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Alberta

Andersson, Flames top Tkachuk, Panthers in shootout 5-4

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By George Richards in Sunrise

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Rasmus Andersson scored in the fifth round of the shootout to lead the Calgary Flames over the Florida Panthers 5-4 Saturday night in a matchup of teams that made a major trade last summer.

Adam Ruzicka had two goals and an assist for Calgary. Nikita Zadorov and Blake Coleman also scored.

Florida got goals from Colin White, Sam Reinhart, Eetu Luostarinen and Matthew Tkachuk.

“It was a good game,’’ Calgary coach Darryl Sutter said. “We fought back through a lot of adversity during the game.”

Tkachuk spent six seasons with the Flames before going to Florida in a trade for Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar on July 22.

Tkachuk scored with 6:14 left in regulation to make it 4-all and help force overtime.

“It felt good to get it to overtime,’’ Tkachuk said. “It felt like we were dominating them yet it was somehow 4-3.”

Ruzicka scored on a power play at 15:13 of the first period and Zadorov made it 2-0 with a goal 51 seconds into the second.

Florida tied it with two goals in the second — the first coming when Colin White stripped goalie Jacob Markstrom of the puck as he played it along the end board, took off and put it into the vacated net.

Reinhart made it 2-all with a power-play goal from the slot off a pass from Tkachuk.

Both Markstrom and Spencer Knight ended with 31 saves.

“This was a tight, even game where I did not think one team had a long stretch of dominance,’’ Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “It is one of those games that, 20 years ago, would have ended in a tie. And you would have thought that was right.”

WELCOME BACK

The Panthers honored both Huberdeau and Weegar with a video during a break in the first period. The two were both drafted by and spent their NHL careers with the Panthers before the July trade.

Huberdeau and Weegar both stayed out together for warmups as fans cheered them on.

Florida captain Aleksander Barkov, Huberdeau’s longtime linemate, sent one more pass his way before they both skated to their rooms. Huberdeau was booed when he came out — and scored — in the second round of the shootout.

Tkachuk returns to Calgary for the first time since the trade later this month.

“I didn’t expect to have that many jerseys out there and that was cool to see that,’’ Huberdeau said. “I’ve been here a long time and I think they gave me a great ovation, so that was cool.”

NOTES: Barkov returned to the Florida lineup after missing Thursday’s game against Dallas with an undisclosed illness. He did not practice on Friday. … Defenseman Connor Mackey and forward Kevin Rooney were healthy scratches for the Flames. … The Florida power play has scored in six consecutive games.

UP NEXT

Flames: Play at Philadelphia on Monday night.

Panthers: Play at Columbus on Sunday night.

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Alberta

Partial settlement approved in lawsuit against Calgary Stampede over abuse of boys

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Calgary

A judge has approved a partial settlement in a class-action lawsuit against the Calgary Stampede that alleged the organization allowed a performance school staffer to sexually abuse young boys.

Phillip Heerema received a 10-year prison sentence in 2018 after pleading guilty to charges including sexual assault, sexual exploitation, child pornography and luring.

Heerema admitted to using his position with the Young Canadians School of Performing Arts, which performs each year in the Calgary Stampede Grandstand Show, to lure and groom six boys into sexual relationships.

The school is operated by the Calgary Stampede Foundation.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Alice Woolley approved the deal in which the Stampede has agreed to pay 100 per cent of the damages.

Hearings on the amount will take place on Dec. 14 and 15.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2023

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Alberta

Hot rental market makes search ‘stressful’ for many — and it won’t get better soon

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Marissa Giesinger is pictured in Calgary, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. On the hunt for a rental home in Calgary over the last six weeks, Giesinger and her boyfriend trawled through listings morning, noon and night, only to find most come along with dozens of applications and a steep price tag. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

By Tara Deschamps in Toronto

On the hunt for a rental home in Calgary over the last six weeks, Marissa Giesinger and her boyfriend trawled through listings morning, noon and night, only to find most come along with dozens of applications and a steep price tag. As an added difficulty, many landlords are unwelcoming to the couple’s brood — dogs Kado and Rosco and a cat named Jester.

