Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – CFL ON TSN – I see on social media a couple of personalities have been sparring back and forth over whether or not it’s TSN’s responsibility to drum up interest in the CFL since they are the rights carrier.  On one hand, I would say ‘Yes’ but not if TSN is going to lose its shirt over it.  TSN is, likely, already losing money on the CFL broadcast deal and I believe a renewal on the contract is far from a sure thing at this point.  That’s not to say TSN doesn’t carry some responsibility. If you are going to pay for exclusive rights to broadcast games, then you should have to do so in the most professional manner possible.  Go watch an ESPN broadcast of NCAA women’s fastball, which is far from being a marquee draw.  It feels like you are watching the World Series.  TSN (and Sportsnet) falls way short when it comes to comparing broadcast presentations with American counterparts.  If you gave ESPN or Fox the rights to the CFL, you’d notice an immediate improvement on the overall package.  I used to work in broadcasting and people in the suits would tell me how expensive it is to broadcast live events as if they should be forgiven for amateur work.  My response to that always has been and always will be this – ‘if you can’t afford to provide the service you advertise for then maybe you need to get out of the business’.  The flipside of that is when I did SJHL games for Bamboo Shoots, I left the rink every night feeling like I just did an NHL game.  The overall quality (except for the play by play guy) was exceptional and on par with any national event.  There’s no reason at all for a CFL game not to be the same as an NFL one in overall viewer presentation.  If TSN can afford to run twenty talking heads during NHL free agent frenzy, they can afford to make the CFL a major production.

3 – TSN PUSHES WORLD JUNIORS – It’s also true the CFL has no stars, but TSN could try and trick us into thinking there are some and while they’ve attempted to pass Nathan Rourke off as Doug Flutie, they aren’t overly convincing doing so.  Look at the World Junior Hockey Championships.  People go crazy over that two week event and most of the stars in that tournament will disappear and never be heard from again.  The quality of play in that event is also not great at all.  Many of the games are blowouts and it’s even worse now that we have banned Russia from participating.  Yet, people can’t get enough of Canada beating Austria 12-0 with players, most of which, will never play in the NHL.  The closest thing to a household name the CFL has is Chad Kelly and the league tried to chase him out rather than capitalize on his Last Chance U fame.  I get he had off-field issues but if you want the league to attract big time talent, you have to be more open to accepting the questionable characters who are looking for a second chance.  

4 – MORALS DETERMINE CFL TALENT – I’m not sure the CFL would allow a player like Lawrence Phillips to play in the league like it did in 2002 as the former first round NFL draft pick tried to rebuild his value by playing in the CFL.  He was unsuccessful as he went to jail in 2008 and years after that was found dead in his cell.  The league basically forced the Riders to cut Garrett Marino in 2022 when the woke left public pressure got too uncomfortable.  So, the fans are speaking and saying they don’t want those guys in the league but then those same fans can’t be whining about a lack of overall fan interest either.  I’m not saying every star has to be criminal or a morally bankrupt person but the fact of the matter is that most who are of NFL level talent are only here because of personal baggage and if the CFL is of too high a moral standard to accept those projects, so be it but you can expect to see a drop in calibre too.  

5 – VEGAS SIGNING – The Vegas Golden Knights have, quickly, become a team despised by many, in no small part, because General Manager Kelly McCrimmon has found some unique ways to take advantage of the salary cap in order to make his team better.  It speaks volumes about the times we live in where people simply aren’t as competitive as they used to be.  They’d rather get mad at someone who tries his damndest to win rather than try to one-up him.  I’ve said before and I’ll say it again – It’s never been easier to win in the NHL.  Only a handful of teams are interested in it.  About a dozen more pretend to be trying and then there are 10-12 teams who don’t give a flying fadoo.  While all the attention is focused on Vegas manipulating the salary cap, someone should also look and see how McCrimmon has picked up on something that nobody else has:  the draft and prospects are way overvalued and overrated.  The Knights are a top team and ended last year with two regulars who came through their system – Nicolas Hague (who’s been since moved to Nashville) and Pavel Dorofeyev.  You can say it’ll eventually catch up to them, but when?  They’ve been drafting since 2017 and have dealt away the likes of Nick Suzuki, Erik Brannstrom, Cody Glass, Paul Cotter, and Peyton Krebs.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, however, the four year contract earned by Yorkton’s Kaeden Korczak earlier this week.  

6 – McCRIMMON FINDS WAYS – I learned as a young sports reporter in Brandon that if a rule doesn’t exist, Kelly McCrimmon is smart enough (more importantly, competitive enough) to make you create one because he’s going to exploit gaps and holes in the system.  I think I’ve told this story before but one season when the Wheat Kings were faced with having one too many 20-year-olds and one too many Europeans, everyone knew McCrimmon would be forced to deal Jan Fadrny because he was both 20 and a European.  While everyone waited for some team to take advantage of Brandon’s weakened position, McCrimmon bought himself time by sending the list rights of injured 20-year-old captain Brett Girard to Tri-Cities but he didn’t tell anybody that he did this and the agreement was that once Girard was healthy to play, Tri-Cities would send him back to Brandon and then the Wheats would make an appropriate trade.  Girard never left town (I speculated he didn’t even know he was dealt) and kept rehabbing with Wheat King staff.  As it turned out, the WHL created a rule preventing this from happening again and McCrimmon did, in fact, trade Fadrny to fix the roster but he, somehow, coerced Kelowna into sending Nolan Yonkman the other way.  Yonkman was a towering defenseman who ended up playing 76-NHL games and was very popular in the Brandon dressing room.  Fadrny had a good offensive year with Kelowna but never panned out as an NHLer.  

