Toronto Bar Advertisement: “Free beer and food during the Maple Leafs postseason schedule”— the day after Toronto missed the playoffs.

In hockey circles they say that crushers who want to become rushers soon find themselves as ushers. The same thing might be true of team executives who listen to fans. Soon they’re sitting with them.

Never is this better illustrated than in the recent firing of Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving. With the Buds missing the post season— after being a preseason favourite of some to win the Eastern Conference— the firing is hardly surprising. Toronto finds its salary cap almost maxed out, its draft capital traded away (just two 2026 picks in top 5 rounds) and its farm system thin. 

To say nothing of a head coach hired by the previous GM doing the dead coach walking behind the Leafs bench. The looming question? Should Toronto re-tool or rebuild? That’s what Leafs Nation wanted to hear from MLSE CEO Keith Pelley last week as he met the media horde to discuss firing Treliving. 

Bear in mind that Pelley— who’s been on the job since January of 2024— is not a talent evaluator or a former coach/GM. He’s a business and broadcast  executive who has run TSN, Sportsnet, the Toronto Argonauts and the European Golf Tour as an administrator. Still there was an expectation that he might get into the weeds on personnel. 

Wisely or not, Pelley fed the press and fans some red meat, proclaiming that the person he hires to run the luckless Leafs will be asked to do a retool— not a rebuild, This led to howls of indignation from the media and fans who want Toronto to scuttle the high-priced lineup led by injured captain Auston Matthews that had failed to advance to the semifinals, let alone the finals, since the Core Four was anointed.  Okay, since 2002, but who’s counting?

Others nitpicked Pelley’s use of the term draft “choices” when hockey cognoscenti call them “picks”. And so on. (Because if it’s a Toronto problem it’s a national problem.) If Pelley’s aim was to take the responsibility on his own shoulders he did so, by outlining the profile of the person he’s about to hire. 

What almost all seem to agree is that Toronto needs to take a bold step in choosing its next president/ GM. Or whether it should be two separate hires. 

If you’re looking for that job description one controversial name quickly comes to the fore: Mike Gillis. A former first-round choice, sixth overall of the Colorado Rockies in 1978, a notable player agent (Pavel Bure, Bobby Holik, Markus Naslund) and the man who ran the Vancouver Canucks for the six most successful seasons in club history 2008-2013. Under Gillis the Canucks came within a game of winning the 2011 Stanley Cup, while also winning the Presidents Cup twice and the Northwest Division five consecutive years.

But the results are only part of the story. The Gillis formula in Vancouver often set traditional thinking on its head. Assessing that in a league with 30 teams (now 32) looking for conventional answers only leads a team to stagnate, Gillis overhauled the Canucks travel, their training programs and their scouting (current Leaf Chris Tanev was one notable free-agent find). His player-friendly approach, honed as an agent, allowed Vancouver to retain loyal players and attract new talent.

The success of the Canucks with the Sedin twins, Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows and Kevin Bieksa (among others) was not due to a charm offensive. Under Gillis the Canucks were a swaggering, self-assured squad loathed in many quarters. Gillis himself was taciturn, brusque and, at times, hostile to the media. He didn’t hide his disdain for business-as-usual around Gary Bettman’s league. There were many in the NHL community who enjoyed the demise of Gillis and the Canucks’ of that era.

Eventually the failure to win the city’s first Stanley Cup and the lingering drama over trading fan favourite Roberto Luongo took its toll. Francesco Aquilini, the owner who’d taken the risk with Gillis, succumbed to fans’ impatience and dumped Gillis’ development plan in favour of Canuck legend Trevor Linden. Whatever it brought Aqulini in the short term, hiring Linden and a steady lineup of other GMs has left Vancouver the worst team in the NHL as 2025-26 winds up. 

We had a front-row seat for that six-year stretch, researching our book Ice Storm: The Rise & Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canuck Team Ever (Amazon Kindle, brucedowbigginbooks.ca). We saw it close-up from the excitement of Gills’ 2008 arrival; to the heartbreak of the 2011 loss and riot afterward; to his disheartening dismissal after finally trading Luongo. We saw the many people in front of the public and behind the scenes who made it a great story. 

