STACKHOUSE’S 10 MONDAY THOUGHTS

1 – RUSH DROP ANOTHER – It may have been the worst performance in franchise history on Saturday night as the Saskatchewan Rush produced a paltry five goals against the previously winless Albany Firewolves in what amounted to a 10-5 loss.  Robert Church had three goals to ‘lead’ the Rush.  Jeff Shattler didn’t play as he was placed on the Covid list earlier in the week.  We are now four games into the year and the Rush have one win.  The verdict is in.  They miss Ben McIntosh and they haven’t been able to replace him with any of the new faces.  Mark Matthews is also off to a bit of a slow start, although his three point game on Saturday negatively impacts his numbers in a way that isn’t a true reflection of his season so far.  McIntosh has 8 goals in 4 games with Philadelphia, a number which would tie him for first on the Rush (with Church).  On the bright side, Adam Shute played well enough to win most nights (in goal) and the defense, as a whole, looks very solid.  Before the game, Albany made a trade for veteran Ryan Benesch, who becomes their leading scorer (14-points in 4-games).  The Rush need to make a similar move.

2 – NFL FINAL GAME – There is no more entertaining professional sports league than the NFL.  Sunday night’s season finale between the Chargers and Raiders was nail biting for me and I am not a fan of either club.  The Chargers never should have been in this ‘win and you’re in’ game in the first place.  Their silly minded analytical coach cost them a game or two earlier in the season and he, essentially, did in this one too.  He gambled on a 4th and 2 from his own 18-yard line in the third quarter and it ended up resulting in a turnover and 3 points for the Raiders.  That particular play call, though, I can’t even blame on analytics.  Then at the end of the game, it appeared as though the Raiders were content to run out the clock and play for a tie (which sends both teams to the playoffs) but Brandon Staley called a timeout.  The Raiders then ran a play and the Chargers couldn’t stop them and the next play after that was a game winning 47 yard field goal.  I believe some websites had gambling odds of Jacksonville winning over Indianapolis and then the Chargers and Raiders playing to a tie at 700-to-1.  A friend of mine placed $5 on it and was a few seconds away from cashing in almost $2500.

3 – SASKATOON JETS – It’s only one issue but if you want to really see how disconnected the media are from the general public, look no further than what the mainstream reporters were saying about the Winnipeg Jets looking at SaskTel Centre for home games simply because you can have fans there whereas you can’t in Winnipeg.  I won’t give these reporters the satisfaction of using their names but there were, at least, three of them who accused the Jets of choosing profits over health.  Meanwhile, the blowback from regular people on Twitter and Facebook was, very much, in favor of the Jets and it wasn’t people who live in Saskatoon who were supportive.  There are a lot of common folks who live in Winnipeg that understand the viability of the Jets comes down to being able to make money.  They lose $1.4-million for every home game that takes place without fans.  You can say whatever you want about the amount of money True North has but the reason why they have the money they do is because they are smart business people.  Playing in an empty rink is the epitome of dumb.  Yet, they have no choice if they stay in Winnipeg.  Therefore you have two options.  Lose your shirt or leave.  Most Winnipeg people understand this and are perfectly fine with them cobbling together some sort of a plan that generates a bit of revenue.  It would be beneficial for long term survival of the hockey team and it also would give the Jets a few more long-term fans as, my assumption, is that the Edmonton Oilers are the de facto favorite team amongst those who live in Saskatoon.

4 – FURTHER ON JETS – One reporter who skewered the Jets for their capitalist approach posted a link to his article on Twitter, but in order to read it you had to pay for access.  My guess is that he doesn’t even see the irony here. Also, if I was the Jets, I would be looking at Grand Forks and not Saskatoon for a temporary home. Can you fully trust Saskatchewan to stay open?

5 – HELLEBUYCK NO INTERVIEW – Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck refused to answer questions from one of these Winnipeg reporters following his team’s win in Arizona on Tuesday night.  This reporter tried to destroy Hellebuyck’s good name by writing a scathing article about him simply for disagreeing with the government narrative surrounding Covid. He even brought Hellebuyck’s infant son into it.  A truly disgusting article with one intent, and that’s to push a political view against someone who is asking questions and expressing his own opinion.  Hellebuyck’s teammates should all do the exact same thing as Hellebuyck and see how much this reporter likes doing a job he can no longer do.  An apology article followed from this media person the day after Hellebuyck refused to talk to him, but it’s not an actual sorry.  It’s merely an attempt to get Hellebuyck to talk to him in the future.  It’ll probably work.  These personal attacks against people (Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rodgers, Hellebucyk) who question what’s going on have to stop.  Hate is hate no matter what side you are on.  I’ll leave it at that because I don’t like being dragged into that game. 

