Stackhouse’s 10 Thoughts

1 – RUSH SEASON ENDS AS RUNNER UPS – The clock struck midnight on the Saskatchewan Rush season on Saturday as they lost 15-6 in the third and deciding game of the NLL Championship series with Buffalo as the Bandits won their third straight league title.  The reality is this:  Dhane Smith and Josh Byrne are the two most dangerous offensive players in the league.  Ian MacKay was the best playoff player.  Paul Dawson is the best shot blocker, Steve Priolo is an absolute ball hawk, and Matt Vinc is one of the best goaltenders ever as he wins his 6th title at the age of 42.  How do you beat a lineup that is that good?  You don’t.  The fact that the Rush treated their fans to an electric win in game two is high praise for them as they needed something to go off the rails for Buffalo in order to complete the upset.  

2 – STILL A HUGE SUCCESS – Despite the loss, the 2025 season for the Saskatchewan Rush has been a resounding success.  They went from being out of the playoffs in 2024, as well as every season since 2019, to the top of the standings where they finished 13-and-5 and in a tie with Buffalo (Bandits got the tiebreaker).  At no point did they ever lose two in a row and they cleaned up on the NLL awards front with Derek Keenan being named Top General Manager, Jimmy Quinlan Top Coach, Matt Hossack Top Defenseman, and Frank Scigliano Top Goaltender.  Keenan doesn’t get nearly enough credit locally for how much he means to the lacrosse community here.  There are some people in sports who just refuse to let their teams suck and Keenan is one of those rare people and even when the Rush missed the playoffs several years in a row, he made sure the team was competitive and they never ever bottomed out to the point where the entire roster needed an overhaul.  He also made sure to get players who could contribute when he traded away franchise cornerstones Mark Matthews and Kyle Rubisch.  You can see by the attendance numbers that Saskatoon is finicky when it comes to supporting sports teams and I believe if Keenan had gone 100% all-in on a youth style rebuild that it would have put the team’s future in Saskatoon in jeopardy.  Instead, he recognized that Zach Manns and Adam Jay were under-utilized in Toronto and Scigliano was evaluated incorrectly by San Diego.  He made sure to hit home runs in the draft (Jake Boudreau, Jake Naso, Ryan Barnable to name a few) and he really did a great job transitioning the defense by hanging on to veterans until Holden Garlent and Connor McLelland were ready to take over and then he hung on to Mike Messenger and brought back Hossack.  Genius.

3 – GREAT ENTERTAINMENT – I haven’t cheered for a team like I’ve cheered for this year’s Rush in a long time and maybe ever.  I’ve been a member of the media for most of my adult life (so I feel like I’ve been more an observer than anything else) and the last few years where I have had no allegiances at all to anyone I haven’t really latched on to a team.  The 1986 Fredericton Express (which lost in the first round to Adirondack) of the AHL would be the last time that I remember being emotionally invested in a team and I was 11-years-old.  I’m not embarrassed to say the Rush have brought the kid out of me this year.  Almost every home game has been exciting and there’s just something about them that has me out of my seat, screaming and cheering like a regular fan.  The comeback against Halifax was wild.  The Buffalo game last weekend was a true nailbiter for 60-minutes.  This has been the escape from real life that sports should be and I am forever thankful to have experienced the kind of joy that I didn’t even realize I was missing to be able to just cheer and be happy for a team with no connection to them whatsoever professionally or otherwise aside from just being a real fan.

4 – HO HUM PRESEASON CFL – The Saskatchewan Roughriders opened the preseason with a 15-9 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Saturday.  CFL exhibition football is unwatchable and as far as fans trying to figure out what their team may have to offer for the upcoming season, the games are useless on that front as well.  The playbooks from all teams are very vanilla so even when the projected starters are in there you aren’t seeing anything close to what may be the real deal once the regular season begins in June.  The big news for me was the large turnout for a season ticket holder event on Saturday, which indicates maybe fan support is heading in the right direction.  I have to admit I haven’t been paying loads of attention during the offseason but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Riders were the class of the West Division and that alone may bring sellout crowds back to Mosaic Stadium.

5 – RATTLERS PREDICTABLE START – The Saskatchewan Rattlers are three home games into their CEBL season and are 0-and-3 after losing an 88-86 heartbreaker to the Niagara River Lions.  The Rattlers led for most of the second half and went into Elam Ending time up 78-74 but were unable to finish the job.  I wrote last week that this may be their worst team that has been assembled and I am willing to back off that a bit but the reality is that it’s difficult to imagine them winning more than 6 games.  Nate Pierre-Louis, who had a triple double in the loss to Edmonton on Thursday, scored 25 points and 10 rebounds on Saturday while Jamir Chaplin had 24 and 7 rebounds.  Grant Anticevich had his best game of the year with 16 and Isaac Simon drew a starting assignment and finished with 10, including a key three pointer late in the game that got the Rattlers to within one of winning it and they almost did, but a play set up by Pierre-Louis to Chaplin was half a second late and the basket was called back as the shot clock had expired.  From here, the Rattlers are at Scarborough, at Niagara, and at Calgary before returning home to play Vancouver on June 8th.  Not to be a Debbie Downer but 0-and-7 is a possibility before they host Scarborough on June 13th.

