Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – HELLEBUYCK – NHL training camps opened this week and Connor Hellebuyck did not report to the Winnipeg Jets.  Hellebuyck asked for a trade back in April following harassment and abuse suffered by his wife and family in response to the United States gold medal win and subsequent visit to the White House, which has angered Canadians greatly, some to the point of resorting to borderline criminal behaviour.  Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, basically, ignored Hellebuyck’s request and the matter came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Hellebuyck made public his previously private request.  Cheveldayoff held a press conference earlier this week and talked about the situation to some degree but indicated the offers received for Hellebuyck were terrible and he wasn’t about to make a bad trade.  If he thought the offers were bad this Summer, he hasn’t seen anything yet.

2 – MORE HELLEBUCYK – Fans, predictably, are reacting to Hellebuyck’s holdout by spewing even more hate.  Hellebuyck does have a no move clause and is in the middle of an 8-year contract so there is the thought process of ‘he signed the deal, he must honor it’ but nobody could have foreseen the city turning on him just because he led his country to Olympic gold and accepted congratulations from the President.  A lot of fans are now denying that Hellebuyck’s family was ever abused, suggesting the former Hart Trophy winner has made it all up but I remember very well how petty Canadians reacted and I knew 100% this day was coming.  The notion of Hellebuyck fabricating the harassment, of course, is nonsense.  Hellebuyck has also given the Jets an extremely long list of teams that he will accept a deal to, which is believed to include all American teams.  If you, as a Canadian hockey fan, take offense to such a thing then I’d suggest you have only the Canadian hockey fan to blame.  While most feel as though Hellebuyck should take the abuse and still go out and play, he feels differently.

3 – MORE, MORE HELLEBUYCK – Make no mistake, Hellebuyck is quite aware of who he’s dealing with.  Cheveldayoff is well-known to be patient and won’t be pressured into making a trade he isn’t comfortable with.  The abuse Hellebuyck’s family endured had to have been awful for him to consider never playing in the NHL ever again as opposed to playing for Winnipeg.  Think about that and self-reflect if you want.  Most of you won’t, you will just react in anger and blame Hellebuyck for going to the White House and suggest this is, merely, a consequence of a poor choice politically.  After all, we are reaching North Korea levels of popularity for our federal ruler here in Canada so to suggest that it is fine for one to have a different view of the world comes very close to committing a Canadian crime and Hellebuyck is lucky he wasn’t incarcerated for his White House trip.

4 – TOUGH ON JETS FUTURE – You can applaud Cheveldayoff and the Jets all you want but this stance of letting Hellebuyck rot on the sidelines is not going to win the organization any favor with future free agents.  The other manufactured reasons (which are myths, by the way) why free agents won’t go to Winnipeg aside, the Jets will also be known as the team that has fans who terrorize you to the point you need police and security to come to your aid as well as not granting a player’s desire to leave when that player and his family are under extenuating circumstances.  

5 – MAYBE THERE IS NO FUTURE – I really don’t know what kind of a future Winnipeg has in the NHL at this point and it’s all because of their fans.  Congratulations.  When you say nobody wants to go to Winnipeg, I can point out long term contracts signed by Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Josh Morrissey, Neal Pionk, and Gabriel Vilardi.  If the City of Winnipeg is good enough for those players to commit long term, then it’s good enough for anyone else.  It’s not like Jets players don’t have friends around the league and aren’t spreading the word.  This notion of Winnipeg being too cold, too small, and whatever else is the problem is just a whole lot of nonsense and an excuse to be lazy as far as attracting players.  The Hellebuyck situation is unique in that he wasn’t provided a safe working environment and therefore he wants out.  I just don’t see them ever being able to attract immediate veteran help at this point because of how the Hellebuyck situation unfolded and how it’s been, widely, ignored by the organization to find a solution.

6 – OV BACKS PUTIN AGAIN – Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin’s ties to Vladimir Putin reared their ugly (?) head again this week as he appeared in the Russian Presiden’t campaign advertisement.  The NHL said nothing of the ‘infraction’ so this isn’t as bad as going to the White House, I guess.  Or maybe if Ovechkin played for Calgary, we’d lose our minds over it.  Here’s the weird thing – Canadians despise Putin and Russia because of the Ukraine war yet we love China and are moving closer and closer to friendly relationships with them.  China and Russia share strategic partnerships.  Russia and the US are not friends, yet we don’t like either of them.  Hard to follow, but remember we don’t give two hoots about double standards and once you wrap your head around that, anything is possible.

7 – HOW TO WATCH – I seldom use conventional means to watch sports on television, but the fastest way to find the Thursday night NFL game was to log in to Amazon Prime, which is not the typical way I watch.  So, I was taken by surprise when I logged in and then had to log in again to Crave in order to watch the game.  At this point, I decided I didn’t want to watch that badly even though I assume the game was, probably, also on TSN.  I don’t see all this fragmenting of platforms working as customers are just going to decide which ones they can stomach paying and they, simply, won’t pay for the rest.  As we know, the customer never wins so what I envision is a system whereby if you want to watch 1 platform, you must commit to all of them or else you can just go without watching that sport.  It’s like gas prices.  In order to prevent you from moving around, they just jack up the prices to the point where most just can’t travel and the few that can, well they will pay enough taxes that the government wins yet again.  But keep pledging allegiance to your favorite political party, by all means.  

8 – RUSH OFFSEASON – The Saskatchewan Rush had a busy week as they shape their roster for the upcoming season, slated to begin in early December.   In the Ottawa/Philadelphia dispersal draft, the Rush went to the Ottawa roster for all three players as they selected Transition Jake Stevens, Defense Reed Kurtz, and Forward Sam Firth.  They then made a trade for Connor Kearnan and then, this weekend, signed Reilly O’Connor.  O’Connor had 70-points last year, which would have placed him behind only Ryan Keenan, Zach Manns, and Robert Church on the Rush roster. Kearnan put up 50-points last year while Firth was over a point per game in a depth role.  Kurtz had a 36% success rate on faceoffs, so that insulates the Rush in the event of a Jake Naso absence.  The Rush also traded away forward Clark Walter and defenseman Holden Garlent so the roster is getting a makeover for 2027 but I have to say I’m in favor of what I’ve seen so far.

9 – UFC331 – Joshua Van defending his Flyweight title against former champion Alexandre Pantoja in what was Pantoja’s first fight since suffering a dislocated shoulder against Van December 6th of last year. Arman Tsarukyan knocked out Mauricio Ruffy with a vicious elbow late in round one of the co-main event and should set up Tsarukyan for a fight against Justin Gaethje in the early part of 2027.  Gaethje has said he doesn’t want to fight anyone he has already been in the octagon with (so this disqualifies Ilia Topuria and Paddy Pimblett) so Tsarukyan is a no-brainer.  The stunner of the night was Sean Sharaf, who needed just 12-seconds to flatten Gable Steveson, the heavyweight prodigy who has an Olympic gold medal in wrestling on his ledger as well as four straight knockout victories of his own.  Sharaf went into the fight as a +1200 underdog.  Safe to say the fast track Steveson was on just came to a screeching halt.

10 – MMA 69 – Saskatoon/Flin Flon product Hunter Lee lost a split decision to Darian Weeks in the main event of Unified MMA 69 on Friday night at River Cree Casino near Edmonton, losing his Middleweight belt in the process.  The three judges, clearly, weren’t watching the same fight as thousands of others because even though it was a very competitive and close fight, Lee won three of the five rounds in the opinions of many.  Perhaps his biggest mistake was taking his foot off the gas in round five assuming he was ahead 3-1 in rounds.

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