STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – RIDERS – The Roughriders lost their sixth straight game over the weekend and are primed to make it seven when the Toronto Argonauts come to town this weekend even though the Argos will, undoubtedly, rest most of their starters. Nevertheless, there is still a better than 50-50 chance the Riders make the playoffs, prolonging the agony for one additional week. There’s not much more that can be said about this year other than that this team is now 3-and-17 in their last twenty games outside of a one month stretch to start this season.

2 – LAST HOME GAME COMING UP – The weather forecast for this weekend is showing double digit temperatures and sunny so if the fans don’t come out, the media and team won’t be able to blame a blizzard or cold weather. There’s a chance for an embarrassingly low crowd for the regular season finale. The big questions that we all have will be answered in the offseason. Whose job is it to fire the coach? The GM? Who fires the GM? The President? Who fires the President? The Board of Directors? Who fires the Board or can they even be removed when they are elected to terms (much like politicians)? There are fans that will want a 100% cleaning right from the top on down and I can’t say I blame those folks.  

3 – SEASON TICKET PRICES – I haven’t been a season ticket holder since the team moved into the new Mosaic Stadium. I recognize I’m an old guy who has a hard time letting go of certain things as they change but I truly loved going to watch CFL football at Taylor Field. While I can appreciate all the wonderful aspects of the new Mosaic Stadium, it just doesn’t have the same ‘feel’ for me as a fan and the price increases were too much. So, I admit to speaking without having my facts straight on this topic but if the Riders truly sent out notices and jacked up ticket prices for next year then I would say that’s an ominous sign for anyone hoping for serious change this offseason as it just reeks of being completely tone deaf as far as appealing to your paying customers.

4 – WHERE TO START – If the Riders do make changes at the administrative, management, and coaching levels I can’t even begin to surmise who they could bring in to right the ship. I would look at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and see who they have in support positions and go from there, but chances are whoever some of those people are they won’t be well known to Rider faithful and the fans appear to be at a stage where, unless they are sold on a prominent ‘name’, they may take a wait and see approach on the direction of the franchise before they sink a bunch of money into the team again. From the Riders perspective, I am not sure time is on their side here.

5 – FEMALE PLAY BY PLAY – In the interests of equality, inclusiveness, diversity and all that other nonsense we’ve seen media job assignments given to people who are then scrutinized by listeners/viewers and, subsequently, disrespected by said listeners/viewers because everybody knows there are outside pressures to put certain people in certain roles qualifications be damned. There was an instance last week where a female called a Western Hockey League game on Access Communications. I have never heard her ever on any platform so I couldn’t tell you if she’s ‘good’ or not but I think it’s inherently unfair to her to have to be under the massive microscope that comes with doing a role such as play by play. This is the single biggest reason why I oppose these so-called ‘check the boxes’ appointments. It totally takes away from the individual’s ability to do the job. We all know there are certain folks in certain media jobs and they have no business being there and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for his/her race, gender, etc. What that does, in return, is greatly diminish the talent of those who happen to ‘check the boxes’ but are also very good at what they do.  

6 – COACHES – I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I’d have a bit more to say regarding coaching and now seems to be the appropriate time. I’ve been an observer of coaching in junior hockey and junior football for over twenty years and while I am not at all qualified to stand on the sidelines or behind a bench, I do think from seeing what works, what doesn’t work, and talking to players and how they feel about particular coaches that I can offer constructive criticism on this. It truly amazes me how many coaches believe that they can get maximum potential out of their players through belittling, humiliating, and perpetual negativity without offering an ounce of love in return. I’ve witnessed coaches, who were once players themselves and who were once exposed to the very best forms of coaching and winning culture, become some of the worst coaches ever.  If you have a team that is doing its best but simply cannot execute at the level to which the coach wants, no amount of yelling, screaming, swearing, and insulting is going to get the players to perform better. In fact, the exact opposite will happen. The vast majority of people are wired in a way that if they fear the repercussions of making a mistake, they will make nothing but mistakes. And, if you notice your player already feels horrible, why is it the coach’s job to make the player feel worse? There is a difference between players not listening and players who simply cannot do it. Hurling insults and not even offering up a constructive method for improvement will only make situations deteriorate further.  I feel like I’m Captain Obvious saying this stuff, but you’d be surprised how many don’t follow this logic.

7 – IMAGE OF THE COACH – One glaringly obvious characteristic of all teams is that they will take on the same image as their coach. If you are a ranting and raving lunatic of a coach, chances are very high your team will play in an undisciplined manner and take lots of penalties. This doesn’t even take into account that you are probably driving the referee nuts and he is going to look to stick you with an extra penalty here and there anyway to retaliate against you. When discussing the coaching future with various volunteer Boards I always tell them to evaluate the end of the season versus the start of the season. If you have a team that is easier to play against at the end than what they were at the start, that is on the coach. It’s probably a good thing I’m not at the helm of some of these Boards because when you have a young, rebuilding team and they start the year with some very positive results and then end the year with embarrassing efforts, that would result in a firing of the head coach before the year-end banquet.

8 – POSITIVE INFLUENCE – A lot of coaches really seem to struggle with the idea of being a positive influence on their players and I can’t figure out why. I know I’ve heard some say they feel the best way to bring their team together is to have all the players hate him and they’ll win in spite or despite of him. What a ridiculous theory. The players of today won’t stand for mental cruelty. They will either challenge you verbally and/or physically, quit and go home, or stay on the team and just go into Operation:Shutdown (which is what most will do). When listening to Joe Murphy’s audiobook, there was a story about how Darryl Sutter told his entire team they played so bad he wished they’d all die in a car crash on the way home from the rink. What if one of them truly did? Or, what if one of them took that criticism to heart and did something tragic to himself? Say what you want, but mental illness is real and we know a lot more about it today and there is no question in my mind that a day will come where a coach will say something to a player and that player follows through on the insult and then the coach will have to live with being responsible for that player’s actions.

9 – GREAT COACHES – I’m going to share two examples of a junior hockey coach who has won titles and a junior football coach who has won titles. I will not publish their names because they don’t do these deeds because they want to be recognized. They do them because they truly love their players.  In one case, a hockey player went into his coach’s office during the first round of the playoffs and said he was quitting because he was needed on the family farm after his father suffered an injury. The coach, who had an agricultural background, told his player that he wasn’t going to let him quit and that the two of them would work on the farm together and then come back for practices and games. In the second case, a junior football coach had a roster of 85 and most were from the local city but a number of others were quite a ways away from home.  On Thanksgiving, the coach delivered turkey dinners to the players who didn’t have their families with them to share the holiday meal. This isn’t why these coaches led their teams to championships but it does go a long way towards mining maximum potential from the players. Chris Getzlaf and Weston Dressler both told me, on separate occasions, that while Ken Miller may not have been the best strategic coach, they’d have gone through a wall for him because they saw how much he loved ‘the men in the locker room’ and last I checked Miller had a pretty good career as a coach.

10 – MILS COACH – It’s very early in the season and if I believed in jinxes I wouldn’t even mention this, but while this column has been largely about coaches I think it’s important to point out the Melville Millionaires had win totals of 16, 16, 17, and 14 in each of the last four full SJHL seasons (56 and 58 game seasons).  This year, they have veteran bench boss Doug Johnson at the helm in his first season and they are off to a 5-and-2 start and the roster really isn’t all that different from what ended last year. Johnson won 40 games with an OCN Blizzard team last year that went five straight years of missing the playoffs. The man gets results and not only does he get them on the ice. The Mils, who were averaging well under 500 a game in attendance, are up over 800 so far this year and nearly 1200 attended Saturday’s game against Yorkton.

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