STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

For now, I’m back.  Is it due to popular or unpopular demand?  Remains to be seen.  Here goes:

1 – LACROSSE – I’ll be honest, I have not been as plugged in to all of the sports news as I used to be.  Life just seems to have gone on for me without a whole lot of sitting in front of the television to watch the NHL, NBA, etc.  I’ve found a comfort zone in traveling to Saskatoon to watch the Rush and this Saturday will mark 7 of 9 home games that I’ve been able to attend this year.  While their playoff chances are less than 25%, I can say this has been the most exciting team that has been on the field since before the pandemic.  The league, itself, is as captivating as it has ever been and while I don’t expect to sell you, the reader, on the National Lacrosse League, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is my favorite sports league to follow hands down.

2 – BIG GAME – Saturday night’s game between the Rush and Toronto Rock is the latest must-win game the Rush have faced in a string of must-wins and despite Toronto’s 14-and-3 record there is reason for optimism.  The Rush, 8-and-9 overall, are coming off a win over second place San Diego last week and are 3-and-1 in their last four.  The Rock have clinched first place and may not go full-effort in this one.  This game also marks the return of Mark Matthews to Saskatoon.  The franchise’s all-time best player has been everything the Rock could want this season, putting up a team leading 28-goals and 63-assists.  The Rush also have to be extremely happy with the results on their end.  Zach Manns is third on the team with 37-goals and 44-assists and is coming off a 5-goal game against the Seals.  While Robert Church and Ryan Keenan have lots of lacrosse left in them, Manns represents the future of the Rush and he wasn’t the only asset obtained in exchange for Matthews.  Adam Jay has been serviceable on defense and there’s a first round pick in the trade as well.

3 – NHL PLAYOFFS – The NHL Playoffs start on Saturday and I always find the first round to be the most exciting of all rounds even though the Stanley Cup won’t be won for another six weeks or more. I was fairly quiet on Winnipeg for most of the season as I fully expected a second half collapse, much like last year, but they withstood a slump and ended the year very strong and have to be considered favorites against Colorado.  Toronto has a dubious record of not being able to beat Boston but you know that will change at some point and I feel like the Bruins are at a similar stage Tampa Bay was at last year.  The window is closing on them and the Leafs are younger, faster, and have way more talent on paper.  But are they hungrier?  

4 – GOLDEN KNIGHTS – Vegas is slated to begin the playoffs as the 8th seed in the West but are welcoming back Mark Stone from injury layoff and Tomas Hertl came back a couple of weeks ago so they will have a roster that looks much better than the one they’ve been going with for the better part of two months.  Many fans are screaming foul over the Golden Knights’ repeated exploitation of the rules by sending players on vacation (otherwise known as an upper body injury) to escape going over the salary cap during the regular season but there is no cheating going on.  The rules are there for every team to use to their best advantage and the Golden Knights appear to be the only one willing to go this far with it.  Anyone who says they are proud of their favorite team for having better ethics than the Golden Knights is simply trying to disguise disappointment and the simple truth is this – not many franchises are fully dedicated to winning.  You can bet if Matt Murray resurrects his NHL career in the playoffs, fans of the Maple Leafs will forget all about ethics.

5 – RELOCATION – The Arizona (Phoenix) Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City next season and Canadian fans continue to feel jaded by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman over the continued ignorance of a new rink and a rabid fan base in Quebec City.  I’m here to bring a bit of perspective to this situation, none of which is likely to sit well with the readers but here goes anyway:  Canada is a heavily taxed nation that is not open for business and the NHL is a very big business.  While Quebec has the rink and the fans, do they have an owner?  I admit to being under a rock when it comes to mainstream media reporting but I’m unaware of an actual owner for a team there.  Like the NFL, the NHL prefers individual people to own their teams rather than corporations (such as MLSE).  That’s not to say corporations can’t own teams but it’s clear the NHL would rather deal with one person than a Board. Also, any owner running a Canadian team has to deal with the 35% exchange rate on the US dollar.  It’s simply not attractive.  Also, Bettman doesn’t hate Canada.  He brought the Jets back to Winnipeg and before that he saved the Montreal Canadiens in 2001 when nobody here wanted to buy them.  Is Bettman money hungry? Yes but find me someone who isn’t?  The majority of those who bemoan greedy rich people are people who don’t have a pot to you-know-what in and are just jealous.  Like it or not, money is what makes everything go around.  If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why the politicians take so much of it from us and why are we left with infrastructure that is in shambles.  It’s because they keep it for themselves.

