Commentary: The Good, The Great & The Ugly

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It’s Tuesday and time for the Good, the Great & the Ugly! We’ve got plenty of each to choose from today …

First the good: As always it depends on your perspective but the Battle of Florida took a slightly nasty turn Monday night. Tampa had a 2-1 lead in the third period and looked like they were going to tie the series 2-2 heading back to Amalie Arena for Wednesday’s Game 5.

But the Comeback Cats lived up to their billing and Aaron Ekblad – who returned from suspension in Game 3 and roughed up Tampa’s Brandon Hagel with a dirty pro wrestling move that would make Rowdy Roddy Piper blush – tied the game. Then Seth Jones scored the winner 11 seconds later, and Florida rode away with a 4-2 victory and a 3-1 series lead.

Tampa coach Jon Cooper was inconsolable in the postgame news conference.

Good for the Cats, bad for the Bolts.

Next the great: It’s one of the top days of the year for CFL fans. The 2025 Canadian College Draft goes today with the front-end being televised on TSN.

Our live coverage and draft stories were one of the highlights of my time as Voice of the Riders and I still follow it very closely.

Calgary has the #1 pick. Who will they take?

The CFL Draft is great.

And finally, the ugly: The NFL Draft is supposed to be a highlight of the year too but the snub and dramatic slide of top prospect Shedeur Sanders on the weekend made everybody look bad.

And, if the rumor’s true, Cleveland owner Jimmy Haslam is the reason Deion’s son went in the fifth round. Apparently he made the call on selecting Shedeur, which, may end up being the greatest draft call of all time. But I doubt it. Because the Browns never do the right thing.

And that’s because of a meddling owner who has the opposite of the Midas Touch. The kind who destroys the fortunes of a franchise by not letting their people do their jobs.

Some people in sports are fond of saying, “He’s the owner so he can do what he wants.”

I say that I own my Jeep, so I can drive it off a cliff if I want to.

But I don’t.

That’s today’s Rod Pedersen Commentary

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