Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – WHAT’S NEXT – The Rush are back home on February 14th and will play a road game at San Diego next Saturday against the 4-and-3 Seals.  The Colorado Mammoth are currently second at 6-and-2.  They, soundly, beat the defending champion Buffalo Bandits 20-9 on Saturday behind the seven goal night of Andrew Kew and a nine point game from Jack Hannah.  The Rush have just one meeting against Colorado and it’s not until April 11th.  In the meantime, the Rush are about to be tested as San Diego has been playing well and Vancouver is also only sitting at 2 losses and that’s who will be in Saskatoon on the 14th.  

3 – UFC325 – Alexander Volkanovski defended his featherweight title with a unanimous decision over Diego Lopes in the main event.  It’s the second time Volkanovski has staved off a Lopes challenge.  In the end it doesn’t matter what the scorecards had but the judges had it 50-45, 49-46, 49-46 and while I’m just a novice fan, I had it at 48-47 and while I wouldn’t say Lopes deserved to win, you could have made a case for him to have won 48-47.  Who Volkanovski fights next is a real question.  Lerone Murphy is on a roll and there’s speculation he may fight Movsar Evloev in March and while Evloev is undefeated and the current number one contender, he hasn’t fought since 2024.

4 – UFC LIGHTWEIGHT – The co-main event saw Benoit Saint Denis destroy Dan Hooker, which should move him up to face the winner of Charles Oliveira-Max Holloway.  Earlier in the night, Mauricio Ruffy made short work of Rafael Fiziev and I’m left wondering if a Ruffy-Paddy Pimblett fight isn’t on the horizon.  The lightweight division has a lot of intriguing possibilities and everyone seems to be avoiding Arman Tsarukyan while the latest superstar in waiting, Quillan Salkilld, also won by submission on the card last night.  

5 – HALL OF FAME – Professional sports have done this to themselves, but all the major sports have devalued their respective Hall of Fames in recent years.  This week, the NFL made a complete mockery of theirs by opting not to vote in Bill Belichick as a first time inductee despite his eight Super Bowl rings.  It sounds like it all comes down to Bill Polian being butt hurt over always having his Indianapolis Colts come up short against New England during the Brady/Manning era.  Most voters have remained quiet over their ballots although one said he didn’t vote for Belichick because he thought more than enough other people would and he wanted to preserve the names of several others who were at risk of falling off the ballot.  That’s a dumb excuse.

6 – LEAFS NYLANDER – The Toronto Maple Leafs won over Vancouver on Saturday night but make no mistake about it.  This is a team on the brink of missing the playoffs and there are several reasons that we could speculate on as to why but I also maintain that hockey, more than any other sport, requires a certain intangible for top players in order for them to lead their club to a title and the top players on the Leafs lack such intangibles.  It’s just one incident, but the William Nylander flipping the finger to a national television camera and then doing an interview the following day and laughing through his ‘apology’ is so symbolic of how unserious the Leafs have been during the Shanaplan/Auston Matthews era.  While you may say flipping the bird is no big deal, I would just also throw out there that if you do that during a game at the opposing team’s bench, you are given a travesty of the game penalty and that can earn you a three game suspension in Saskatchewan Hockey sanctioned matches.

7 – HUSKIES BASKETBALL – For the second time this season, I went to a Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball game and it was nice to see 1200 people attend their 63-45 win over the Regina Lady Cougars, who entered the game 15-and-1.  The Huskies improved to 17-and-0 with the victory and are, obviously, the top women’s university team in the country.  Do yourself a favor and go watch them next weekend against Winnipeg.  Most of the players that were on last year’s national championship team are on this team too.  Gage Grassick, who scored 35 in the title game, went toe to toe with Cara Misskey, the Lady Cougars star who never left the court in playing all 40 minutes on Thursday and dropped 25-points to go along with 11-rebounds and 3-assists in a losing effort.  Grassick played 36 minutes and 14-points, 10-rebounds, 4-assists, and 2-steals.

8 – PROVINCE OF CHAMPIONS – Saskatchewan sports fans are spoiled.  The Riders won the Grey Cup and looking at the early free agents returns,  should be a solid bet to win it again.  The Rush are leading the NLL.  The Huskies football team went to the Vanier Cup and just came up short.  The women’s basketball team, as mentioned, won the national championship.  The Saskatoon Hilltops defeated the Regina Thunder for the Prairie Conference championship in junior football and then won the Canadian Bowl as well.  The Prince Albert Raiders are the second best team in the Western Hockey League.  The Regina Red Sox won the Western Canadian Baseball League crown.  What am I missing?

9 – SNELL – If there is a bigger baby in professional sports than the starting pitcher in Major League Baseball, I am yet to see it. Los Angeles Dodger Blake Snell announced this week that he was ‘exhausted’ after the World Series and while he hopes to be ready for the start of the upcoming season, the reality is that he’s behind schedule because he needed to rest his pitching arm.  Snell threw 95 innings (combined regular season and playoffs) this year and made $36-million only to underwhelm in the World Series against Toronto, where he allowed 10-runs and 15-hits in 13-innings.  The Dodgers still won, of course, because they have a bottomless pit of money (most of it deferred) to spend on free agents.  They aren’t even necessarily well-run.  They just buy everyone they can and rely on being deeper than any other team.  This is, likely, why MLB is headed for a labour stoppage in 2027.

10 – EPSTEIN FILES IN SPORTS – Late this week, the so-called Epstein Files were released to the public and there is some heavy reading in there to be sure.  Not unexpectedly, the sports world has its fair share of figureheads named in the documents.  Owners of three NFL teams (New England, NYGiants, NYJets) are identified and the Giants owner (Steve Tisch) is accused of having Epstein ‘scout’ women for him.  Is the NFL going to do anything about it?  Doesn’t appear so.  On Saturday, it was revealed a high level Edmonton Oilers executive met up with Epstein on his island in 2015, along with another individual referred to as ‘G-Betty’ as well as a young hockey star described as ‘the next Gretzky’.  I think what’s going to be fascinating is being able to read how disgusting some of these famous people are and yet knowing nobody is ever going to hold them to account.  Sure people like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, William Barr, Prince Andrew, etc are all rich and can go through life getting whatever they want from whoever they want but they’ll never be able to change the fact that they are all gross and creepy.  Without money, they are nothing.  And with money, they are all still scumbags.  

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