STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – RIDERS PRESEASON – The Saskatchewan Roughriders play their preseason game tonight and quarterback Cody Fajardo, coming off a lackluster season, has apparently looked so good in practice he doesn’t even need to dress for the game.  That’s encouraging news.  Expected backup, Mason Fine is the projected starter for the game.  Preseason games are meaningless and almost always painful to watch but I may check it out for the first half.  I’m especially interested in the running game and the kicking game in addition to quarterback play.

2 – HEALTH CONDITIONS STRIKE CFLer – 26-year-old defensive end Connor McGough has retired from the CFL because of health conditions.  Perfectly normal, they say.  McGough didn’t play last year because of myocarditis and it, apparently, hasn’t improved enough for him to resume his career.  Meanwhile, defensive back Jeff Hecht seems to be the only player openly questioning the normalcy of these health conditions that have popped up over the last year that have sent record numbers of pro athletes into retirement or even death.  I guess I don’t blame the others for staying quiet.  You just get John Chick’ed if you speak out.  Oh well, it’s your career and not mine so stay quiet if you think that’s for the best. 

3 – RATTLERS EARLY SEASON – The Saskatchewan Rattlers are off to a 1-and-1 start after coming from behind in the home opener to defeat Niagara 92-89.  On Sunday, the team faded in Elam Time getting outscored 11-0 in falling 84-71 to the two-time defending champion Edmonton Stingers.  Scottie Lindsey led the team in scoring in both games, picking up 24-points on Sunday after scoring 23 in the opener.  They’ll play the 2-and-0 Fraser Valley Bandits, at Sasktel Centre, on Wednesday.  It’s a tough beginning to the season for the Rattlers as in addition to facing the Stingers, they’ve played runner-up Niagara and the Bandits are off to a very good start.

4 – ARIS INJURY – Sebastian Aris, an impressive back-up guard from Denmark, carried a hot hand in the first game and dropped 14-points on the strength of 3 three-pointers, but he suffered a non-contact ankle injury on Sunday and had to be carried off the court.  Any amount of absence from the lineup will prove to be costly and put additional pressure on Lindsey, Devonte Bandoo, and Tony Carr.  Carr scored 19 on Sunday and Bandoo had 14 as well as a team leading 8-rebounds.

5 – NBA FINALS – The Boston Celtics are, generally, regarded as having the best defense in the NBA and they say defense wins championships so that should give them a 50-50 shot at beating the Golden State Warriors but the Celtics will need to be a lot more consistent than they were against the Miami Heat.  I’m taking the Warriors in five unless the Celtics pick it up and play the full 48 minutes.  

6 – OILERS/AVS – The NHL playoffs have been as good as they’ve been in many, many years and that’s because we’ve seen plenty of offense.  The Western Conference final is shaping up to be a doozy with Connor McDavid against Nathan MacKinnon.  I know hockey purists don’t like games where goals are in abundance but this has all the makings of firewagon hockey and I can’t wait for it.  I’m still anticipating Mike Smith to come crashing down to Earth for more than just 1 game a series but I hope he can keep it going so that this isn’t so one sided.

7 – FULL BUBBLES – I didn’t realize this was on the table until I read it in one of Rod’s columns the other day, but the CJHL will be voting on whether to mandate full shields on Junior ‘A’ players for the 2022-23 season.  The NCAA already has this and one league in Ontario also requires them.  If they want to continue down the path of catering to what the NCAA does, they pretty much have to pass this.  The optics of safety are also something hockey administrators are sensitive about, even if a particular rule isn’t more safe in actuality.  I discussed this with an on-ice referee over the weekend and he said stick work continues to escalate in games he’s involved with and he fears full shields will make it even worse.  He bemoaned the removal of the two-fight rule as being a spark to increased stick infractions and asked me what I’d rather see in the game and I said that it’s not an either/or situation.  Administrators want no fighting whatsoever and no stick work and they’ll continue to do what they need to in order to either eliminate both or protect the players the best they can in the event they are on the receiving end of such violence.

8 – TWINS AT TORONTO – The Minnesota Twins are headed to Toronto this week to face the Jays and will be without five players when they do so as the as-of-yet unidentified players are all unvaccinated.  It’s believed a middle of the order hitter and a decent starting pitcher are included in this list. For their part, the Twins are saying all the right things to support the players who chose not to get their shots but I find this especially interesting when it was generally passed off by the media last year that Andrelton Simmons was the lone unvaccinated player on their roster and the media spent a lot of the year vilifying Simmons for his selfishness.  You can bet the media will dial up their outrage over these five players to 12 out of 10 but it sounds like within the clubhouse this is a non-issue.

9 – KAPLER NO ANTHEM – San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler will be virtue signaling for the foreseeable future as he will not be coming out of the clubhouse for the national anthem before his team’s games.  It’s his way of sparking change over the direction the United States is going as a society in the wake of yet another mass school shooting.  Full disclosure.  I don’t own a gun and have no intention of ever owning one.  But, if I did I can tell you that the laws in place would have no bearing on whether or not I’d shoot someone with it, so I don’t understand the idea of having stricter laws as being a means to reduce these tragedies.  America definitely has a problem that needs fixing but people who commit mass murder aren’t likely to be deterred because they have to go through proper channels to get their hands on a deadly weapon. Committing murder is about as big a lawbreaking offense as you can commit, so why would you expect someone to follow the law up until the point he/she commits murder?  Kapler Tuesday update – He will now decide day to day on whether or not he will come out for the anthem.  On Monday he did.  But he said he may not every day.  Whatever.

10 – SOMETIMES CANADA AND USA ARE THE SAME – Remember when some of you told me to ignore what’s going on in North Dakota as far as full hockey arenas were concerned during the pandemic?  Remember how you said you can’t apply the science they were using to the science in Saskatchewan?  Different country, different people, different everything.  You just can’t uniformly apply the same rules here as they do down there.  Now explain to me why a mass shooting in Texas means Canada has to bring in even tougher firearms laws, which are already more strict than the US to help combat school shootings that don’t happen here.  Most Canadians don’t have guns so more freedom-removing rules from the government won’t even result in an eyebrow raise from 95% of the country, but this isn’t a good thing.  

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