6 – RAPTORS GAME – I’m not sure which sports network was carrying the game last Friday and it probably doesn’t matter anyway but they lost me before the game even started.  I moved on to something else.  With precisely 0 fans in attendance, all on-camera personalities donned masks for the audience.  I can only speak for myself, but I see enough people in masks all day that the last thing I want to see is more people in them talking to me on the television screen.  Also, anyone with a functional brain knows there is one reason and one reason only for doing this and ‘health and safety’ isn’t it.  Just speculation, but my assumption is that when the camera is turned away from the talking heads, the masks come off.  

7 – WHERE YOU GET IT – Here’s a bit of education that you won’t read anywhere else but I’ve picked it up from listening to health experts that aren’t really health experts in the government sense of the word but have gone to medical school and treated a lot of Covid patients.  Sports games are not seeing much virus spread at all amongst the fans and the reason for that is because when you go to a game, you don’t interact with anyone really other than the friend or family member that accompanied you to the game.  The virus has shown to be spread through prolonged close contact and this just doesn’t happen at a sporting event even though there are thousands of people in attendance.  This is different from, say, an office Christmas party where you may have 30-40 people all engaging with each other and exchanging Holiday wishes for several hours at a time.  If the virus is present, there stands a real good chance a lot of the people in attendance become infected and then those people go home to their families and have prolonged contact in the house and then you see further spread amongst the family members.  Studies have shown that between 85 and 90 percent of cases are a result of situations similar to what I’ve just outlined.

8 – MORE ON SPREAD – Here’s another thing that should be obvious to anyone paying attention but it’s just not reported.  When you see these outbreak cases amongst sports teams, the actual game play itself is not where this is happening.  Football teams, for example, will lose all of their quarterbacks or a number of linemen all at once.  This could be because they are all buds but it’s also more likely they are spending prolonged time together in film rooms or in position meetings.  These are the types of things I wish we’d discuss more and it would allow for life to move forward in a closer to normal sense but also allow for certain restrictions that may make a real difference.  In pre-vaccination life, sports teams had no real amount of cases.  They also were conducting the majority of their meetings virtually.  Now that vaccine effectiveness has been reduced to zero (sorry but it has) you are seeing more and more cases and I think it’s partially due to the fact players aren’t distancing the way they did pre-vaccination.  Canada bans fans from sports venues without a shred of evidence that it’s a major contributor to overwhelming ICUs and some provinces have halted game play amongst youth when they really could and should allow for it; just keeping in mind you want to minimize the time spent together when not playing.    

9 – SASK WINTER GAMES – Add this to the list of casualties as far as sporting events which were scheduled to take place but won’t.  This one’s a bit different.  There are no government orders preventing these games from going forward and there are volunteers working their tails off to make it happen but this comes down to sponsorship dollars, according to a friend’s Facebook post (who has a daughter directly impacted by this discouraging decision).  “Essentially, the Games had no money with sponsorship way down.  Large corporations who would typically jump all over this opportunity feared the ‘look’ if cases were reported due to an event that they had sponsored.  So, here we are.  Stuck.  Canada and its perpetual virtue signalling is stopping the 1800 dedicated athletes from competing.  Too many are scared of being part of the solution, so we will forever be stuck where we are.  They aren’t afraid of a bunch of kids getting sick, or even the virus itself.  They’re scared of being part of the way out of this.  If they actually cared about my daughter’s health, they wouldn’t even let her do her (sport) to start with.  It is far more dangerous at her age than this virus ever has been.”  As most readers know, I’ve been an aggressive defender of business during this pandemic but I have to agree with my friend’s opinion here.  There are two groups of people.  Ones who threaten to take their business elsewhere (but never do) and ones who say nothing but actually do speak with their wallets and with-hold supporting businesses they are upset with.  We have been in very strange times even pre-Covid and things are going to come to a head.  I believe businesses who hold a particular opinion but are too scared to share it are going to be the ones most negatively impacted and we’ve already seen this to some degree in the sports world.  

10 – FINAL GAMES THOUGHT – My friend who has a daughter, crushed that she can’t participate after spending upwards of a dozen hours a week in her sport, wants people to know the Chair (Valerie Sluth) of these games is an angel.  “She was in a fight that she cannot win.”  As someone who has been involved with teenagers playing hockey for over twenty-five years and as someone who has three athletic children, I can say I’ve witnessed first hand the unnecessary damage inflicted on young people over the last two years and there can be no forgivable excuse for it.  As much as I have complained about various things, the reality is that we can eventually fix most of it, but the one thing that has been stolen from everyone (young and old) is time.  Time is something that you never get back.  These kids will never be this age again.  Their opportunity is lost.  Forever.  We don’t read about it in newspapers because the stories aren’t covered but there are countless young people who have given up on dreams and are mentally wrecked and those people are the reason I’ve had the stances I’ve had for two years.  We should have never ever ever ever sacrificed a normal life for kids in the name of ‘the greater good’.  It was wrong in March 2020.  It’s still wrong in January 2022 and the fact some STILL don’t get that tops my very long frustration list.  If you are a parent or a young athlete and you want to share your own story (anonymously or not), please reach out to me and I will do my best to articulate what the last two years have been like for you.

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