STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – GOLD FOR CANADA – That could have been a really good game on Sunday, but whomever was refereeing put the screws to Canada for two periods and then really shoved a big one up the Russians you-know-what at the end of the game. It could have been 6-on-3 for Russia, down a goal, but the refs neglected to call a delay of game penalty on Canada even though the linesman indicated such a penalty immediately upon the puck leaving the surface and hitting TSN’s camera.  The bright side is that no team was favored. It was bad for both clubs.

2 – NAMES ON THEIR BACK – Let’s get the names back on the shoulders of the referees.  If fans can rip a player for poor play, why can’t they yell at an official? And, on the flipside, how about when a referee does a good job?  Shouldn’t he/she get credit? I look back to the SJHL days of knowing Al Smith, Keith Mackintosh, Nathan Wieler, and Devin Klein were doing games. I also knew I was in for a nice evening and wouldn’t be frustrated at what my eyes were witnessing. I guess this is what we want. I just think if you are on display for fans to see, we should know who you are and give you appropriate accolades if deserved or a raspberry should we so be inclined.  Or, maybe we should go the other way and remove the names off the players so we aren’t making them feel bad whenever they are having an off night.

3 – FLAMES TV DEAL – Rumours are rampant that Sportsnet is not renewing their regional television rights contract with the Calgary Flames at the end of the season. The flags were already obvious based on the number of people Sportsnet has let go from their NHL on-air talent department, but the TV operations must be bleeding money at an alarming rate. The real winner here is TSN. Who needs national rights when you are doing Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and (presumably) Calgary for a tiny fraction of the cost Sportsnet paid to do, what is essentially, Toronto?

4 – REPLAYS – I’ve harped on the flaws with the replay system in the past, but two very glaring examples of how bad it really is occurred this week.  At the outdoor game between Dallas and Nashville, a puck was flipped into the stands and it appeared on replay that the puck nicked the glass as it left.  But, it’s not reviewable. Why? The end result was a powerplay for the Predators that put them up 5-on-3 and they scored a goal. On Saturday, Winnipeg’s Josh Morrissey was hit from behind in the third period on what was a textbook CFB.  No call. Morrissey is slow to get up and head off, Minnesota scores a goal and then go on to win in overtime. Again, not reviewable. However, let’s make sure we get these one-inch offside calls right. I mean it’s a real issue. That’s sarcasm, for those who are missing detectors. The solution is simple. Get rid of coach challenges. In the event of something egregious, have an eye in the sky that can call down and overturn a particular situation.

5 – DELAYED EXCITEMENT – The use of replays has pretty much sucked spontaneous excitement out of sports. On Sunday during the Vikings-Saints game, Dalvin Cook appeared to fumble and the Saints recovered and returned for a touchdown. I never once flinched or had an emotion of any kind come over me as I knew the play would, ultimately, have to be reviewed and analyzed to the millisecond and then we could cheer or boo. How wonderful. But hey – the right call was made so it’s all worth it I suppose. For what it’s worth, there was a bit of it at the end of the game too just to ensure Kyle Rudolph didn’t push off the defender when he caught the game winning pass. Was thrilling to wait for the decision.

6 – SOME CROW TO EAT – On a previous post, I called Drew Brees one of the top five quarterbacks of all-time. Upon reflection, I’d like a do-over. On Sunday, he wasn’t even the best quarterback on a field that only had Kirk Cousins on it with whom to compete against.

