Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – RATTLERS HOT START – For the first time in franchise history, the Saskatchewan Rattlers are 3-0 to start a CEBL season. While the reality is that the Rattlers are not anywhere near being able to set a league record in attendance, they are certainly worthy of much closer scrutiny from sports fans and media alike. The Rattlers controlled the entire 40 minutes against the previously unbeaten Vancouver Bandits on Thursday night. Last Saturday, they stormed back from being down 23 against Montreal with four minutes to go in the third quarter to win by six. They’ll play their first road game on Sunday afternoon against Edmonton. The Stingers are also 3-0 so the schedule hasn’t been kind through the early going but the Rattlers have passed each test.

2 – RATTLERS TIDBITS – Thursday’s game was our first chance to see Somto Dimanochie, a post player who comes from York University and has played a little bit previously in the CEBL with Edmonton. He was inserted into the lineup in place of veteran Julian Roche. Dimanochie was a force along the boards with five rebounds in just under twenty minutes of floor time. Meanwhile, Jalen Harris is second in league scoring, averaging 27 points per game and Grant Basile is sixth overall at 20.7 (he is also fifth overall in rebounds per game with 9.0). This is despite the fact the Rattlers are ranked last in the league in field goal percentage from within the three point line so there is still plenty of improvement that can be made.

3 – CFL WEBSITE & PREDICTIONS – It’s 10:30 on a Friday night and I can’t get the CFL website to load to check the scores of the preseason games being played tonight. Oh wait. The site does load. Just takes a while.  Once you are there though, the stats seem to be working. Bravo. We should be good to go for week one. The Riders open on Saturday at Edmonton and I’m going to pick the home team in this one. I’ll also go with BC over Toronto, Hamilton over Calgary, and Montreal over Winnipeg in a minor upset.

4 – COTE ARENA – I had the privilege of being invited to attend the new arena grand opening at Cote First Nation last week and it is great to see Saskatchewan get another first class arena. I believe the intent is for there to be ice 12 months of the year at this new facility so there is a great opportunity to capitalize on business with spring hockey programs from nearby communities in Yorkton, Melville and other areas. I know travel is a factor for some of the spring teams as year-round ice isn’t easy to come by. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Cote buy a home game or two from the Yorkton Terriers, especially during Harvest Showdown in November when the team is out of their regular facility for almost three weeks. I’ll definitely be there for the Cote Selects home opener in the SaskEast Hockey League later this year and I wouldn’t want to be the team coming into there for the first game. The atmosphere is going to be electric.

5 – JUNIOR HOCKEY – The landscape of junior hockey, as most people know, is rapidly changing with the BCHL breaking free from Hockey Canada last summer and then midseason, five AJHL teams were annexed into the BCHL when it was announced their intent was to finish the current year and then go to BC.  Closer to home, we have the South Sask Academy in Moose Jaw, which is non-sanctioned but growing in popularity as an option for families and offers an extensive training program for minor hockey players to further develop their hockey skills but also steers them towards the BCHL (even if unintentional) because of its non-sanctioned status. Families, increasingly, don’t care about ‘renegade hockey’ where they used to be scared off by it a number of years ago.  South Sask Academy openly states on its website that they find the current Saskatchewan Hockey Association (which falls under Hockey Canada) policy to be excessively punitive and directly attacks players, parents, and families.

6 – WNBA CLARK – Caitlin Clark is the heavy favorite to win WNBA Rookie Of The Year as she’s on pace to be the first ever rookie to average more than 15 points per game, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. Clark also leads the league in technical fouls (3) and recently made public her opinion that she’s being guarded, physically, in a way that defenders would not get away with if she was someone else. It’s hard to agree or refute the claim but there is definitely widespread jealousy within the ranks of her fellow players and how she has, single handedly, increased the profile of women’s basketball.  It’s hard to figure out when you consider how much work has gone into increasing the popularity of the sport and then when it happens, the people from within do everything they can to discredit, downplay, and ridicule the one person who’s most responsible for the increase in mass appeal.

7 – BABCOCK EXPOSE – The Athletic has quite a scathing article on Mike Babcock that was published on Friday afternoon. While the stories that former players are revealing are, unfortunately, not a reach for me to believe the fact of the matter is this – Brendan Shanahan wore a letter for Babcock as a player in Detroit. He’d know full well the methods that Babcock used to ‘coach’ and yet the Leaf President saw fit to hire Babcock in Toronto. I don’t think I’ve seen a media person anywhere put Shanahan’s feet to the fire on this. Frankly, if Babcock has been chased out of the NHL then so too should Shanahan. He’s just as culpable but for some reason he’s adored, pretty much league-wide.

8 – CHIEFS PLAYERS – While people continue to seek safe spaces over comments made by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker at a Catholic school graduation ceremony whereby he made the outlandish claim that women may be more excited to start a family than have a professional career, there comes news that Chiefs defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs has been charged with two counts of second degree animal cruelty for allegedly leaving two dogs on his back porch for 10 days without any food. Buggs, who looks like he could stand to miss a meal or two himself, denies the allegations and the transgression apparently is no big deal compared to the dangerous words uttered by Butker because I don’t see any petitions to have him removed from the team nor do I see City officials publishing his home address.  Prior to Butker’s very harmful family values comments, was a car accident involving Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice, where it is alleged he fled the scene before eventuallly turning himself in to face charges of aggravated assault and six counts of collision involving injury amongst other various offenses. Again, no petitions and no doxing.  Butker is the real problem. The world is truly upside down.

9 – STRAWBERRY HEALTH – The New York Mets are retiring Darryl Strawberry’s number 18 jersey this weekend. Doctors say it’s a miracle Strawberry is alive to see the ceremony. In March, the Strawman was admitted to hospital with a major heart issue that medical officials believe was taking place over a five day period and had it gone on much longer he would have passed away. Of course, this is normal for 62-year-old men and, yes, I know he has had all sorts of other health issues and he took drugs like they were candy.  

10 – MURRAY DEATH – Pro golfer Grayson Murray committed suicide last weekend at the age of 30.  As I’ve done with other premature deaths in the sports world in recent weeks, I’ve talked a bit about them and I’m going to do the same here. Staunch covid vaccine defenders are quick to perform mental gymnastics to defend them at every turn (although very few of them seem to get booster shots but that’s a discussion for another day) and then act like it’s some sort of victory when a man dies the way Murray did and nobody can tie it to a vaccine. I mentioned last week that my constant nagging on these issues has nothing to do with vaccines but rather the unprecedented level of damage suffered by people through what has been endured the last few years.  We don’t know the underlying issues Murray suffered from but I do know, first hand, of numerous people who are now in very dark places mentally over having had government boots on their neck for two years. Not everyone is going to, successfully, be helped through whatever internal struggles they face and even more are going to fall through the cracks the more we continue to downplay or belittle people who are suffering because they have felt that parts of their life were stolen, needlessly, by so-called authority figures who refuse to acknowledge the error of their ways.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)