“We made the tough decision recently to house our dogs with someone else until we can find a place that’s affordable and we can take both of them,” said Giesinger, a 23-year-old Mount Royal University student.

“It’s definitely been stressful.”

The competitive rental market Giesinger has encountered in Calgary is being seen across the country as multiple factors combine: high interest rates deter buyers and add to rental demand, still-high inflation is squeezing renter budgets, there’s an undersupply of purpose-built rental units and population growth is fuelling demand.

These conditions have left prospective renters feeling even more frustrated than usual by sky-high rents, the frenzy of interest that surrounds any affordable listing and the litany of demands landlords can make when so many people are interested in their home.

Giacomo Ladas, communications director for Rentals.ca, calls it “almost a perfect storm” — and it isn’t likely to ease up any time soon.

“What this does is create such a burden on this rental housing market that even though we’re out of the (busy) summer rental season, there’s so much demand that (these conditions are) going to continue like this until the fall and into the winter,” he said.

Data crunched by his organization and research firm Urbanation.ca shows average asking rents for newly-listed units in Canada increased 1.8 per cent between July and August and 9.6 per cent from a year earlier to reach a record high of $2,117 last month.

Between May and August, asking rents in Canada increased by 5.1 per cent or an average of $103 per month.

When Giesinger rented a two-bedroom basement unit with a roommate a few years ago, the duo paid $1,000 per month, but now she routinely spots “super tiny,” one-bedroom places for $1,350 a month.

“If you want a basement suite or an apartment, you’re looking at minimum $1,200 and that doesn’t include any utilities or anything like that unless it’s a super rare listing,” Giesinger said.

Rentals.ca data show newly listed one-bedroom properties in Calgary priced at an average $1,728 per month in August, up 21.6 per cent from a year earlier. Two-bedroom homes have climbed 17.4 per cent to $2,150 over the same period.

The picture in Vancouver and Toronto is far bleaker. Rentals.ca found the cities had the highest rents in the country.

Newly-listed one-bedroom properties in Vancouver averaged $2,988 in August, up 13.1 per cent from a year earlier, while two-bedroom units hit $3,879, an almost 10 per cent increase year-over-year.

Newly-listed Toronto one-bedroom homes averaged $2,620 in August, up almost 11 per cent from the year before, while two-bedroom properties had a 7.1 per cent rise over the same time frame to $3,413.

It’s numbers like these that have convinced Kanishka Punjabi to abandon her hopes of moving in the near term.

“Two days ago, I gave up on my search because the rental market is that bad,” she said.

The public relations worker has been living in Mississauga, Ont., but felt it was time to find a home in downtown or midtown Toronto, closer to where she works.

However, few of the two-bedroom homes she spotted in her two-month search were within her $2,800 budget.

For example, one apartment she liked at the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton streets had 25 offers in just over a week.

“Some people actually just sent in their offer without looking at the apartment too because there are so many people who are in desperate need of rental units,” said Punjabi. “There’s just not enough.”

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. has projected that the country needs to build 3.5 million additional homes beyond what’s planned before the market reaches some semblance of affordability.

It also calculated that the annual pace of housing starts — when construction begins on a home — edged down one per cent in August to 252,787 units compared with 255,232 in July.

Despite the nudge down, Rishi Sondhi, an economist with TD Bank Group, said it has been a strong year for starts because the industry is responding to elevated prices by building at a robust pace.

But between population growth and rising interest rates, he said, “supply is struggling to keep up with demand” and that’s bound to weigh on renters for quite some time.

“In the short term, it would be unrealistic to expect too much of a reprieve simply because population growth is likely to remain strong through the duration of this year — and that’s really one of the big fundamental drivers,” he said.

“In addition, it’s unlikely to expect affordability in the ownership market to improve too much either because we think the Bank of Canada (key rate) is going to be on hold for the remainder of the year, but there is some risk that they take rates even higher, especially if inflation doesn’t co-operate.”

For renters like Giesinger that message puts even more pressure on her to settle on a place soon.

“Now I’m scrambling to find the money for a deposit and we’re still never really sure like what kind of place we’re going to get,” she said.

“And when you’re battling dozens of other people for a rental it can be super stressful.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2023.

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