are teetering perilously close to becoming a league laughingstock despite having enough talent on the roster that many think they could return to contending status as soon as this season.

8 – ARCHIE – Anaheim Angels reliever Archie Bradley will miss the next 2-3 months after breaking his elbow jumping over a railing to take part in a bench clearing confrontation against the Seattle Mariners on Sunday. Pitchers have to be the most brittle of all pro athletes.  

9 – DEATHS – There have been more young athletes who have passed on in recent weeks, including former NBA first rounder and Purdue basketball star Caleb Swanigan, who passed away at age 25 due to natural causes.  As well, 21-year-old Fabricio Navarro died of a heart attack on June 15th.  He was a professional soccer player from Argentina. Retired NFL star Tony Siragusa passed away in his sleep last week.  He was 55.  It’s been a tough year with mysterious sports deaths amongst people who are way too young.

10 – POLITICAL COMMENT – I’ll make a brief one because I get asked a lot to sprinkle a bit of this into the column, so here’s my hot take for this week:  if meddling into the RCMP investigation of the Portapique, Nova Scotia mass killings doesn’t bring down the Trudeau government then absolutely nothing will and we will have them until long after you and I have left this bizarre world.

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