STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – BYE BYE BO LEVI – The Hamilton Ti-Cats are poised to sign Bo-Levi Mitchell to a three-year contract.  I’m not saying I told you so, but I told you so.  This has to be crushing for all the Rider faithful that deemed Mitchell’s Saskatchewan arrival as all but a foregone conclusion and just a simple formality.  Now, we move on.  Some who have inside knowledge of CFL teams believe Dane Evans will be the next QB of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and there does appear to be a path for that to happen at this point.  Either way, you can’t win without an upper echelon quarterback.  Evans has had some flashes (much like Cody Fajardo) but he hasn’t been able to put it all together (like Cody Fajardo).

2 – MITCHELL LEAVES MONEY ON TABLE – According to Dave Naylor, BLM took less money from Hamilton than what he would have, presumably, gotten on the free market so that they have an opportunity to spend on other areas of the team in an effort to put a competitive product on the field.  The Ti-Cats were 8-and-10 last season.  The Riders were 6-and-12 and lost their last seven.  This is a subtle yet strong message from Mitchell to everyone that he doesn’t believe the Riders can be competitive even if he played for them for the same amount of money he’s taking from Hamilton.

3 – MITCHELL THE ANSWER? – One friend said to me the other day something that both the Riders and TiCats should possibly take to heart: an organization that has been at, or near, the top of the CFL for many years has decided Bo Levi Mitchell can’t help them anymore and so they’ve cut him loose.  This should be a cautionary tale for other teams who think he’s the savior.

4 – NEUTRAL SITE – We aren’t going to see it but in the event of a Buffalo-Kansas City AFC Championship game, the contest would have been played at a neutral site (Atlanta).  That, in itself, isn’t surprising in light of what happened a few weeks ago when Damar Hamlin suffered a heart attack on the field.  What is more shocking is the notion that the NFL was using this game as a trial for future conference championship games.  There are those with knowledge of the inner-workings of the NFL that both the AFC And NFC title games, in the future, will be held at neutral site venues just like the Super Bowl.  This makes absolutely no sense to me.  What’s the point of finishing first then?

5 – THANKS FANS – The other thing that it does is it gives a middle finger to the fans.  Thanks for supporting your team, but if you want to support them all the way, you will have to fly, rent a car, get a hotel, and eat at fancy restaurants in order to see the conference title game.  The Super Bowl?  Well, you’ll have to do it all over again only the costs skyrocket from whatever they were for the AFC/NFC game.  Money talks.  I get that.  But, a neutral site only makes sense to me if you can’t sell as many tickets at the top seeded’s stadium.  Perhaps this is where capacity comes in but just charge more if you have a target $$ amount.  

6 – EVANDER KANE – I have to admit, I’ve come around quite a bit on Evander Kane.  Being a Jets fan, I fully supported the Jets moving on from him when they dealt him to Buffalo and then as he moved to San Jose and trouble continued to follow him, I didn’t have much sympathy.  He seemed to make good on a new lease on hockey life with Edmonton and the Oilers are, clearly, a way better team with him in the lineup. When he suffered a serious wrist injury earlier this year I found myself rooting for him to get back and help the team even though I pledge no allegiance whatsoever to the Oilers as a team.  He did manage to get himself back sooner than anticipated from his wrist injury but now he’s out again due to ‘personal reasons’.  Kane has had well publicized issues stemming from relationships with teammates, domestic relationships, and financial situations.  Whatever it is that is dogging him this time, I just hope he can get himself right.  He’s an incredible hockey talent who has only scratched the surface of his full capability.  It would be a shame to never see it fulfilled.

7 – BOUDREAU – This Bruce Boudreau fiasco is something I didn’t understand, probably, because I don’t consume much mainstream media.  On Twitter, someone cleared it up for me by saying the Canucks had hired Rick Tocchet quite a few days ago but because of Tocchet’s TV obligations, he can’t take over the team until later in the month.  This was leaked publicly and resulted in Boudreau being a sitting duck for well over a week.  The reality is this – good organizations never fire someone unless they have the replacement already in hand ready to go.  The goof up here is that once it was leaked that Tocchet was coming in, the Canucks should have relieved Boudreau immediately and gone with an interim bench boss until Tocchet gets freed up.

8 – MEDIA VOID – In this same Twitter thread, fans were bemoaning the fact that so-called NHL Insiders in the media circle haven’t touched the Boudreau topic in a critical way, perhaps due to the fact they want to maintain their sources for so-called ‘insider’ information.  This is just the latest example on how poorly the NHL is covered.  There is basically no media at all for the league.  Everyone is just an extended PR arm for the NHL head office as well as its teams and everything is extremely controlled.  If someone steps out of line, they are exiled.  There is no better example of this than Ron MacLean, who lost his job as Hockey Night In Canada host when the NHL and Rogers struck their gazillion dollar TV rights deal.  MacLean, eventually, was brought back but not before he was reminded who butters his toast and that is, in all likelihood, why he took the side he did when Don Cherry was bounced.

9 – NHL TOUCHY – The NHL may be the most sensitive and thin skinned sports league in the world.  What they fail to realize is that critical discussion generates overall interest.  Teams keep everything close to their chest and even when it comes to injuries almost nothing is publicized.  You just get ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ body injuries and ‘day to day’, ‘week to week’, or ‘indefinitely’.  Ho hum.  The defense to injury vagueness is because if another team finds out about so-and-so’s bad knee, they will go out and target the knee and deliberately injure the player in the event he comes back and is still vulnerable.  Of course you can’t even call someone a name anymore without drawing a 3-game suspension, so my guess is that if an injury is publicized and someone else, specifically, targets that area of the body, they’d be looking at a hefty punishment.  Also, news flash – to those on the inside the nature of injuries are quite well known and so are other issues that may be dogging certain players, coaches, and managers.  It’s the fans who are left in the dark and only the fans.  You can say it’s none of our business but when you have sports betting companies asking for our money at every corner, I think having all this information available is actually quite pertinent.

10 – CLEVINGER TROUBLE – Chicago White Sox pitcher Mike Clevinger has been accused of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse by his ex-wife on his child.  The precedent has been set.  I think Major League Baseball really has no choice but to suspend him indefinitely until the matter is resolved and then, depending on the outcome, subject him to further punishment.  If it comes out that he did nothing wrong but it still is morally questionable by the Commissioner’s Office, it only makes sense in light of Trevor Bauer’s suspension that an additional penalty be enforced.  As we know, accusations are all it takes for one to be suspended (unless you are an NHLer that was on the 2018 World Junior Team, then it’s no problem to keep playing).  Interesting tidbit – the woman who accused Trevor Bauer has admitted to also having a sexual relationship with Clevinger.  Small world.  She also texted her friend and called both of them ‘whack a doodles’.  

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