7 – PANTHERS BRING EVERYONE BACK – Now that the Florida Panthers have resigned all three of their key free agents and all three took discounts to stay and now that Mitch Marner has accepted a contract that is about $4m less than what he’d accept from the Leafs, people are screaming that it’s unfair for the teams who are based in low taxed centres and they have an advantage when it comes to signing players.  Well, yes they do and no they should not be penalized for it.  In Toronto, it would take $16m per season for Marner to take home what he will on a $12m contract from Vegas. The City of Toronto, and just about all major cities in Ontario are riddled with social problems.  That’s Toronto’s problem to fix, not Vegas.  Clearly paying all this tax doesn’t make our cities any better or players (or any person with the ability to choose where they live) would opt to pay the extra in order to have the beauty that these higher taxed places offer.  There is no reason at all for taxes to be as high as they are.  This is what you get when you overtax people.  Those who can choose, simply, don’t want to be there.  Look at it this way – people shop at big boxstores over the local corner store because the buying power is as such boxstores can offer it for less money.  Why aren’t you lobbying for the boxstores to charge more so that the playing field is more level?  I thought so.  

8 – JETS STEP BACK – The Winnipeg Jets shocked me last year with their President’s Trophy season and I think they would have gone deeper in the playoffs had Connor Hellebuyck maintained his regular season level of play.  Expectations will still be high for the Jets in 2026 despite losing Nikolaj Ehlers in free agency but I look at what’s going on within the division and am concerned the Jets could nosedive.  Colorado and Dallas aren’t going anywhere.  St. Louis was a very tough out by the end of the season and Minnesota would have been higher up had they not dealt with a rash of injuries.  Nashville should be better with all their talent and Utah has taken strides to improve as well.  What this all means as far as where everyone slots in remains to be seen but the Jets still don’t have a second line centre unless Jonathan Toews plays like he’s 27 and not 37 and now they have a hole on the wing with Ehlers leaving.  Players like Brad Lambert, Nikita Chibrikov, Braden Yager, and Colby Barlow may get a chance to make the big club and play prominent roles almost immediately.

9 – RATTLERS SPLIT TWO GAMES – The Saskatchewan Rattlers blew a must win game on Thursday night as they couldn’t hit a free throw to save their life in the second half in an 82-80 loss to Montreal.  The Rattlers run a promotion whereby if the other team misses two free throws in a row, everyone in attendance wins free tacos.  Well if they did for when the Rattlers missed the shots, I think everyone would have won three free tacos.  On Saturday, the Rattlers fell behind by as much as 14 and trailed 82-71 going into Elam Ending but they scored nine straight to get back into the game and ended up winning over Ottawa 93-90 to improve to 4-and-11.  Jordan Bowden set a franchise record with 9-three pointers and finished with 40 in total, just five off the record set by Jalen Harris last year.  As bad as the last place Rattlers have been, you can’t argue the fact they have been in almost every game.  Vancouver has beaten them three times by a combined 77-points but their overall point differential in eleven other games is just 20-points.  They’ve played eight games where the final score has been decided by four or fewer points (3-and-5).  They won’t make the playoffs but it appears as though each game is going to be contested until the end and that’s about all you can ask for from a team that is short on talent night in and night out.

10 – ANOTHER PITCHER DROPS – New York Yankees starting pitcher Clarke Schmidt is headed for his second Tommy John Surgery after leaving Thursday’s game against the Blue Jays with an injury.  Schmidt is just 29-years-old and has eclipsed 100 innings in a season only once.  Yet, baseball teams insist that the number of innings is the number one factor that determines whether or not a starting pitcher hits the injured list.  It’s mind blowing to see a complete lack of deep dive into this issue as starters used to, routinely, throw 250 innings without getting hurt while, now, most teams are scared to death to allow a pitcher to work more than 6 innings a start and no more than 180 innings a season.  Pitchers make a ton of money to blow out their arms.  Schmidt probably won’t pitch again until 2027 and who knows how effective he will be.  I just don’t understand why baseball isn’t developing young pitchers to adjust their arsenal to allow them to pitch more often and deeper into games.  There’s 100  years of data that they can tap into that proves there is a way to do it but we live in a sheep world and somewhere someone at some point decided 100 pitches a game and less than 200 innings is the way to go and everyone else just got in line and is doing the same thing despite overwhelming evidence that it does absolutely nothing to preserve a career.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)