Stackhouse’s 10 Weekend Thoughts

2 – RUSH LINEUP – It has to be encouraging for Rush GM Derek Keenan to have a team that is 10-and-3 and has seldom played with a lineup that you would deem to be their best. Robert Church missed two games earlier in the year with injury and he’s missed the last two because of a personal matter.  Scigliano missed two when his wife had a baby a month ago. Austin Shanks also missed a game due to illness. Having said all that, it’s imperative for the Rush to have Church in the lineup. He’s a difference-maker and it’s unrealistic to ask Scigliano to keep the score under 8 every week.  From here, the Rush play at Halifax next Friday night. The Thunderbirds were upset by a Toronto Rock team that has traded away a lot of their veterans and appear resigned to missing the playoffs.  Halifax is 7-and-5 and in the thick of things despite this weekend’s setback.

3 – UFC 313 – Saturday night’s main event for UFC 313 left me a tad disappointed as the Alex Pereira – Magomed Ankalaev bout went the full five rounds but was largely uneventful with Ankalaev emerging on a unanimous decision. Pereira is 37 so time isn’t on his side but my guess is he gets a rematch with Ankalaev sooner rather than later. Pereira did say in a post fight interview that he intends to only take a few days off and go back to training.  The other big match on the card was Justin Gaethje defeating Rafael Fiziev (Lightweight) in a unanimous decision that featured much more action than the Pereira-Ankalaev fight. It’s the second time Gaethje has beaten Fiziev. The Lightweight Division has been my favorite to watch over the last few months, but I don’t see a clear challenger to Islam Makhachev, who is ranked as the top pound for pound fighter in all of UFC.

4 – CFL COMMISSIONER – CFL training camps are eight weeks away from opening up and the league doesn’t appear to be close to hiring a new Commissioner. The league announced Randy Ambrosie was going to ‘retire’ in late October and here we are over four months later and there doesn’t even seem to be names that are being bandied about as a successor. Former CFLer Mike Morreale is the Commissioner and CEO of the CEBL and that league is slated to begin its regular season right around the same time as the CFL starts training camp. My hope is that Morreale stays with basketball and provides continued stability for a league that is emerging as the top professional Canadian-based sports league. It’s just too bad fans in some of the markets haven’t caught on quite yet. I do wonder what the Saskatchewan Rattlers would get for attendance if they competed near the top of the standings as opposed to the bottom, which is where they’ve been more often than not season over season.

5 – TRADE DEADLINE – I used to be on the edge of my seat watching NHL trade deadline coverage on television but I’ve reached the point now where I just go on one of the websites after the deadline passes and then read up on the transactions. Saturday night I did see a monologue from one of the supposed ‘Insiders’ and he delivered a sombre story on Brad Marchand’s deterioration with the Boston Bruins that led to his trade. What I found funny was that this ‘Insider’ knew all about a meeting that Marchand had with Bruins management but he also admitted that he didn’t know who was in the meeting or when the meeting took place. But, trust him. He knows everything else. This is why I can’t watch anymore.

6 – RANTANEN – The Mikko Rantanen trade was the top deal of the deadline, although Toronto media will tell you the Leafs picking up Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo was the biggest impact that any team made.  Rantanen has taken it on the chin over the last six weeks through his surprising trade from Colorado to Carolina to refusing to sign long term with the Hurricanes and playing at a pedestrian level that makes one question whether or not he’s a truly elite player or a player who benefitted from playing with Nathan MacKinnon.  Rantanen going to Dallas is, perhaps, a perfect landing spot. His AAV is, perhaps, $2-million a year less than what he was hoping for but Texas tax laws make up the difference. The Stars are also loaded with talent and my guess he rediscovers the form he showed with the Avalanche, who now have to deal with Rantanen playing within the division. Rantanen did score a goal and an assist in his first game with the Stars on Saturday night.

7 – HOCKEY ALLEGED SEX ASSAULT – CTV/TSN reporter (one of the few true investigative journalists left in this country) Rick Westhead has uncovered another story of a gang rape involving major junior hockey in Ontario. This one involves the Mississauga Steelheads and just like the London World Junior incident, it also involves 8 players and 1 female who felt like she was left with no option but to go along with the assault and then get out as soon as she saw a chance. I looked at the roster of the Steelheads during the year in question and there is a common name on the team that is also charged in the London incident – Michael McLeod. To be clear, no names have been released in the Mississauga matter as it’s still under investigation but the victim says she only felt compelled to come forward once the London incident was public.

8 – HARRIS REINSTATED – Canadian curler Brianne Harris is eligible to return to competitive curling anytime she wants as her near year-long suspension has been lifted after it was revealed she had trace amounts of a banned substance in her system that was a result of intimate relations with her husband, who was in a crossfit competition.  Harris did this the right way. She was found guilty and kept her mouth shut because she knew she was innocent and time would be the deciding factor in this. Now, Harris is launching a legal complaint against the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport and the World Anti-Doping Agency. She’s claiming noncomformity with the code and I hope she wins. Having said that, nobody will give her back her year of loss of play nor can her reputation really be restored because once this kind of news comes out, there’s no putting it back and we are a dumb society. There will be a lot of people who just assume she was guilty and her suspension is over. What should have happened was the notification of a positive test and then an investigation as to how this could have happened and nobody outside of confidential lines should have been aware. It also should not have taken this long to figure it out.

9 – SASKATCHEWAN BRIER – Unpopular take I know, but I can’t get behind a Saskatchewan team in the Brier when the skip comes from Brandon. And, I know it was about ten years ago but I also can’t get behind this team when I can remember when this Skip lost the Manitoba provincial final and refused to do an interview with the local media, bolted to the dressing room and then refused to join his teammates for the closing ceremonies. And, I know it was even longer ago than ten years, but I recall working in the media in Brandon and getting calls from the father to cover his son at various bonspiels and that it wasn’t right that I was always giving the coverage to the Wheat Kings and Bobcats. So, I guess some of this inability on my behalf to cheer for the Saskatchewan team is personal. I admit that. However, just about all the curling teams now are made up of various all-stars at certain positions and then they qualify for a certain province based on a technicality. To me, if you don’t have all four members born and raised in said province then you can’t represent. There will always be exceptions to the rule, I get that. For example, I’m no curler but I was born in New Brunswick and spent the first 19 years of my life there.  I’ve lived in Saskatchewan since 2001. So what’s my home province? I consider it to be Saskatchewan but when it comes to competitive sports I think it’s a muddied issue for sure. It just seems like these provincial curling teams aren’t rostered like they used to be and very few a true representation of the jacket colors being worn.

10 – VANDANE – I want to end this week by issuing a public congratulations to Yorkton hockey product Davis Vandane, who was named Germany’s DEL-2 Defenseman Of The Year earlier this week. Vandane has 56-points in 51-games and that is about 15-points better than any other blueliner in the league. Vandane didn’t always have a smooth path on his hockey journey.  He played for three WHL teams with a 14-game stint with the SJHL’s Yorkton Terriers sandwiched in there. He played two seasons of Canadian university level hockey and then moved on to the ECHL before finding a home in Europe. The 32-year-old still has plenty of hockey in him and I think he’s a good example of one of the wrongs when it comes to player evaluation.  Davis wasn’t an NHL level prospect when he was 17-years-old, but he’s been as good as any pro prospect over the last half dozen years.  

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster)