STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – CFL THIS WEEK – The Saskatchewan Roughriders, sitting decently at 5-and-5, are enjoying a bye week after an improbable win over the BC Lions a week ago and now the Lions have suffered their second straight upset defeat as Hamilton waxed them 30-13 on Saturday behind James Butler’s 118-rushing yards and a very efficient game from quarterback Taylor Powell.  Meanwhile, Vernon Adams was over 300 yards passing again for the Leos with nothing to show for it. Does this take a bit of shine off the Rider victory a week ago? You decide. Meanwhile, Alouettes QB Cody Fajardo was horrendous in a blowout loss against Winnipeg.  Fajardo, it seems, saves his worst games for the Bombers. It’s to the point where he shouldn’t even be on the field against them anymore.

2 – STATS – Labour Day is coming and the CFL still doesn’t have their new and improved stats program up and running. A month ago, this was considered an epic failure. It’s to the point now where many seem to have just accepted there may be no true up-to-the-minute stats on TSN and Sportsnet for the entire season. It’ll be well worth the wait we are told. Uh huh. I’d like to say not much in the CFL surprises me, but this is shocking for a professional sports league. They should have just pulled the pin and gone back to the ‘old’ company providing the stats after about week two but this league loves driving square pegs into round holes.

3 – EYE FOR AN EYE – In recent days, I’ve seen increased support for NHL suspensions to players who injure other players to match the length of time the injured player is out. In theory, it’s not a bad idea. But let’s say Mitch Marner slashes the wrist of a fourth liner and that fourth liner is out for 6-weeks but then his team keeps him out an additional 2-3 weeks because they want to see Marner miss as much time as possible.  Heck, we’ve seen teams in recent years hold certain players out of the lineup for entire seasons if they are up against the salary cap ceiling. So, for that reason alone this suggestion on suspensions doesn’t work.

4 – NFL INJURIES – Speaking of injuries, the NFL has suspended a couple of preseason games because of players being carted off the field. The precedent was set last year with Damar Hamlin and I think you can expect this to be normalized now. Hopefully we don’t see players injured to this extent too often but it’s inevitable nonetheless. I recognize I’m going to get ratioed for this, but I don’t think it’s a great idea to just stroke off games whenever there is a serious injury. If we feel that strongly about it, just cancel the entire sport. I continue to be amazed that we haven’t figured out why hockey and football are too dangerous to be played with rules that allow for tough physical play yet it’s okay for a UFC fight to end in a brutal knockout, or I’ve even seen fights where the unconscious fighter is hit a couple of times even after he goes nighty-night and nobody is trying to cancel that sport.

5 – JOE MIXON – Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon has announced he will be refusing to answer questions from certain media outlets, including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and The Cincinnati Enquirer.  Mixon has been the subject of legal troubles throughout his career and this offseason was no exception. It turns out Mixon isn’t legally guilty of anything and he’s fed up with the negative press. Frankly, I don’t know why more public figures don’t just refuse to do interviews with certain outlets. For example, there is almost nothing good that can come from Pierre Polievre talking to the CBC. So why does he? This is one area where Justin Trudeau is smarter than his rival. Trudeau has nothing to gain from speaking with Rebel, so he doesn’t.  

6 – SHOHEI OHTANI – Baseball’s greatest player, Shohei Ohtani, has a torn UCL and won’t pitch again this season and he probably won’t next year either as surgery usually means a full 12-15 months away from throwing big league innings. He may be won’t pitch ever again because surgery would also mean he misses a huge chunk of next year as a hitter too. It should be stressed, but won’t be, that the Angels went to a 6-man rotation in an effort to preserve Ohtani’s arm and guard him against injury. In doing so, they probably lost 10 more games than they needed to because the 6th starter in any rotation simply isn’t going to be that good and now they have the injury with Ohtani that they feared they’d have if they used the traditional 5-man starting staff anyway. This should result in a massive overhaul on how baseball goes about developing pitchers but it won’t. There’s never been more evidence that the less a pitcher pitches, the more likely he’s going to need some sort of surgery that results in a 1-2 year layoff or even some pitchers never come back. It’s peak level stupid. I’ve always pointed to Tommy John (who the surgery is named after) and the massive number of innings he threw AFTER he was operated on as really the only evidence you need that the number of innings is not at all related to going down with an elbow injury.  For 75 years, starting pitchers pitched often and deep into ball games without massive arm casualties. Yet, some nerd somewhere decided something needed to be fixed and everyone bought in and countless pitchers have been destroyed ever since.

