Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – RUSH SEASON SO FAR – The Rush finish the first third of the season at 4-and-2 and if they can repeat that in the next third, they’ll be in good position to make the playoffs for the first time since 2019.  It won’t be easy.  The Rush had the benefit of being able to sneak up on teams to start the year but from here they host last year’s runner-ups, Albany next weekend.  The Firewolves are just 2-and-5 (including a loss at home to Saskatchewan) because they now have a target on their back but they’ll be in a similar position as the Rock in that it’s a huge game for them.  Then the Rush are at San Diego, at Calgary, and home to Rochester and all three of those games are going to be a challenge defensively because all three have elite offensive players.  If the Rush are 6-and-4 at the ten game mark, consider it a success.

3 – CFL SCHEDULE – The CFL schedule came out this week and every year Rider faithful analyze it and try to determine if it’s a good or bad one. I pay no mind to it myself.  It’s like this: if you want to go to the games you will find a way to go and it doesn’t matter if the game is on a Thursday night with school the next day, Saturday afternoon with snow flurries, or Sunday at noon in the sweltering heat.  These are all just excuses for when fans don’t show up.  The league is also the type of league now where you can’t easily predict which teams are going to be good from one year to the other as there is so much turnover and roster volatility.  So, let’s just circle the calendar for when the season starts and hope that it’s a good year. 

4 – HORRIBLE DISCIPLINE DECISIONS – Thursday night I was watching the first period of the Islanders-Flyers game and the sequence of events that unfolded after Maxim Tsyplakov elbowed Ryan Poehling in the head is nothing short of amazing as far as exposing certain levels of incompetence in the National Hockey League but nobody seems to be interested in exploring it.  Tsyplakov hit Poehling with what appeared to be, in live time, a cheap shot in the head that knocked him senseless to the point that he needed help leaving the ice.  He didn’t return to the game and is out indefinitely.  The play happened directly in front of one of the referees (Mitch Dunning or Brian Pochmara) and neither of them felt it was worthy of even a minor penalty.  However, after a discussion amongst all officials, a five minute major was assessed to Tsyplakov.  At this point, one of the refs goes to the penalty box area and reviews the incident on video.  After a delay, an announcement is made that there is no penalty at all.  So we go from no call to major and back to no call within a span of five or so minutes.  A day after that, the NHL Head Office announces a three game suspension for Tsyplakov.  How can you get a suspension for something that isn’t worthy of even a minor penalty after a video review during the game?  Very clearly there is someone or some people in this chain of events that need to be removed from his position.  Whether it’s Pochmara, Dunning, someone in the video room in Toronto, or someone involved with Player Safety.  Someone should take responsibility but I don’t see anyone else demanding accountability so we will all just move on.

5 – PUT NAME BARS BACK ON – Keeping names off the backs of referees is another form of skirting accountability in hockey.  We should all know who these folks are calling games.  It used to be that on-ice officials were as recognizable as the players.  Whether it was Kerry Fraser, Mick McGeough, Andy Van Hellemond, Don Koharski, etc. we all had a pretty good idea on what we’d be in for watching a game officiated by certain refs.  I’ll even go back 15-20 years in the SJHL when we had Al Smith, Devin Klein, Todd Sharpe, Nathan Wieler, Keith Mackintosh, etc. all doing games and all recognizable with names on their back.  If you went to a game and saw that it was Mackintosh, you knew you’d be in for a fair night with about 2-3 minors aside and a fast paced game as long as the players weren’t dumb.  Smith would bring more of a dynamic element in which you may expect to see an argument or two from the players’ bench but he was also a very good official.  Today, whether it’s the SJHL or NHL I don’t know who any of the referees are unless I’m highly annoyed and find myself searching to see if it’s been entered online.  I couldn’t tell you who the top referees are anymore but I do know there have been more than a couple move on to the NHL and their ability to call games had to be nowhere near the top of the evaluation criteria and it’s mind blowing (also bad for the sport) to see people who don’t have a feel for on-ice management get promoted based on what his last name is, what was his history playing the game, etc.  Let’s get back to knowing who the on-ice officials are.  The good ones deserve to be well known and the bad ones deserve to be criticized when they are working at high levels. I understand leaving the names off when the referees and linesmen are cutting their teeth but when you get to junior, senior, and professional levels it’s more about refining than learning.

