Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – CALGARY SPORTS THIS WEEKEND – I am eager to check out a Calgary Roughnecks home game tonight (Saturday). I’ve never been to a lacrosse game where the Rush haven’t been the home team so I’m curious to see how the game day experience compares between the two teams. Calgary has been drawing well with over 9000 fans a game and they’ve got a chance to move into third place if they defeat Rochester, who are 4-and-7 and coming off a loss in Saskatoon last Saturday night. Sunday night, I will get a chance to attend the Flames against the San Jose Sharks and get an up close look at rookie phenom Macklin Celebrini. The Flames come out of the Four Nations break trailing Vancouver by three points in the race for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. I’ve been to a couple of Flames games before and I love the public address announcer.  When the visiting team scores a goal, he barely acknowledges it over the PA system.  

3 – CANADA WINS – Canada remains on top of the hockey mountain of the world after the 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. to finish off the Four Nations Face Off on Thursday night.  It was fitting that the best player in the NHL scored the deciding goal. I will admit to being stunned at the intensity level exhibited by the teams involved over the last week. It was fantastic hockey played at the best level imaginable. Hopefully this game will shut up the critics of Jordan Binnington. What a lot of observers can’t measure because there are no analytics to come to a conclusion on this – some players are just really good when a lot is at stake. Binnington is one of those players. Meanwhile, I still have questions about Connor Hellebuyck in a big game.  He only gave up three, but he could have given up five or six and may have with a lesser defense in front of him. There was no doubt in my mind when overtime started that Canada was going to win because they had the better goalie. If I was running the Edmonton Oilers, I’d be making a trade for Binnington ASAP. 

4 – AMERICANS LINEUP – I was left perplexed by a couple of things from both sides. Clearly, Matthew Tkachuk wasn’t healthy enough to play. I understand his desire to get into the line up and contribute, but hobbling around on one leg and only able to play six minutes is more valuable than a healthy Kyle Connor, who was a scratch? The Americans badly needed a goal at crunch time and couldn’t get one. Connor has 30 goals to Tkachuk’s 22 as it is. For the Canadians, I’m not sure if this was mentioned during the Sportsnet broadcast or not, but on ESPN it was revealed Sidney Crosby was dealing with an elbow injury that was serious enough that he couldn’t even really shoot the puck. So when Canada got the powerplay, who’s on it? Crosby.  You mean with the abundance of talent, the Canadians couldn’t find another forward capable of shooting that they had to resort to using the banged up Crosby? I get it if these are regular club teams and the options are a major drop off but as good as Tkachuk and Crosby are, on these superstar teams they don’t need to be relied on when they are physically compromised to the degree that they were.

5 – HORRIBLE ANTHEM RENDITION – The much debated ‘will they boo the anthem or not’ ended up being answered with a small ‘smattering’ of boos by the Boston crowd when the Canadian anthem was sung before the Four Nations Face Off gold medal game. But, the reason for the booing wasn’t because Americans don’t like us. It was because the singer, Chantel Kreviazuk butchered the song to the point it was nearly unrecognizable. I thought in real time, ‘How fitting that just like everything else in this country, we are the ones responsible for what has been destroyed or ruined and that is the fault of each and every one of us that has allowed it to happen’. It’s not Donald Trump’s fault that Kreviazuk became a horrible singer overnight. It’s not Trump’s fault our government is propped up by funding from fentanyl profits. It’s not Trump’s fault all of our major cities are over-run with homeless people. It’s not Trump’s fault a large number of people are fed up and feel no more national pride. Yet we will blame him anyway because that’s just who we are.  Even Kreviazuk said she changed the words on purpose because of Trump, totally self unaware that the word changing was the least of the issues when it came to her terrible performance.  Legendary enforcer Derek Parker even remarked, “I did a better job when I sang the anthem prior to our Melville Millionaires playoff game in 2003.” I was at that game and I can attest to that Parker was better than Kreviazuk and that isn’t much of a compliment to Derek.

6 – NOTRE DAME RELOCATING – The SJHL has announced a rare franchise move that will see the Notre Dame Hounds relocate to Warman for the 2025-26 season.  The move should be an instant game-changer as far as competitive balance in the league is concerned. The Hounds have been near the bottom for the last few seasons and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Warman near the top, almost, immediately. While I don’t expect this to be an OCN Blizzard situation whereby the Blizzard came into the MJHL in the late 90s and turned the league on its ear by establishing an immediate dynasty, I do see Warman being similar to the Blizzard in so much as that the Blizzard forced the rest of the MJHL teams to pick up their socks in order to be competitive.  Warman is likely to raise the bar for the other SJHL teams and that’s a good thing.

