Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – RUSH STILL FIRST  – The Saskatchewan Rush emerged from a bye week and stopped a 2-game slide by eking out a 10-9 win over the San Diego Seals Saturday night in what was the team’s first home game in a month.  The win improves the Rush’s overall record to 11-and-3, which puts them one game ahead of second place Vancouver in the standings.  The Colorado Mammoth are two games back. 

2 – RUSH RECAP – Robert Church, who entered the game as the new all-time career points leader for the Rush at 960, had a hat trick and five points to lead the offense.  Once again,  however, the Rush were late getting started as they fell behind 3-0 in the first quarter in what has been a very common theme all season.  Matt Hossack added 9-loose balls and 4-caused turnovers while Frank Scigliano was outstanding on this night as he made 39-saves and allowed only 3-goals in the second half.  From here, the Rush go to Toronto next Friday and then return home in two weeks to face Buffalo in a championship series rematch game.

3 – LADY HUSKIES – Congratulations are in order for the Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team, who defeated the UNB (Fredericton) Reds 77-68 in the national championship final last Sunday.  The Huskies were stunned in the conference semi-finals, spoiling their unbeaten season, but they were still invited to the nationals and made good on their hiccup by laying claim to their second straight national crown.  It was a 3-point game until late in the fourth when Logan Reider hit a shot clock buzzer beating three to knock the wind out of the Reds’ sails.

4 – UFC WHITE HOUSE – The UFC is taking hits from all sides this week after announcing the Freedom250 White House card and falling well short of Dana White’s promise of it being the best night of fights ever.  With Jon Jones, noticeably, absent and with several other championships not being contested; the fans and critics are absolutely right to express disappointment.  Having said that, the top two active heavyweights are paired up (Alex Pereira and Cyril Gane) and the lightweight division will see a unified title fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje (the interim champion).  However, there is no Jones.  No Connor McGregor, and no Kayla Harrison.

5 – UFC BIG EVENTS – The booking model for UFC has changed dramatically now that American fans can watch through a monthly subscription as opposed to pay-per-view.  If the White House card was being run as an event where the number of eyeballs watching mattered, chances are much greater that Jones would have his financial demands met.  But, since the agreement with Paramount + is a fixed number, there is no incentive to overpay an athlete to fight.  This means you are, likely, to see a lot less of the blockbuster type main events going forward.

6 – GUDAS/MATTHEWS – Much has been made about the Leafs’ lack of response to Radko Gudas knocking out Auston Matthews with an illegal knee on knee hit earlier this week that has resulted in Matthew’s being ruled out for the rest of the season but I wasn’t surprised in the least that nobody came to his defense.  First of all, this team has never appeared to be a tight knit group and that’s a big reason for the lack of playoff success.  The other element that nobody seems to talk about is the shift in hockey culture where I feel we are in between generations where players would, automatically, seek instant retribution and where players are told to just sit back and let the league office handle the matter.  Yes, it’s shocking a Craig Berube-coached team would do nothing but the players of today are trained much differently than they were 20-30 years ago as far as this type of response is concerned.

7 – MATTHEWS COVERAGE – I shouldn’t be surprised the coverage of the Matthews hit doesn’t go too deep into the hockey player mindset.  These supposed insiders that feed us all the information are, embarrassingly, bad.  One of them posted later in the evening that the situation was ‘fluid’ in that the league may want to reach out to Gudas and that he could be called for an in-person hearing but it was also possible the matter would be dealt with over the phone.  If you read the post carefully, you will see words like ‘could’ ‘may’ ‘possible’, etc and that should be your clue that the ‘insider’ is speculating much the same way you or I would speculate.  There is no real information here.

8 – HAGEL ON DAHLIN – There are some screaming talking heads that are suggesting the Brandon Hagel – Rasmus Dahlin incident is similar to that of Todd Bertuzzi – Steve Moore.  Of course nothing could be further from the truth but there is one common denominator in both of those incidents and that’s both Moore and Dahlin refused to defend themselves and that’s why both of those matters unfolded the way that they did.  I will say in Moore’s case, he answered the bell earlier in the game and one could argue he shouldn’t have had to fight Bertuzzi at that juncture but I come back, once again, to the changing culture of what is a player supposed to do when a teammate is injured by an opponent?  In that Bertuzzi situation, the entire Canucks roster wanted a pound of flesh for something that happened in a previous game whereby they felt they didn’t get a chance to issue the payback on the night it happened.  

9 – CHANGES IN CURLING – Curling skip Mike McEwen has been dumped by his Saskatchewan-based team in favor of Kevin Koe’s third, Tyler Tardi.  McEwen is not from Saskatchewan and neither is Tardi.  Long gone and never to return are the days of curling teams consisting of four people who are all from the same club (let alone city and province).  Now you have provinces, routinely, represented by people who come together to try and form the best all-star team possible and sometimes even cherry pick which province’s jacket to wear depending on the path to qualify for the Brier/Scotties.  In McEwen’s case, Manitoba is a gauntlet as far as top end teams are concerned so it made sense for him to try wearing Saskatchewan colors  but I was never really a fan despite his other three teammates being from the province.    

10 – TUGS AT HEART STRINGS – I saw a highlight clip this week that would make the toughest of toughies tear up.  Colin Dorgan, who lost his mother, brother, and grandfather in the Lynch Arena shooting last month; scored the double overtime winning goal to lift his team into his high school conference’s championship game. God may or may not be real.  It’s certainly fair to question his existence in a world that gets more evil with each passing day but I can’t help but think there is some sort of a greater power watching over some of us and blessing a few when they need it the most and Colin Dorgan was on the receiving end on this particular day.

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