Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

1 – CANADA FATE SEALED – I felt Canada was doomed following the round robin loss to the USA on New Year’s Eve when their coach tossed the players overboard by saying there was nothing he could do in order to establish better discipline. Even if that is true, saying it publicly isn’t the way to get the message across.  I find it funny that the coach couldn’t give any information on Matthew Schaefer’s injury when he, clearly, suffered a shoulder or collarbone injury in the Latvia game because you have to keep everything ‘in house’ but when asked about the abundance of penalties the team was taking, he quickly threw his hands up. While the tournament is short and you can’t really send someone to the press box, ice time is very valuable and if you take it away from a player or two, the rest of them get the message and these guys are all good enough that if you wanted to go with 2-3 lines for half a game, the boys would be just fine. I’ve paid close attention to junior hockey for thirty years and I can tell you I see teams take on the image of their coach more often than not and when the coach absolves himself of responsibility on discipline, it’s not a reach to suggest the players don’t have the ability to look in the mirror on it either. Additionally, when the coach gave up on his players New Year’s Eve, the players no longer had a reason to play for him. If they were going to get the job done, they’d have to do it on talent alone and it almost happened in the third period against the Czechs.

2 – WE ARE STILL THE BEST – Canada has the best players even when they don’t take the best to the World Juniors. For whatever reason, rigid and unimaginative coaching has infected the game to the point that it greatly diminishes the entertainment and instructs the players to play to the other team’s mistakes. Capitalize on the mistakes then try to score. Or, wait for a powerplay. If you weren’t the better team, that’s a solid philosophy. Canada, however, should be dictating the play and going into offensive overdrive on every shift of every game until the game is out of reach. Will they make mistakes? Sure, but that’s why you also have the best goaltenders in the world. That’s why you have the best defensemen in the world. You can, easily, compensate for a mistake when the other team scores by, simply, scoring more goals. No other country could keep up. Canada was criticized this year for not having good enough offensive players but the handcuffs weren’t taken off until the third period of the last game because desperation had set in. Also, when you go full out on offense, you will create more mistakes by the other team, all of which are inferior to Canada.

3 – HIRE MACDOUGALL – Canada also has the best coaches so I’m at a loss as to why Dave Cameron has now had three cracks at this. He’s won one, lost one, and now lost a second one. We have nobody else qualified so that Cameron needed to be given a third run? If you are a frequent reader of my column, you are well aware of the admiration I have for Gardiner MacDougall, whose resume speaks for itself when it comes to winning. MacDougall is in his first season as head of the Moncton Wildcats of the QMJHL and guess what? He’s in first place with a 27-5-and-2 record. If you need a reminder, MacDougall was pretty much plucked off the street to run the Saint John Sea Dogs just before the Memorial Cup in May 2022 and despite only being at the helm for a few weeks, he led the underachieving Dogs to a national title. Give the man the job and get out of his way.  Oh right…..

4 – TAKE THE BEST PLAYERS – Somewhere along the way, Canadian evaluators decided they wanted to feed their egos and construct the best ‘team’ as opposed to just taking the best ‘players’. We saw this at the Nagano Olympics when Rob Zamuner made Team Canada because he was deemed to be an elite defensive player. The reality is that the depth of the player pool in Canada is such that scouts and evaluators can feed their collective egos and choose what they think is a great ‘team’ while ignoring a lot of deserving players. The fact of the matter is this: Canada has the best hockey players in the world and if we quit monkeying around with how teams are constructed, we’d easily win gold medals at both the junior and professional international events. If you go back to the best Canadian team ever, the 1987 Canada Cup team, Team Canada had 6 centremen on the club. You’d never see that today. Dale Hawerchuk and Doug Gilmour wouldn’t make it because they’d be considered redundant. The 2005 World Junior team had Sidney Crosby, Patrice Bergeron, Jeff Carter, Ryan Getzlaf, Mike Richards, Jeremy Colliton, and Colin Fraser at centre. They were the best players. When they are this good, you ask some of them to play out of position and assume roles they wouldn’t ordinarily have on their club team. Guess what? Since they are the best, they’ll figure it out. In ‘87, we saw Lemieux, Gretzky, and Messier all on the same line. Crosby and Bergeron were unreal in the ‘05 WJHC. Just take the best players. This isn’t hard.

5 – REPEAT OFFENDER – Nashville Predators forward Zach L’Heureux was suspended for three games for slew footing Jared Spurgeon this week. Spurgeon is going to miss three weeks. L’Heureux is 21-years-old. He was suspended 9 times in four years of junior and twice more in 70 games as a pro in the AHL. How many strikes does a player get before you just kick him out of the league entirely? What if Spurgeon never comes back? Playing in the NHL should be a privilege and if you are out there injuring others and robbing them of that privilege, there is no reason for you to be out there either. The next time L’Heureux does something that warrants a suspension, it should be for life and the Predators should be staring at a $1-million fine for employing a reckless player who is out there deliberately hurting other players.

