STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – CHIEFS NAME – The Kansas City Chiefs are on the chopping block, if you will, with regards to their offensive name and the offensive way their fans celebrate by doing a tomahawk chop, of sorts. Here’s why Cleveland’s baseball team, Edmonton’s football team, and Washington’s football team never ever should have changed their names: there will be no stopping. Once left wing radicals succeed in one crusade, they’ll move on to the next. Nobody talked about the Chiefs until the Redskins went bye-bye. I’m not butt hurt enough to know who will be after Kansas City, but once the Chiefs change their name, someone else will be forced to as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Patriots are pressured to change simply because the word is associated with a Donald Trump supporter. Laugh at the ridiculousness if you like, but I’m telling you there is no stopping.

2 – GOFF/STAFFORD TRADE – You don’t see these kinds of trades in the NFL very often, which is too bad. For Stafford, it’s an opportunity to show he’s better than his team’s results throughout his career. For the Rams, it shows they are ‘all in’ already on next season and you have to think along with the Bucs and the Seahawks, they are one of the favorites in the NFC. Goff is a quarterback I quite like although I admit he’s probably not someone you can win a Super Bowl with. I admire him trying to play through a demolished thumb on his throwing hand as anyone willing to do that gets full marks from me as there are far too many athletes today who won’t play unless they are fully 100%. I see Goff as too good to be a back up but I also think he’s very limited as a starter. However I admire the moxy and I’m rooting for him.

3 – TAX FREE STATES – Deshaun Watson is done with the Houston Texans and there is some scuttle butt out there that he’d prefer to play for the Miami Dolphins because of the low tax situation. I know it doesn’t fit the left wing narrative but can we start talking about multi-millionaire athletes skirting paying their fair share to society in order to help everyone be equal? They love virtue signalling about it, yet when it comes time to put money where mouth is located …. you can’t find the money.

4 – MLB FANS – You can bet if/when fans are allowed to return to sports stadiums in big numbers that there will be tremendous celebrating and teams will find a way to pay tribute to their customers and show appreciation. I don’t know if baseball can be included in this. It’s the one professional sports league that I’m convinced hates its fans. Once again, the owners and players seem to be doing a dance around a collective bargaining agreement that is already in place but the owners want to renegotiate. Even if there is no renegotiating, the existing CBA runs out at the conclusion of the 2021 season and there is a near 0% chance 2022 starts on time and what a sad state of affairs that would be if we finally end up in a situation where fans can attend but baseball has no product to offer.  

5 – MICKEY CALLAWAY – There are a lot of things in life I don’t understand and one of them is sending repeated messages to women who want no part of you. First of all, any man that has even an inkling of self-awareness knows fairly quickly if a woman is interested in him but if you don’t know and you send a text that goes unanswered, that should be very self explanatory. I mean just think of it from your own perspective. If you got a text message from someone you liked or was hoping would message you, the chances of you replying almost immediately are very good, right? So, if you send one and it goes unanswered, the woman didn’t just forget. She is simply uninterested. To continue sending messages and eventually a shirtless photo is harassment and there is no defense for it, not to mention his insinuating that he will leverage his power in order to get some of the women to get together with him. The ladies Mickey Callaway messaged have saved what he sent and there really doesn’t need to be much of an investigation.  See ya.

6 – TONY DEANGELO – I’m not interested in defending Tony DeAngelo, but I find it hard to believe the Rangers let him go because of a fight with his goaltender. It’s not all that uncommon for a goalie and a defenseman to be at odds with one another and for that to occasionally be solved through a physical altercation. As far as DeAngelo’s other public baggage is concerned the Rangers and the general public were well aware of it long before this past weekend so unless something ‘new’ has cropped up in that area I am not buying that as a reason either. Here’s what I will say: Teams in all sports are littered with bad actors who may have questionable morals, support the wrong political candidate, or put their foot in their mouth verbally from time to time. Should you be canceled over it? I guess that’s the world we live in right now. Personally, I found Ulf Samuelsson repulsive. The man appeared to show zero respect for his fellow player when out on the ice and yet he always had a job and was also one of Wayne Gretzky’s pals. We all have our limits with what we will tolerate I guess.

7 – MONTREAL CANADIENS – I’ve despised the Habs almost as much as I despise the Leafs for most of my living years on this planet but I’ve come around after living nearly half a century. This is the most entertaining team in the league by a country mile and it’s loaded top to bottom at every position. Nick Suzuki is going to be a franchise player. They already have a franchise goalie in Carey Price, and then they’ve got a line-up so stacked that Victor Mete and Corey Perry can’t play every night unless there are injuries. I’m assuming Montreal and Toronto will be in the Canadian Division final (provided the NHL doesn’t have to cancel the season because of Covid infections) and the Habs are making it real easy for me to pick them as my rooting interest in that series.  

8 – BLACKHAWKS REESE JOHNSON – The Western Hockey League isn’t playing and that’s not news to anyone in Saskatchewan, but it may come as a shock to Chicago Blackhawks play by play man Pat Foley. On Sunday night I was watching the Hawks and Regina’s Reese Johnson (who played for Red Deer) was making his NHL debut to which Foley commented, “I’m not sure if the Rebels are off tonight or not, but you can bet Brent Sutter is watching if they aren’t playing.”  Foley, by the way, is excellent at calling the game.

9 – REGINA AIRPORT – The elimination of air traffic control jobs at Regina’s airport is not a sports topic, although it certainly could impact the future of major sporting events in Regina provided normality is ever allowed to return. I find Scott Moe’s public denouncement of such cuts to be a tad hypocritical. I think I read somewhere that air foot traffic is down 90% since the start of the pandemic at the Regina Airport. Cherry-picking support for air traffic control at the airport when there are so many other businesses and industries on the verge of dying is hollow. And there is only one reason for all of these things being destroyed – government orders (from all levels) that make no sense and are inconsistent at best, dishonest at worst. If Mr. Moe doesn’t like this form of economic destruction, perhaps he could be a bit more lenient with his government’s measures so that people and businesses can be more viable and set a good example and then, only then, he can bark at Nav Canada.

10 – MENTAL HEALTH DAY – Don’t get me wrong. Having a designated day to acknowledge mental health and bring more awareness to it is a good thing. I’m just not so sure about the title sponsor for it. One week after grandstanding on mental health, the company that promotes the ‘Let’s Talk’ day slashed dozens upon dozens of staff at its Montreal and Toronto locations, hardly setting much of an example in the area of overall mental well being.  There are always two sides to every story, of course, but if you do even a shallow search on Twitter you will find all sorts of accounts from people who were dealt heavy mental anguish at the hands of this employer.  Look at Dan O’Toole, last summer he was quite clearly going through something domestically where his mental state wasn’t what it should be.  Today, he’s out of a job.

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