Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – COULD BE ONE AND DONE – It’s possible the Rush have peaked too early after opening the year 10-and-1.  Realistically, a win next week against Toronto could push them into fifth place but they’d be looking at a road playoff game in Buffalo and, likely, a quick exit.  It would be a very disappointing end to what appeared to be a season full of promise for most of the way.  Long term, I’m not sure the team can sustain being a top NLL club when it only draws 6500 fans a night.  

3 – LEAFS PLAYING POKER – With the Leafs’ loss to Florida on Saturday night, they are now the 5th-worst team in the league and as long as they can stay there (or worse) for the last week of the regular season, they’ll keep their first round pick that they traded to Boston last year for Brandon Carlo.  Meanwhile, the guy in charge of the Leafs is Keith Pelley and he makes $10-million a year (or more) but is unqualified to hire a new General Manager for the team so he’s sourced out the job to a firm to conduct a search.  It should be noted the firm represents Sunny Mehta, the Assistant GM of the Florida Panthers.  Mehta is best known for being a really good poker player who has written a couple of books regarding poker strategy.  He also pioneered the first full-time analytics department while with the New Jersey Devils and Pelley is said to be high on analytics, low on personality and actual hockey qualifications so that should give Mehta the leg up.

4 – RON MACLEAN DISLIKED – I sometimes run across these social media exercises where you have to choose between groups of people over a particular issue and I saw one this week that featured pictures of a number of hockey personalities and the premise is you pick three that you can silence forever.  I thought I was being clever by saying Ron MacLean x 3, but as it turns out that’s what a lot of other people chose.  Nobody has done more damage to himself as a broadcaster in this country than MacLean from when he stabbed a knife in the back of Don Cherry.  MacLean is brilliant, highly skilled, and tremendously sharp but being a traitor to Cherry and a subsequent coward in the days that followed the ‘poppy’ incident erases all of his credentials in the minds of many.

5 – MAX COMTOIS – A viral hockey video surfaced this week from the KHL where a referee was hot mic’d and it was revealed that Max Comtois, a former Canada World Junior captain, is disliked by his coach and teammates.  In fact, former Regina Pat Jordan Weal is heard telling the referee not to call the game against their club just because Comtois is disliked by the official.  Weal goes on to say ‘not a lot of us like him either’.  It’s an interesting insight and yet another damning indictment on the people who decide the roster make-up at the World Juniors.  You don’t become a bad teammate overnight so Comtois, likely, has had some luggage for most of his career and yet nobody else on the 2019 team was more worthy than him to be captain.  

6 – ZACH FUCALE – I also couldn’t help but wonder about Zach Fucale, who was also in the video sequence centred around Comtois.  Fucale has been in the KHL for the last three years and has put up eyebrow raising numbers.  He’s also a former second round draft choice of the Montreal Canadiens and has a career record of 1-1-1, 1.75, .924 in the NHL with Washington back in 2022.  He will be 31 at the end of May so I get it.  Nobody in the NHL is paying attention to him but with all the trouble the Edmonton Oilers have with their goaltending and the very limited cap space to work with, you mean Fucale was never worth a look-see?

7 – UFC327 – Carlos Ulberg knocked out Jiri Prochazka late in the first round of their Light Heavyweight title fight but the real story here is that Ulberg did it by fighting on one leg as he appeared to suffer a torn ACL early in the first round but he hung in there and even though he was losing the fight, he caught Prochazka with a left hook that knocked him to the mat and then Ulberg pounced and finished him off.  The title was vacated when Alex Pereira moved up to heavyweight and the title may have to be vacated again as Ulberg is sure to miss significant time with the devastating knee injury.  

8 – ABS – Some MLB umpires are being subjected to embarrassment and some of them feel the fans are judging them against near impossible standards.  I actually don’t get that sense at all.  I’ve been watching games and the challenges where balls are nibbling the strike zone are not criticized when overturned but when a pitch is right down the middle and the ump misses it, you can’t help but wonder how many games have been ruined by incompetence.  Forget the strike zone, there was a game last week where CB Bucknor ruled a runner missed first base when running down the line.  The replay showed he actually stomped on the middle of it.  What’s Bucknor watching?  The issue is that umpires, in the past, weren’t held to any standard at all and those who are bad at the job got away with it.  Imagine how many challenges Angel Hernandez would have to endure on a nightly basis…thankfully he’s retired.

9 – PLATOON – I’ve long harped on baseball pitchers always getting hurt and the sport’s stubbornness to get to the bottom of why and to change how hurlers are developed and trained.  Another dumb aspect of the game that doesn’t get enough attention is the constant platooning of hitters so that left handed bats can face right handed pitchers and vice versa.  On Saturday, Minnesota Twins DH Trevor Larnach faced a left-hander for only his third at bat of the season and he, promptly, hit a line drive for an out to first baseman Vladimir Guerrero.  It was hard contact, clearly seeing the ball well.  His second time up, he deposited an Eric Lauer pitch over the fence in right field for a three-run homer.  Good players are good players.  I get platooning if you have average players and you want to keep them away from elite pitchers.  Larnach, I suppose, isn’t an above average hitter but he doesn’t get much of a chance to improve when he’s, firmly, planted on the bench every time they see a lefty, regardless of how good or bad that lefty is.  When healthy, Addison Barger is in a similar predicament and remember the Jays ended up having their top offensive bats on the bench in key World Series games last year because they wanted righty vs lefty match ups.  It just seems weird that not even one team can see the flaws in this strategy.

10 – CEBL – Signings are starting to trickle in around the CEBL and the Winnipeg Sea Bears are raising some eyebrows by bringing back troubled former MVP Teddy Allen and they also have announced the signing of former 3-time league MVP Xavier Moon.  Moon played for Edmonton from 2019-21 and averaged 23.1-ppg in his final season with the Stingers.  Moon has also had a cup of coffee in the NBA with the Los Angeles Clippers.  Allen was league MVP with Winnipeg in 2023 but was sent packing in 2024 for off-court reasons.  He resurfaced with the Rattlers a short time later but was unable to help them salvage their season.  He did not play in the CEBL in 2025.  As far as the new Saskatoon Mamba are concerned, Emmanuel Bandoumel is leaving the club and has signed with Edmonton.  A pair of U of S Huskies players have signed developmental contracts with Saskatoon as Easton Thimm returns to the club and Mohamed Mahadhi joins the team as well. The Mamba have also announced the return of Davonte Bandoo but there’s nothing to indicate the Mamba are going to have a better record than the Rattlers.

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