7 – UNIVERSITY HOCKEY – I was reading the comments on last week’s blog post that I made and the Regina Cougars came up. When I worked in Brandon, Tom Skinner ran the program and he told me that while he’d never be able to build a powerhouse like Alberta or Saskatchewan, he felt he could make the team competitive on a weekly basis through the highest end Junior ‘A’ player coupled with a couple of local major junior grads and he was right on that. For the Cougars to improve, they need to try and better mine their own backyard and come away with a guy like Riley Woods or try and keep a top tier goalie like Logan Flodell, as opposed to seeing Flodell play at Acadia. That’s not to say these attempts haven’t been made, but until they are successful at securing a couple of big name local WHLers, they will always struggle.  Guys like Flodell and Woods can then help you recruit other players from the WHL that they may have been teammates with and then you end up building a decent base with which you can recruit. But, it’s extremely difficult to get started. By and large, your top Junior ‘A’ players will develop into excellent Canadian university level players by their third year and you have to be patient.  The Bobcats were able to do this (Ryan Robson, Vinnie Jonasson, and Alex Argyriou all ended up playing Bobcats after their Wheat King careers were over) and they had some weekends where they defeated U of A and U of S. They never won a championship, but teams didn’t like playing them either. The other avenue that worked for the Bobcats was digging into the BCHL. Ian Lampshire and Colin Ryder were impact Canadian university players, in fact, Ryder may have been the top goalie in Canwest one year if my memory recollects correctly.  Jerry (a commenter on last week’s post) is also right when he says Canadian university hockey is, maybe, the best form of hockey in the province as far as entertainment and he is also right when he says it’s under-marketed. A shame. There was a season about 15 years ago in which UNB won a national title and their roster had ten former Ontario Hockey League captains on it. It’s great hockey.

8 – OUELLETTE FLEES — Yorkton Terrier goalie Ryan Ouellette was the best Junior ‘A’ goaltender in all of Canada, but he has decided to leave the Terriers and the SJHL for the greener grass of junior hockey in the United States to finish out the season.  I’m not usually this harsh when it comes to young men making bad decisions when it comes to their hockey future, but I actually have some hope this backfires on Ouellette and whomever it is that he has advising him on his hockey future. Ouellette was headed to the CJHL Top Prospects Game on January 14th.  A game in which NHL scouts have a significant say as to who they want to see and, possibly, put on the radar for the draft. Ouellette will no longer be in that game. Ouellette was also slated to be in the SJHL-MJHL Showcase in Regina January 21-22 and, likely, would have left that event with an NCAA scholarship in hand.  I’m guessing La Ronge’s Liam McGarva can now thank Ouellette for the opportunity as he will replace him. The Terriers have bent over backwards to accommodate Ouellette. He was handed the number one job prior to last year’s playoffs and he ran with it and delivered a standout performance. He rewarded them by bolting for the States (he is an American so it’s tough to fault him I suppose although the US is a big country and he’s not really closer to home if you look at the big picture) and ended up making the Minnesota Wilderness (NAHL).  After playing six games, he was asking to come back to Yorkton.

9 – SJHL SOLID LEAGUE – People who know me, know I’m not just a pro-Yorkton guy.  I wear the SJHL on my sleeve and I’m passionate about the league and believe in the league as an excellent loop and players can, and do, advance by playing here. I look at two other netminders (Patrick Pugliese and Grant Boldt) who are playing in the NAHL and may end up with scholarships but they aren’t in the NAHL without getting that chance in the SJHL first. It’s too bad they didn’t stay here because that’s what we need in order to maintain our high end credibility with scouts. And, I would like to think at some point these players reflect when they are older and more mature and realize it was the SJHL that provided the springboard towards getting recognized.  There are other examples scattered about the NAHL and USHL where players have played a year or so in the SJHL and then they leave opting for ‘a better league’ or ‘more exposure’ or whatever you want to call it. But, the reality is that for every player who leaves and ends up disappointed, I will show you a Caleb Moretz (RIT), Greyson Reitmeier (Michigan Tech), Mac Sinclair (Canisius), Kristian Stead (Alaska-Anchorage) or Davis Jones (Alaska-Fairbanks).  These are players who aren’t from Saskatchewan and came from other areas and made careers here as juniors and parlayed them into excellent post-secondary opportunities. They are also guys who, I’m not sure, would have ever been discovered had they stayed home.

10 – WWIII – Relax, we have a long way to go before that ever happens and Trump was right to blast that terrorist into oblivion. You shouldn’t allow Trump hate to get in the way of your judgment on that. If Trump had blown up Paul Bernardo, left wing loons would come up with reasons why that was a bad thing to do.

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