With the Canada Day long weekend over and a busy sports week that saw the end of the Stanley Cup, the CFL's opening weekend, Aaron Hernandez' arrest and the NHL Draft it is time to bring back everyone's favorite self-proclaimed favorite column, Ruttig's Rants: Rapid Fire Edition.
In honor of Canada Day, we start off with the CFL's opening weekend where stuff apparently happened. Montreal beat Winnipeg on the grand opening of Winnipeg's new Investors Group Field, the defending Grey Cup champion Toronto Argonauts overcame Henry Burris and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Calgary Stampeders beat down the B.C. Lions 44-32 at McMahon Stadium. In CFL news I actually paid attention to, the Roughriders beat the Eskimos as expected 39-18 in Edmonton to start off their much hyped 2013 campaign as Grey Cup hosts.
This is the part of the CFL season I invest myself in the most as every sport besides baseball is in its main offseason, but with an 18 game schedule and two bye weeks anything that happens in the summer in the CFL ends up being irrelevant, Canada Day weekend was a very entertaining opening weekend for the CFL as usual, but once there are other options on the television I will stick to my once a week maximum dose of the CFL for Rider games until the playoff chase heats up and games actually mean something.
In NFL offseason news, Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots was arrested after a week long stakeout of his house in investigation of the murder of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd. Hernandez handed the investigators a broken cell phone and home surveillance tapes that led to him becoming the number one suspect in the case. Much has been made of "The Patriot Way" over the years as New England prides themselves on being a high character organization, but this just goes to show you that the NFL's arrest problem goes beyond the control of the league's franchises.
In baseball the Toronto Blue Jays went on their annual pre-July hot streak over the past month, finally climbing over .500 for the first time all year and temporarily getting everyone back on the bandwagon before the Jays lost two straight series to AL East rivals Tampa Bay and Boston.
The good news for Jays fans: Jose Reyes is back and we will all get to see a lineup that was supposed to be the best in baseball finally back to nearly full health. The bad news for Jays fans: the only thing that slightly above .500 is going to get you in the AL East this year is last place.
Baltimore, Tampa Bay, New York and Boston are simply just too good for the Blue Jays as injuries have taken key players out of the mix and Mark Buehrle has made it his mission to be one of the worst veteran acquisitions of 2013 on the mound. Toronto still has a shot of making the playoffs thanks to their win streak, but those two glorious two weeks in June may likely go down as the only positive of the moneybag Blue Jays season.
It was teenagers in suits week for the NHL and the NBA as the two leagues hosted their annual drafts the past week. The NBA's quick two round event was highlighted by one of the weakest draft classes in recent memory, creating a lot of crazy trades and unpredictable selections. Among them was the first overall selection of Canadian Anthony Bennett from UNLV by Cleveland.
Bennett will now join Canadian Tristan Thompson in Cleveland, but will now also face the burden of being the first overall pick out of nowhere. Bennett is a solid post player and played well for a Runnin' Rebels team that made the tournament, but any college basketball fan will tell you that he was nowhere near being the best prospect in hoops this past season . Canadians can be excited that the growing youth movement in Canada Basketball is arriving early with the first overall pick, but everyone should be more excited to see Andrew Wiggins at Kansas next season if we are awaiting the revolution of basketball in Canada.
In hockey news the NHL Draft was one of the more loaded drafts in recent memory and the Colorado Avalanche opted to go with the best available of many highly touted "can't miss" prospects on the board in selecting Nathan MacKinnon of the Halifax Mooseheads with the #1 overall selection. MacKinnon was clearly the best player in Junior hockey over the past season, and his dominance over a Memorial Cup field in Saskatoon that included top five picks Jonathan Drouin and Seth Jones, who many thought would be the top pick given Jones connections to the city through his dad Popeye, who played for the NBA's Denver Nuggets. Every team who picked in the top four is likely going to get a player who is going to come in and produce right out of junior next season, and the Nashville Predators will come out as the hugest winners in stealing what many considered to be the top pick of the draft in Jones at the fourth spot.
Still the biggest talking point leaving the weekend was the trade of Corey Schneider to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for the ninth pick of the draft by the Vancouver Canucks. After shopping Roberto Luongo for the better part of a year, the Canucks decided that they would get better bang for their buck in dealing Schneider and ending up getting Bo Horvat a highly regarded center for the OHL Champion London Knights out of the deal.
Heading into a new direction the Vancouver Canucks finally can move past the circus they created. A new era on draft day, a day full of new life.