6 – UFC – In September, I watched UFC 306 and that was really the first time I gave mixed martial arts any amount of time as a viewer.  I enjoyed it, much to my own surprise.  I watched Jon Jones in UFC 309 and then last night I wanted to see UF C311 because Merab Dvalishvili was on the card again.  It was Dvalishvili who upset Sean O’Malley in UFC 306 to become Bantamweight Champion.  The challenger, Umar Nurmagomedov came in at 18-and-0 so call me captivated.  I am not well schooled in the sport, but I felt the fight was outstanding.  Nurmagomedov won the first two rounds but was visibly tired.  Dvalishvili, as Joe Rogan put it, appeared as though he just got out of bed and went on to dominate the final three rounds to take a unanimous decision.  From here, I’d like to see the two of them tangle again or maybe put Nurmagedov against O’Malley with the winner getting a rematch with Dvalishvili, who is a cocky fighter but somehow quite likeable despite obvious show boating in the middle of his matches.

7 – MORE UFC – Islam Makhachev easily won the main event with a first round submission over Renato Moicano, who was a last second fill-in to replace the injured Arman Tsarukyan.  The speculation now is that Makhachev is the best pound for pound fighter in the UFC and there simply isn’t anyone in his weight class that can offer him a formidable challenge.  Tsarukyan has a bad back but he’s rated number one on the list of contenders.  Charlies Oliveira is second but Tsarukyan beat him in a close split decision in November.  I’ll probably end up watching UFC312 since Sean Strickland is slated to headline that card as he challenges Dricus Du Plessis for the Middleweight title.  Du Plessis should be considered the favorite, I would think.  But, I’ll be cheering for Strickland as he made a name for himself in Canada last year by verbally opposing Justin Trudeau’s communist rule and speaking out against the government funded media that helps promote his dictatorial powers as something we should all love.

8 – CHIEFS ODDS STACKED – I watched about four minutes of the Chiefs-Texans game on Saturday.  I knew after the bogus roughing the passer penalty that ended up giving the Chiefs a 6-3 lead (field goal) that there would be no chance for Houston to win this game.  The only way Kansas City doesn’t win a third straight Super Bowl is if someone blows them out and takes the ability of a higher power to determine the outcome away.  It got so bad that even Troy Aikman was calling out the league for how obviously slanted the calls are in Patrick Mahomes’ and the Chiefs favor.  Chiefs ownership claims that the following for their team has gone up over 30% since overrated pharmacy pushing tight end Travis Kelce started dating Taylor Swift.  This means money for the Chiefs and money for the NFL.  The longer Kansas City stays in the playoffs, the more eyeballs there are on the product.  For that reason alone, nobody else stands a chance as long as the games are close.  

9 – BASEBALL – The topic of a salary cap has once again reared its ugly head in Major League Baseball as the Los Angeles Dodgers have laid claim to just about every single player they have wanted the last couple of offseasons which is rendering MLB rather uninteresting for fans and if I was an owner of another team, I wouldn’t even bother attempting to try to win through spending money as it’s akin to just lighting a fire to millions of dollars and wasting it.  What needs to happen with baseball is much the same as what needs to happen with a lot of other things in society (healthcare, cost of living, government corruption):  it needs to crash and bottom out and then we can start to fix it.  But, as long as the New York Mets are willing to pay Juan Soto $700-million dollars, there is (at least) one other team willing to try and take on the Dodgers so I’m not expecting this to happen anytime soon.  However, if you talk to most other average sports fans, baseball is a long way down the list on what they are paying attention to.    

10 – DINE AND DASH – Monday evening I logged on to Facebook and right at the top of my feed was a post from the General Manager of Joe Beeverz in Yorkton.  It was a long description of their very busy Saturday night and she admitted that they were not on the top of their game as there was an influx of sports teams in the city last weekend.  The point of the write up was that there was a group of ten or so parents (of an unknown sports team) who expressed displeasure at the wait time for their food.  The staff packaged up their meals so they could leave and take the food with them (not ideal) and that’s precisely what this group did. But, they also refused to pay.  They walked out.  What amazed me was that there wasn’t a single adult with a good conscience among them who was willing to pay for, at least, a percentage of their own personal order.  It would be one thing had they refused the food entirely, but they accepted it all.  To me, this is a criminal act and the organization these parents were affiliated with needs to be exposed.  What also disappoints me is that I’ve heard from a number of non-sports parents who have a perception of sports parents and they all said they weren’t the least bit surprised at the entitlement.  This is all the more reason we need someone in the sports community to step up and denounce this horrible act of theft.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)