6 – MARNER SCAPEGOAT – While Maple Leaf fans and media sharpened their knives and drove them into the back of Mitch Marner, I feel like it’s worth showing the stats of each of their top five forwards over the last five games of the Florida series:  Marner was 5-0-2-2, -3; Auston Matthews went 5-1-2-3, -3; John Tavares 5-2-0-2, -6; William Nylander 5-0-2-2, -3; and Matthew Knies 5-1-1-2, -5.  For the most part, Marner is the one fitted with goat horns and being an unrestricted free agent, his return is anything but certain.  Other than that, I don’t know that there will be as big a change as people think in Toronto during the offseason but if I was running the Leafs, I would bring Tavares back on a two or three year contract and rename him the captain.  I’d deal Matthews to a team looking for a number one centre and collect a young centre with number one potential but someone who is capable of being a number two right away (Logan Cooley?) as well as trying to get a solid top four defenseman (Mikhail Sergachev?) and then using the extra salary cap space freed up with Matthews and Marner gone to go after whoever else you want.  I don’t see these moves as a step back at all, but rather a remodel of the current roster and, possibly, a better chance to go deeper into the playoffs with a reconstructed roster.

7 – SHANAHAN ERA ENDS – The Leafs have finally decided to move on from President Brendan Shanahan, who did a good job pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes for 11 years.  As far as I know, not a single person in the media has taken Shanahan to task for his hiring of Mike Babcock, whom he had to have known was a so-called abuser of players from his Detroit days when Shanahan wore a letter for Babs.  The other thing Shanahan did and never drew any criticism for until the end of his tenure was he liquidated his support staff of its strongest people.  In the business world, when a leader removes those whom he deems a threat to his position, it’s a sign of insecurity.  Shanahan came into the job preaching a lengthy rebuild (which guarantees 5 years) which was already an indicator, to me, that he was insecure.  Shanahan has a way of always landing on his feet, though, and his name is already being bandied about as a replacement for Bill Daley, the NHL’s second-in-command. Incredible.

8 – FLORIDA TAX SITUATION – With the Florida Panthers steamrolling the Carolina Hurricanes on their way to a third straight appearance in the Stanley Cup final, we are once again hearing how unfair it is that the Panthers play in a state where income tax isn’t a thing and the standard of living in Florida is head and shoulders better than many other places in North America.  There are those who believe this is going to end up being a part of the next CBA and that it’s possible the players who play in Florida will be forced to cough up some of their hard earned money to level the playing field with cities who are located in states/provinces where governments are, openly, stealing hard earned wages from citizens.  This should be an absolute non-starter for the NHLPA and rather than make players who play in great geographical centers forfeit money that is rightfully theirs, there needs to be pressure imposed on some of these dive provinces and states to relax their tax codes.  The argument that governments need this money to ensure life is better for the less fortunate is a crock of dandelions.  Governments have never taken more from people and people have never gotten less back than they do today.  Our social problems weren’t as bad when taxes were less.  Why do most people not see this?

9 – HOWDEN NOT BELIEVABLE – Officially, Brett Howden isn’t a liar because his text messages to teammates surrounding the criminal case against five players from Canada’s 2018 World Junior Team have been ruled inadmissible and he’s allowed to go with ‘I don’t remember’ (which is code for ‘I’m not turning on my teammates even if they committed sexual assault’) as a standard answer on just about every question asked of him this week while he was on the witness stand (virtually).  Nevertheless, I still have difficulty believing the players.  Michael McLeod sent a text inviting teammates for a ‘three way’, to which Carter Hart replies that he’s ‘in’ and then when everyone gets there, nobody is interested in her and she’s the one taunting them to have sex with her and the poor boys eventually succumb to the pressure.  Yeah right.  Having said all that, based on what’s allowed as evidence and what’s not…I think the players are winning.

10 – WNBA IN NEWS FOR WRONG REASONS – When Caitlin Clark was leading the Iowa Hawkeyes in the 2024 NCAA March Madness tournament, I was a regular watcher and found myself paying attention to the women’s bracket more than the men’s.  Last year as she turned pro, I didn’t watch any games but was still paying attention.  Now, I’m just sick and tired of the blatant hate that other players in the league have for her and it’s clear to me the entire WNBA is built around drama and conflict.  There’s almost no discussion at all about the ability of the athletes and for that reason, I’m out.  Good luck to the league’s players as they seek equality as far as salaries go.  Actually, I hope it happens.  I’d love to see how long the league survives handing over $55-million to Jackie Young.  I’m going with not long.

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