7 – MORE BASEBALL – This weekend, Baltimore reliever Felix Bautista got bad news regarding his pitching elbow. Bautista has a 1.48-ERA as well as 110 strikeouts in 61-innings pitched. Workload isn’t the issue here. My guess is that it’s the fact he throws 102-mph. No sport has changed more in the last 30 years than baseball and it’s not for the better. It used to be that you’d have upwards of 40 players hit over .300.  Now, it’s maybe 10-15 and there isn’t even an emphasis on batting average. Heck, you’d be hard pressed to name who won the batting title in each league last year. I also saw a meme that pointed out Tony Gwynn struck out 188 times from 1990-99. The late Gwynn, who’s a Hall of Famer, would have no value to an MLB team in 2023 because he has no power. Kyle Schwarber and Eugenio Suarez lead the NL and AL respectively at nearly 170 strikeouts and there’s still over a month to go. In fact, there are already 5 players with over 150 whiffs. In 1995, Mo Vaughn struck out the most, which was 150. It’s not all bad though. The rule changes for this year have resulted in games being over 10 minutes shorter than last season and television ratings are up 9-percent.

8 – BCHL – Junior ‘A’ hockey camps are opening next week around the country and one of the more publicized events of the offseason was the BCHL opting to remove itself from Hockey Canada in an effort to give players more opportunities, but one of the least publicized aspects of this decision from the BCHL is that the league is, essentially, considered to be an outlaw one and therefore it only stands to reason that once a player starts playing games in the BCHL, he is considered an outlaw player and would be suspended from sanctioned hockey for a year. Typically, I see players try their luck in BC and in the event they are cut, they will filter back to the SJHL (or their home province). That, no longer, will be an option.  My advice for anyone heading to BC to be really confident that they’ll still be on the roster come January 10 or they may not be playing hockey anywhere. On a related note, Junior ‘B’ loops in BC (KIJHL, VIJHL, PIJHL) have been granted Junior ‘A’ status, but they aren’t expected to compete for the Centennial Cup.

9 – TERRIERS HIRE COACH – The Yorkton Terriers have hired Emery Olauson as their next head coach.  Olauson maybe isn’t as well known as some other veteran bench bosses who would have come in and turned the Terriers around quickly but he comes with a decent pedigree and a plethora of experience in his own right. Olauson was once a very good player for Weyburn and Estevan and played a bit of pro as well as at St. Thomas (Fredericton) U-Sports where he played under former Melville player and NHLer Mike Eagles. His most recent experience was in the KIJHL with the Columbia Valley Rockies (Invermere) and they were a first place team at 31-9-2-and-2, and he’s also had successful stints in the MarJHL with St. Stephen and Edmundston, so he should be well suited to find players from all over the country. Almost as important as being a good hockey coach in the Junior ‘A’ market is being a good contributor to the local community.  Olauson has a young family with three boys and should be very visible within the city. He’s expected to be in Yorkton by next Friday.

10 – FIGURE SKATER PAUL DIES – Canadian Olympic figure skater Alexandra Paul has died at the age of 31 after a tragic car accident earlier this week in Ontario. Authorities say Paul, who competed at the 2014 Winter Games in ice dance with her husband Mitchell Islam, was with her infant son in a stopped line-up at a construction zone when a semi-truck came barreling through and caused a crash that involved seven vehicles. Paul’s infant son is going to be okay, but will grow up without his mom. There have been a number of people putting pressure on the transport truck industry since the Humboldt crash in 2018 yet we continue to see these types of accidents that are resulting in death. I can speculate as to why these crashes are occurring and why we aren’t doing anything about it, but I don’t feel like triggering a bunch of you so draw your own conclusions.

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