Time for a short-term hiatus

I am not packing it in, just taking a break

I enjoy getting to events like Huskies hockey, but it is break time for me.

    It is break time for yours truly when it comes to writing this blog.
    The main reason for taking a break is because I have never taken a hiatus from writing this blog since starting it up on August 29, 2014. I usually try to have at most six off days between posts.

    Starting on Monday, my plan is to go 18 consecutive days without writing a post on this blog. You all will probably have a laugh for my return date.

    I plan to be back on here on Jan 24, when the Medicine Hat Tigers arrive in Saskatoon to face the host Blades in a WHL regular season contest. I figured that would be the best time to get back at it, when the Tigers are in “The Bridge City.”

    Of course, I have lots of links to the Tigers due to covering them as a beat writer for 10 seasons from 2004 to 2014 for the Medicine Hat News.

    My break is also a smart one in the veteran move department, because that means I get to avoid dealing with the WHL trade deadline.

    Believe it or not, I am not a big WHL trade deadline fan. That goes back to my time in the Hat.

I plan to post again when Cole Sillinger and the Tigers come to town.

    While I always felt like I did a good job covering items on the trade deadline front, I never liked saying farewell to players and watching them leave town on a personal front.

    The guys that came through the Tigers were all good, and you got to know them fairly well. It made the departures always feel tough.

    I actually started to formulate the plan for taking a break, when I was creating my “Top 10 cool things I saw in 2019” post.

    I figured there would never be a truly perfect time to take a break. With that said, my annual memories post was completed, so it felt the timing was more ideal once that was done.

    On the hockey front, that is a sport that seemingly has something happening all through the year. I figured it would be good to take a break now before all the playoff cycles started.

    I enjoyed being at the rinks all through December after I wrote my “I’m exhausted” post.

    I was happy covering the University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey games at Merlis Belsher Place on Friday and Saturday.

Clashes between the Blades and Raiders are always a fun time.

    It always makes it worthwhile to see the likes of Prince Albert Raiders head coach Marc Habscheid, Medicine Hat Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins, Kamloops Blazers head coach Shaun Clouston, Saskatoon Blades associate coach Ryan Marsh and Huskies men’s hockey team head coach Dave Adolph at the rinks.

    I was pumped to see Canada down Russia 4-3 at the world junior hockey championships in Ostrava in the Czech Republic to win the gold medal on television today. Blades head coach Mitch Love was an assistant coach for Canada.

    Love oversaw the Canadian power play, which went 14-of-34 for a 41.2 per cent success rate.

    More importantly, I know how much pressure there is for anyone associated with the Canadian team to win gold at that event, so I was happy to see Love would get to enjoy a big high.

Blades HC Mitch Love won a world juniors gold medal on Sunday.

    The break will allow me to get my feet wet on some new normals.

    On Friday, I agreed to become the communications coordinator for the Gordie Howe Sports Complex. I’ve already started to create some social media posts.

    The Gordie Howe Sports Complex is just a 10-minute drive from my residence, and I can even bike there in summer. My mind has been flooded with ideas of what I want to do, and it is getting cluttered.

    Needless to say, I want to get used to ins and outs there and get organized.

    When I accepted the spot, I had a mixture of being nervous and being pumped, so I believe this means this will be a good thing.

    I am also trying to help out a couple of old friends in Dan Senick and Cam Hutchinson as they go full steam ahead with running The Davidson Leader weekly paper. I am not going to be able to help out as much as they originally hoped, but I will still try to be a contributor.

    I am working on a couple of articles for them over the next two days. I am planning to be at one of the U Sports women’s hockey games on either Friday or Saturday night, when the Huskies host the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns.

I will be around the Gordie Howe Sports Complex a little more often.

    I am hoping to catch up with a player who is very popular in the area The Davidson Leader serves and has been a popular subject for page views on this blog. We will see how the week plays out first.

    I might still drop in on some WHL games just to scout them. I haven’t done that since the 2016-17 campaign, and it helps me see the game in a different light.

    I find it hard to just go to a WHL game just to watch it unless I am involved somehow.

    Away from sports, I might be able to take in things like a Tuesday night movie. I haven’t been able to do that for some time.

    The sports scene was busy today. Out in Edmonton, Alta., the Blades nearly rallied back past the host Oil Kings before falling 4-3. The Oil Kings lead the WHL standings with a 27-7-5-2 mark.

    Out in Winnipeg, Man., the defending WHL champion Prince Albert Raiders downed the host Ice 5-3. The Raiders had lost seven times in regulation and once in extra time in eight outings before Sunday’s win.
    The Raiders are 21-14-4-1 and the Blades are 18-17-1-2. Both should be in the post-season picture.

The Hilltops celebrate winning the Canadian Bowl in Nov. 2018.

    On the SFMAAAHL front, the Prince Albert Northern Bears took two of three games against the visiting Swift Current Diamond Energy Wildcats at the Art Hauser Centre over the last three days.

    The Bears won 5-4 and 3-2 respectively on Friday and Saturday. The Wildcats took Sunday’s clash 3-0.

    At Merlis, the Saskatoon Contacts fell 5-4 to the Tisdale Trojans in SMAAAHL action on Sunday.

    There seems to always be something happening.

    One of the tough things I find when it comes to covering the local, provincial and WHL sports scenes is you are always taking from Peter to pay Paul when decisions are made about what events you will work.

    As soon as you do one thing, you are leaving something else out. There are only so many hours in the day.

    In the current climate, it always feels like you are doing a disservice to someone.

I will return to the rinks and the SaskTel Centre press box before you know it.

    For now, I am not going to let any of those matters enter my mind. It is break time, but it is not pack it in time.

    You will still see me around, and I will be back on this blog. It isn’t going anywhere.
    Plus, I would miss seeing Saskatoon Blades play-by-play voice Les Lazaruk too much, if I wasn’t in the press box for Blades games.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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