STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – RUSH VICTORY – The offense finally clicked as Josh Currier scored 4 times and Jeff Shattler picked up 3 and finished with 5 points.  Scoring leader Ryan Church had 7 points, as did Ryan Keenan in a 15-13 win over the Vancouver Warriors.  Too many times this season, the fortunes of the Rush have depended on how many goals were scored by Church and Mark Matthews so it was good to see things get spread out.  It was also worth noting the one big change, other than a new coach, was Mike Messenger playing forward and he provided a spark with two nice goals and a four point night.

2 – PLAYOFF SCENARIO – I believe the victory, which improves the Rush record to 5-and-10 is too little too late in order to make the playoffs, but here’s the simplified version (although it’s also a bit more complicated than this) with three games to play:  they need Calgary or Philadelphia to lose all their remaining games and the Rush would need to win all of theirs. The Roughnecks have to play Vancouver, Rochester, and Colorado to end the year.  The Wings go up against Albany and Georgia.  The Rush will be home to Colorado next weekend, San Diego the week after that, and then they’ll end the schedule at Panther City, which if the stars align, could be a ‘win and you’re in’ game.  The reality is that the Rush opposition doesn’t matter too much.  They’ve outshot whoever they have played 13 times out of 15 games so they are capable of holding up their end of the deal.  I just think they need way too much help to get in. 

3 – RATTLERS – The Saskatchewan Rattlers are starting to put together their roster for the 2022 season.  The most significant signing may be Toronto born forward Irshaad Hunte, who played with Texas A&M in 2019.  His bread and butter appears to be rebounding, something the Rattlers need to improve upon from last year.  The Rattlers are also bringing back guard Lawrence Moore in the hope he is healthy and ready to play after getting injured during training camp last year.  Moore averaged 22 points per game with the U of S Huskies over his final two seasons.  Sebastian Aris is a guard from Denmark who joins the team through the CEBL import rule, D’Andre Bernard, who was one of the better players on last year’s 1-and-13 team, is re-signed; and Shane Osayande is also coming back after spending last year in Europe.  The Rattlers season opener is closer than you may think, May 25th against the Niagara River Lions.

4 – SASKATOON SPORTS – Maybe this is already a thing and I’m just unaware of it, but I think there is a market for someone to grab the bull by the horns and go hard as a ‘new media’ outlet for Saskatoon area sports (similar to how Rod started in Regina).  It took me 15 minutes to drive from the Sasktel Centre parking lot to Boychuk Drive on Saturday night and that’s with a lot of luck exiting the parking lot.  Why not have a 30 minute postgame show of all Rush, Rattler, and Blades games?  It’s a great way to pass the time and review what you’ve just witnessed.  With online video easily available, audio play by play may be on the verge of becoming extinct but I think there is a market for creative and well done analysis shows on the teams I mentioned as well as all Huskie Athletics.  Especially in the case of the Huskies, I think if you went to the families to help fund the venture you may be surprised at the level of positive feedback.  If I lived in Saskatoon and wanted to do sports media full-time, I’d be all over this.  Personally, if someone asked me for $50 to help fund an analysis show for the London Beefeaters last year, I would have paid.

5 – SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL – The first Sunday Night Baseball Game Of The Week featured the Red Sox and Yankees and one new wrinkle I quite enjoyed was Boston CF Kike Hernandez talking with the broadcast booth while he was on the field playing.  He even had three or four balls hit his way during the inning.  On the flipside, I don’t really understand the emphasis on exit velocity.  Josh Donaldson flew out to left but the announcers raved about how hard he hit the ball.  Giancarlo Stanton has led the league for the last half dozen years in exit velocity.  It hasn’t translated into him leading the league in homers or batting average or even on-base percentage.  And what good is exit velocity when you strike out 211 times a year, like Stanton did in 2018.

6 – STARTING PITCHING – Blaming the short Spring Training season, Major League Baseball teams are capping their starting pitchers at less than 80 pitches through the early going.  With a full slate of games on Sunday, the deepest a starter went in a game was 5 ⅔ innings from Carlos Carrasco.  He did this by throwing only 72 pitches.  Anaheim’s Michael Lorenzen (who didn’t start at all last year) went six innings on Monday night against the Marlins and threw 89 pitches.  A pitcher has to go 5 innings to qualify for a win and the average start through the first week is just over 4 innings.  Starting pitchers make a ton of cash.  On one hand, I get the notion of trying to keep them healthy.  On the other, what are you paying them for if you refuse to maximize their use? 

7 – CAM NEWTON – It’s going to be hard for the NFL’s worst quarterback over the last two years to get a job after his most recent comments.  Newton was talking about women and remarked, “Now a woman, for me, is handling your own but knowing how to cater to a man’s needs.  Right?  ‘I’m a boss b—-, I’m this, I’m that.’  No, baby.  But you can’t cook.  You don’t know when to be quiet.  You don’t know how to allow a man to lead.”  This isn’t a slip up either.  In 2017, Newton said it was ‘funny’ to hear a woman talk about ‘routes’.  If there was ever a person who needed sensitivity training, it’s Cam.

8 – WRESTLEMANIA – I caught the first couple of matches as well as the last few minutes of Brock Lesnar losing to Roman Reigns.  I didn’t care for the ending to the main event match.  It seemed very abrupt.  Perhaps someone was hurt.  The first match featured three tag-teams and because I don’t regularly watch WWE anymore I can’t recall all of their names. I just remember thinking Randy Orton shouldn’t be in a preliminary match but maybe he’s been passed that many times in the talent hierarchy and this is what he is now.  The match itself was spectacular.  I also caught HHH’s ‘thank you’ to the fans as he announced he’s retiring from active wrestling.  Other than it took about 10 minutes of him standing in the ring without saying a single word I thought it was pretty cool when he finally spoke and then left with his boots in the middle of the ring.

9 – UNWELL ATHLETES – A total of 15 players had to withdraw from the Miami Open tennis tournament last week after they all became unwell.  It’s not known if the fully vaccinated players ended up with Covid or whether there was something else that caused this ‘new normal’ condition.  Tennis and soccer are two sports that seem to have been hit particularly hard with sudden and unexplained health issues amongst its athletes in recent months and some ‘experts’ are suggesting it’s because both of those sports require athletes to push their cardio-vascular systems to the limit and some aren’t recognizing where that limit is.  It used to be considered ‘healthy’ to exercise at that level but the science has changed.

10 – COLLAPSING – According to One America News Network, there have been 769 documented incidents of professional athletes collapsing while competing.  The average age of those affected: 23.  There is finally some open global discussion about whether the rise in heart conditions across several high-intensity sports is related to Covid, Covid vaccines, or something else entirely (I’m not including Canada in this when I say ‘global’ as we aren’t allowed to question government authority here).  Some European doctors are telling athletes to take a week off after getting a shot, while others insist there is no reason to be concerned at all. In Saskatchewan, I’m aware of one junior hockey player not playing because of a heart condition at the present time but I can also tell you I was aware of one in 2020 too just after Covid first hit.  Either way, we should get to the bottom of it.  It’s still mind boggling to me how one is quick to debunk some news sources yet worship others.  Here’s the reality folks – none of them are honest so you have to sift through the information on your own and make your own determinations.  I, personally, question the 769 number and the average age BUT I don’t question there have been a lot more incidents than normal.  

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