Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – GAME ONE RECAP – Former Thunderbird Austin Shanks, who signed as a free agent in the offseason, led the Rush with a sock trick (six goals) and Zach Manns had his best game since early February in scoring 2 goals and 7 assists.  Jake Boudreau collected 10-loose balls and had 2-caused turnovers.  Matt Hossack also filled the score sheet a goal, two helpers, eight loose balls, and two caused turnovers.  Hossack has truly been an elite player all year and, as I mentioned last week, should be the runaway Defensive Player Of The Year in the NLL.  When I look at the two biggest differences from this year to last when it comes to the Rush, it’s the addition of Hossack through the expansion draft and the rookie play at the faceoff circle of Jake Naso, who got the better of last year’s NLL Transition Player Of The Year Jake Withers last night.  When the Rush got the lead, Naso ensured the Rush started the next series with the ball more often than not and it becomes hard for a team to come back when that happens.

3 – COME SUPPORT RUSH IN GAME TWO – Game two in the series is next Saturday at 7:30 in Saskatoon and hopefully there are more than 5400 in attendance.  Halifax had 11,000 for game one last night and the Rush used to play in front of sellouts on a regular basis.  I got my ticket for this Saturday immediately after last night’s game and I would say it’s one of the best seats in the house and I paid $60.  You don’t have to pay that much if you don’t want as there are less expensive tickets but the point is that this is an affordable ticket as far as professional sports is concerned and the Rush have delivered in putting a highly competitive team on the floor/box. I realize the overall press coverage of this team sucks so there are a lot of casuals who don’t even know about it and Saskatoon isn’t exactly known for being a supportive fan base when it comes to sports but the people there have done it before so let’s see if they’ll do it again.  

4 – JETS/BLUES – Winnipeg and St. Louis will play game seven of their first round playoff series tonight and while the Jet fortunes were always going to rise and set on the play of Connor Hellebuyck, the reality is that if Winnipeg got even slightly below average goaltending this series would be over and the Jets would be waiting for the second round to start.  Hellebuyck has been as bad as any goalie as ever been in an NHL playoff series and it actually extends well beyond that as he was shellshocked last year against Colorado and he was nearly as bad two years ago against Vegas.  If you look at his last 11 playoff starts, he has a 4.80-GAA and an .840-SPCT.  There is no netminder on the planet who, with that body of work, should get a game seven assignment.  But, Hellebuyck is going to win the Vezina for his great play in meaningless regular season games and he makes a lot of money so the Jets are going to use him.  Hellebuyck is 3-and-0 on home ice in the series but Winnipeg has limited St. Louis to 21 or fewer shots in each of the three games and the SPCT is awful.  There isn’t even the slightest of indications Hellebuyck has a good game in him so if it happens tonight, it would be a stunner.  What the Jets should have done was put Hellebuyck on the bench after he was hooked in game three and gone with Eric Comrie until Comrie had a horrible showing.  I believe the only way Hellebuyck may snap out of this is to come into a playoff game where there is no pressure and relieving Comrie in a game that’s already lost would seem to be a remedy, in my mind.

5 – GOALTENDING – I’ve said so many times that when it comes to hockey teams you can’t even begin to evaluate what you have until you have a good goalie.  Bad netminding will affect everything, including how otherwise good players will play in front of him.  When Edmonton lost the first two games to Los Angeles, I saw plenty of finger pointing at Evan Bouchard as well as some other depth forwards while ignoring the fact that several goals were scored by the Kings that had no business going in.  Once the change was made, Edmonton reeled off four straight wins and with Bouchard scoring some big goals the criticism has gone silent.  Stuart Skinner is also going to get another chance as soon as Calvin Pickard has a bad night.  That’s the way it should be rather than just sticking with the starter, stubbornly, because ‘he’s been our guy all year’.  Ottawa fell behind in their series with Toronto because Linus Ullmark was, obviously, scared to death standing in the crease.  By game five he exorcised some of those demons but it was too little too late.

6 – HANDLING INJURIES DIFFERENTLY IN PLAYOFFS – Winnipeg centre Mark Scheifele is a game time decision tonight after suffering what a few people are saying was a concussion in game five on Wednesday.  There is a timeline protocol that Scheifele needs to pass but it sounds like the NHL deems playoff concussions to not be as serious as regular season ones so the steps that normally take days in the regular season are allowed to be completed much faster in the playoffs so that gives him an opportunity to get in there.  How’s that for safety?  Should the Jets win, I wonder if they’d fiddle with the idea of using Brayden Yager in the next series.  Their centre depth has been exposed as woeful after Scheifele and Yager is with the team after finishing his playoff in Lethbridge (16-8-6-14).  Their other potential offensive up and comer is Colby Barlow, but he’s still blowing the doors off of goalies in the OHL playoffs (16-13-16-29) and is a winger.