6 – MALTREATMENT – Last week, Hockey Canada released stats on Maltreatment (suspensions for name calling) and I find the data interesting to say the least. On one hand, we have players like L’Heureux and Matt Rempe who can go out and over and over again and commit career threatening physical infractions and they will get an endless amount of chances.  While I recognize the NHL, WHL, and AHL are not governed by Hockey Canada, the fact of the matter is this – what do you think would happen if one of those players used a homophobic slur three times in a year? We all know the answer. So player safety is a farce. In Saskatchewan, the number of calls made under 11.4 (maltreatment, discrimination) jumped from 9 in 2021-22 to 32 calls a year later and 97 last season. That’s a tenfold increase. The age groups getting hammered the most with these calls are Midget (U18) and Junior. The report even breaks down the type of discrimination with sex/gender (otherwise known as homophobia I guess) being, far and away, the prevailing form of name calling.  Suggesting someone is either physically or mentally disabled ranks a very distant second. Third is harassing someone about his genetics (I assume this means a comment about the attractiveness and desire an opponent has when it comes to another player’s mother) and fourth is race. To me, the entire thing is left wing overkill and an effort to appease those who hate the sport. I’m not saying don’t penalize for hurtful words but I’d much rather be accused of a sexual preference that I don’t have than get an elbow in the head from behind.

7 – INSEASON TOURNAMENT – The National Hockey League should really investigate an in-season tournament along the lines of what the NBA has done. While I understand the notion that the NHL doesn’t want to be too gimmicky, the fact of the matter is that the 4 Nations Face-Off is as big a gimmick as you get and the annual Winter Classic outdoor game is also a big gimmick. I’m not criticizing gimmicks, but don’t brush off something new and innovative as gimmicky when you are already doing plenty of gimmicks.

8 – NFL RUSHING – There seems to be a lot of discussion around whether or not Saquon Barkley is a legitimate rushing record holder or not because the NFL season is 17 games now instead of 16. Eric Dickerson ran for 2105 (average of 131.6 per game) in 1984. Barkley is at 2005 (average of 125.3 per game) heading into the final week. Barkley’s yards per carry is 5.8 while Dickerson was at 5.6. The correct answer when trying to ascertain the best rushing season ever is actually neither of these two. OJ Simpson ran for a game average of 143.1 over a 14 game season in 1973 and reached 2000 yards with a per carry average of 6.0. Simpson, who passed away in 2024, was a huge fan of Barkley and raved about him almost weekly on X (Twitter). I guess we don’t like him because he got away with murdering his ex-wife but OJ is the all-time single season rushing champion and it really can’t even be disputed even though most people pretend OJ never actually existed.

9 – PLASTIC SURGERY – I just started watching the Netflix documentary on WWE mogul Vince McMahon.  I haven’t paid much attention to professional wrestling since the days of Stone Cold and The Rock so I was quite taken aback when I saw how much plastic surgery McMahon has had and how badly he looks because of it. I’m not suggesting I should be in the running for one of the most beautiful people in the world but I’m always surprised when I see someone with more money than God who ends up getting cheap plastic surgery work done. Unrelated to sports but related to surgery, I also saw an episode of The People’s Court over Christmas and host Doug Llewelyn is still at it. The guy just turned 86 but is making every effort to stay 46 thanks to going under the knife and making his face as tight as you can get.

10 – SMALL HOCKEY WORLD – I’ve been listening to the audiobook Pain Killer by former NHL enforcer Brantt Myhres and while I already knew the hockey world to be a small one where people seem connected through six degrees of separation, it never ceases to amaze me when I discover as such. When Myhres played for the Lethbridge Hurricanes, he mentioned his two main running mates as far as finding trouble is concerned to be Maurice Meagher and Slade Stephenson. Partway through the 93-94 season, Meagher was cut from Lethbridge and assigned to the Antigonish Bulldogs of the MarJHL. Meagher is a native of Port Hawkesbury NS and Antigonish is a 40 minute drive from his hometown. Port Hawkesbury, that Spring, was where I did my practicum for broadcasting so I was more than familiar with Meagher….and Stephenson, for that matter.  Stephenson (an Alberta native) became a folk legend in Port Hawkesbury that season.  Somehow, he funneled all the way down to the Junior B Strait Pirates (in Port Hawkesbury) and was basically a Junior B version of Eric Lindros. He played wing on the top line, protecting leading scorer Mark Deveaux, and ran over anyone in his way while putting up elite offensive numbers and winning Playoff MVP. Thirty years later I learn that, perhaps, it was Meagher’s and Stephenson’s off ice habits with Myhres that contributed to them ending up in the same town as me and playing on the teams I covered as a first year sports broadcaster.  Oh, both the Pirates and Bulldogs won their respective league titles that season. While Stephenson was MVP in Jr B, Meagher had 10-goals and 28-points in 17-games in the Jr A playoffs. Stephenson also played as an AP with the Bulldogs on nights the Pirates were off.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)