7 – ALL TIME HOUNDS – I no longer have an official role with the SJHL but still follow the league, relatively, closely. I did work in the league office for almost 20 years starting at the turn of the century and it got me to thinking about who the top players were over the last 25 years. When making this list, I discounted NHL prospect status and just went with how good they were while in the SJHL.  So while a player like Sasha Pokulok was a first rounder, he didn’t make my list as a top Hound. The beauty about lists is that they can be debated so without any further ado, here are my choices (starting with the 2001-02 season and going to the current year): GOAL-Alexi Thibaudeau, Chance Gieni, Ty Reichenbach.  DEFENSE-Spencer Trapp, Carson Grolla, Tanner Vandesype, Brennan Turner, Austin Lightfoot, Tim Gould.  FORWARD-Rylan Schwartz, Jaden Schwartz, Rylan Kaip, Matt Angers-Goulet, Chris Hahn, Kyle Reed, Ben Duperreault, Sam Aulie, Andrew Joudrey, Kyle Ireland, Andrew Gordon, Ed Gale.  There were others who were really good in one-year careers as well such as Blake Gallagher, Kevin Anderson, and Ted Purcell that are worthy of mention. The most dominant player, in my mind, was Trapp in 2015 and my favorite player to watch was Gieni and how great of a puck handling goalie he was. As far as my favorite forward, I’m going to go with Reed. He was a dominant forward who could flat out score and played a power game.

8 – INCOGNITO NOT A BULLY – In November 2013, Miami Dolphins defensive lineman Richie Incognito was suspended by the team for detrimental conduct related to a bullying scandal that first came to light by ESPN and non-stop ‘reporting’ that just about pretty much destroyed Incognito’s career. In February 2014 the suspension was lifted and Incognito always was quite adamant about his innocence. I remember following this story closely and having a very negative opinion of Incognito because of it. Well here we are in 2025 and the subject of the bullying, Jonathan Martin, has finally admitted the claims against Incognito were highly overstated and that he never, in fact, ever felt bullied. He actually blamed his mother for pushing the lie.  Incognito posted on X, “The NFL and media ran with a false narrative, ruined careers, and moved on.” Sadly, such is the case with media and I always thought that was mainly a covid-era thing but it’s been going on for who knows how long. I’m actually surprised some media members are even granted interviews with certain sports and political figures. There really is nothing to gain by giving your time to people who want to destroy you.

9 – JAYS GUERRERO – The Toronto Blue Jays had $700-million to throw at Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto but don’t have hardly any for Vladimir Guerrero, one of their home grown stars. This tells me a few things, not the least of which is that the Jays never truly intended to pay Ohtani or Soto. They just wanted to make sure their name was in the news so they could show the fans they were trying. If they weren’t bluffing they’d have gotten a deal done with Guerrero last year after Ohtani signed with the Dodgers. From Guerrero’s point of view, you can’t blame him for wanting to go to the market. If Alex Bregman is worth $40-million a year, Guerrero’s got to be worth $50-million, especially if he has a great season.  I think it’s going to be a long year in Toronto and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Guerrero, Bo Bichette, and Chris Bassitt all gone by the end of the season and maybe Kevin Gausman too. The first three are slated to be free agents at the end of the year and Gausman would have just one year remaining on his current deal.

10 – GRETZKY MOB ATTACK BACKFIRES – Some sports writer from Edmonton, who’s apparently in a few hall of fames (sports writers should not be recognized on the same level as athletes but that’s for another day) took to X on Friday to try and start a mob attack on Wayne Gretzky because he’s not a screwed up radical leftist like the writer apparently is. The writer said Gretzky needs to ‘face the nation and explain his relationship with Donald Trump’. Upon getting much deserved massive blowback from western Canadian sports fans, the writer then tried to suggest the comment was geared around Trump’s 51st State remarks that he has been making. Whether you think Trump is in good taste or not is irrelevant but I’m going to say this as clearly as possible: Canada is not going to be a 51st State. Trump isn’t serious about it, but the more Canadians show our Little Man Syndrome over it, the more he’s going to antagonize us. As I saw from another poster on X on Friday, do you really think Trump wants to annex a country where the majority of the population is woke?  Trump despises Trudeau and belittling him by calling him Governor and suggesting a takeover is simply Trump being immature and childish and taking advantage of Trudeau being low hanging fruit. I find it funny. Sue me. 

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)