7 – OFFSIDES ARE EGREGIOUS OFFENSE – The Vegas Golden Knights eliminated Minnesota in six games but that series totally turned when the Wild had a game winning goal overturned in game five because Gustav Nyquist was three millimetres offside.  I get it.  Offside is offside. But why is it crucial to get this call right to the exact letter of the law but when it comes to actual dangerous plays where people can get injured, nobody seems to care?  In the Dallas-Colorado series, Cale Makar chopped down a player in front of the net after the whistle, but because it was in the third period and the game was close, the announcers rationalized that it wouldn’t make sense to call a penalty even though it’s a penalty.  In the Jets series, Gabriel Vilardi took endless cross checks to his kidney (it’s widely believed he is just freshly healthy from a back injury) and it was mentioned that it’s probably a penalty but this is a rough series so the referees have to use discretion.  Why can’t we use discretion on offside then?  Ryan Hartman scored that goal and nobody quit trying on the play.  The Jets had an offside goal called back in game six but, for some reason, a penalty call against St. Louis was allowed to stand as Morgan Barron was hooked on his way to the net once he crossed the blueline.  The goal doesn’t count because the play is, essentially, dead on the offside but the penalty does count because they were trying to prevent Barron from scoring.  Make it make sense.

8 – SPORTS STORE ASSAULT – I’m sure I have looked at the world a lot differently since 2020 but I also think people are in a much worse mental state, as a whole, since 2020.  One big difference that I’ve noticed is that many people who would take the high road on certain issues are no longer willing to do so and, by and large, folks are also a lot more demanding than they used to be.  Call it anger, unhappiness, frustrated, doesn’t matter.  But, it’s something.  That’s no excuse for bad behaviour, but rather an explanation as to why we are seeing more incidents that are jaw dropping.  One such incident was caught on video in Winnipeg at a sports store where a man, who is alleged to be involved with the Regina Capitals, goes totally bonkers and physically assaults an employee after he didn’t get his way with a coupon he wanted to use.  The video, if you haven’t seen it, is easy to find and, hopefully, we can identify who this individual is.  His name needs to be public and there needs to be a fair amount of shaming here so that it, greatly, discourages anyone else.  

9 – HIGH SCHOOL BADMINTON – I attended Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association Badminton Regionals yesterday in Estevan and the amount of talent there was astounding.  There are so many good players and the next step is Provincials so I can’t imagine what that will look like.  What I hope they have to help decide the matches are linespeople.  If you haven’t ever been to this event, you have six matches taking place at once and it’s up to each individual player to declare what’s in and what’s out.  While I had a personal interest in specific games, I also had time to watch a lot of the other matches and I was shocked at the amount of cheating that went on where players refused to acknowledge certain shots as ‘in’ so that they could, unjustly, get the point.  I think this goes a lot towards my last comment on the situation in Winnipeg where the sports store worker was assaulted.  We live in an era where people are more selfish and unhappy than ever and so they don’t care.  They will cheat or do whatever they need to do to get their way.  Having an unbiased official watching the game and calling any play where the ‘in’ or ‘out’ is disputed seems like an easy fix.

10 – ELECTION WRAP UP – If I don’t comment on the election, some of you maniac communist supporters will be relentless so I’m going to offer my concession on this.  You guys win and that’s fine.  In every competition there is a winner and a loser and I’m on the losing team.  That’s just the way it is.  Here’s what I would say to people who want to continue to try and fight for the ‘conservative’ way of life: the country has spoken, we don’t want it.  We are not the US.  Canadians don’t value the same things as Americans.  In Canada, we are thankful for the breadcrumbs delved out by our rulers and we feel safer in that environment than we do in one where barriers are removed and it’s up to each individual to make or break his/her own success.  After all, it’s worse in North Korea.  While it’s true this is, mainly, an eastern Canada philosophy over a western Canadian one, the system is set up to cater to what the east wants and the west has to hope the values will, sometimes, align coast to coast.  I think that time is long gone and will never return.  The last ten years in this country have been an era of increased poverty, increased government control on our lives, increased homelessness, increased open drug use in our inner-cities and now expanding to our towns.  Healthcare and Education quality has spiraled.  We have a very soft stance on crime and are very lenient on most violent offenders while bringing the hammer down on peaceful anti-government protesters.  Taxes have never been higher with the return back to the taxpayer never lower.  We have, willfully, ignored foreign interference into our elections and in some cases, endorsed it, which ensures indefinite power for those that currently have it.  We’ve long passed the point of trying to convince those who share different opinions.  Everyone has pitted in with what they believe.  For me,  I am at the stage of just hoping I’ve been wrong and will be wrong on what’s to come.  If I’m not, nobody can say they didn’t know.  They voted for it and I’ll be here to point it out until I get suicided but I’m more than happy to be wrong.  I don’t usually provide life advice on here but you should try admitting you’ve been wrong from time to time.  It’s not a weakness to expose what anyone can, plainly, see anyway – none of us are perfect.  Heck, I thought the Dallas Stars were no match for Colorado because they sucked against top teams and I thought Mikko Rantanen was a by-product of playing with Nathan MacKinnon.  Yeah.  I was wrong. 

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)