6 – IN VENUE ATTENDANCE – My bigger concern for the NHL (and all of professional sports for that matter) is the continued rising costs to attend games and the demographic of those who are going.  I believe the younger the person, the less inclined that individual is to want to watch live sports at the actual venue.  When I was growing up and even into my 20s, I loved going to live sporting events.  Those events were also much more affordable in a time where there was also much more disposable income.  I think this is one reason why pro sports have sold their economic souls to gambling companies.  The other thing to consider is that while we have exciting athletes like Connor McDavid, Ronald Acuna, Nikola Jokic, and Patrick Mahomes as household names in their respective sports and while the games are, largely, still fun to watch … are they as captivating as Mark McGwire-Barry Bonds-Sammy Sosa chasing home run records?  Are they as intense and as interesting as the Colorado Avalanche-Detroit Red Wings rivalries that featured Claude Lemieux, Darren McCarty, Patrick Roy, etc going toe to toe every night?  Is there anyone who can make you watch an NBA game the way Michael Jordan could?  Those times aren’t coming back so the challenge becomes how to make the future better than those eras.

7 – PITCHER INJURIES – I’ve been writing about the needless babying of starting pitchers for years and now it finally seems as though people in charge of Major League Baseball teams are beginning to take notice that this is a fruitless practice that does nothing as far as preserving the health of arms, elbows, and shoulders of their hurlers.  There has been a feeble attempt to blame the pitch clock by the MLBPA, but the reality is that pitchers going down with serious arm injuries was an epidemic before the pitch clock became a thing in 2023.  Finally, a couple of surgeons have spoken up about maximum effort on every pitch and how that is the most likely culprit resulting in so many going down.  

8 – SKENES – Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, the Pittsburgh Pirates are, laughably, bringing along Paul Skenes in a way that shows they are so scared of him getting hurt that they barely let him pitch.  Skenes, the number one draft pick in 2023, has made 4 starts in the minors so far this season and while his numbers are extremely impressive, the reality is that he’s thrown a whopping total of 12 ⅔ innings total in those 4 starts.

9 – CFL LABOUR – I got sent a story on Thursday from Sportsnet and it centred around a piece written by Arash Madani where he goes over how the Canadian Labour Congress, Canada’s largest labour organization, has voted in the CFLPA as an official affiliate.  The person who sent it to me, who I would call a political moderate, added to the link by saying the CFL could be toast and the PA has now identified themselves as a hard left wing organization.  Time will tell on that, but businesses around the country are not bluffing.  We are seeing this already.  As it becomes more expensive to operate, they simply go out of business.  If the union feels they are going to grab a bigger piece of the CFL revenue pie by aligning with the CLC, my guess is that a franchise or two will lop off long before any meaningful change comes to pass that the union can consider as a ‘victory’.  And, sorry for the political commentary but as we have seen in many recent labour disputes, the people in charge of unions don’t actually have the best interests of its membership at hand anyway.   

10 – ATHLETES DYING – Former MLB first round draft pick, Dave McCarty, who was a member of the 2004 World Series winning Boston  Red Sox team, passed away on Friday at the age of 54 after a cardiac event.  Earlier this month, 35-year-old Vontae Davis (former NFL player) was found dead in his home gym after collapsing.  Add these tragedies to the list of what is now deemed normal health incidents amongst people of all ages.  You can call me nuts if you want but go back and do a search of how many of these stories were posted pre-2020 and how many post-2020. I offer no explanations or reasons other than to say maybe someone somewhere should start asking a question or two.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)