Many expected him to return shortly after being fired, but Gillis was adamants about his conditions for returning to an all-consuming job running an NHL franchise. He’d settled in Victoria, B.C., and was enjoying a comfortable life as a consultant and a grandfather. He was going to be picky. Any team that employed him was going to have to subscribe to his specific requirements. 

Compensation would be important for the Toronto native; but employing his plans for scouting, player evaluation and training methods— which had been curtailed in Vancouver— was equally crucial. He’s also stressed that he wants to be a president/ CEO who would hire a separate GM to use the latest innovations to gain an edge. And to use the Leafs’ abundant finances to hire resources far and wide.

In conversations since that time and in proposals he made for other teams who thought of hiring him, Gillis has emphasized the importance of analytics and a specific power structure. For instance, he wants to see two separate scouting staffs within the team to eliminate same-think. In the Athletic, James Mirtle does an examination of the 2021 proposal Gillis prepared for Pittsburgh before they disastrously war with Brian Burke and Ron Hextall. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7166409/2026/04/02/maple-leafs-mike-gillis-nhl/

Gillis knows Pelley from his time as an NHL governor when Pelley was a broadcast executive purchasing the Canucks TV rights. While there could hardly be described as friends they have a platform to discuss any options with Gillis on the board of the TML charitable trust. 

In his 2021 proposal Gillis described his model as “best-in-class, championship organization on and off the ice.” We are guessing that sounds just about right for Leafs Nation. We’ll know by the June amateur draft if that’s the Leafs’ formula, too.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 his previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

In the age of Ozempic, MLB has found another way to shrink people. Without artificial drugs. Just introduce the Automated Ball/ Strike (ABS) system and watch those inches melt away on players.

Take All Star 3B Alex Bregman now of the Chicago Cubs. In the past three years Bregman's has had three teams. His also has three different heights, shrinking from 2024: 6-foot-2/ to 2025: 5-foot-11/ to 2026: 5 foot-10.

Then there’s Gavin Lux of the Cubs. He has somehow gone from 6-foot-2 as a Cincinnati Red in 2025 to 5-foot-10 playing 2B for the 2026 Tampa Bay Rays.

Connor Wong of the Boston Red Sox has likewise played Honey I Shrank The Second Baseman. Wong has gone from 6-foot-2 in 2025 to 5-foot-10 in 2026. 

And there are more. How is this being done? What does ABS have to do with it? Glad you asked. As part of its ball/strike challenge system, MLB wants precise measurements for every player in 2026— the better to create an accurate strike zone for those players who wish to challenge an umpire’s vision.

(The fine print: The current strike zone sits between 27 percent and 53.5 percent of the player’s height, according to MLB.com. Everyone has a customized vertical zone. It is the same width for all players however.)

MLB visited camps this spring to get accurate numbers on everyone. So between 10 AM and noon (you shrink as there day goes on) they got players in stocking feet, heels together, knees exposed, backs against the wall to record their vitals. 

Now, if you are a player you might want to get a lower height. It shrinks your strike zone to your advantage— like that enjoyed by 5-foot-5 Jose Altuve of the Astros. The last thing you want is a strike zone the size of 6-foot-8 Aaron Judge of the Yankees. Already in the first week of the season fans have seen the impact as batters and catchers have employed the ABS measurements. 

So far, umps have had mixed results. Veteran ump C.B. Bucknor has six overturned challenges so far, including two on consecutive pitches, on Saturday. Others have had a clean slate. Projecting the results for the regular season, based on spring-training data , the success rate for ABS challenges will be 53 percent .

Best of all, the system is fast. Only pitchers, catchers and hitters can employ it, and the decision to appeal must be made in three seconds, no looking at the dugout. No wonder it has quickly become a favourite for cheering fans. Next year MLB hopes to introduce technology to determine if players have executed a complete swing at a pitch— always a contentious call. Should that work a robotic strike zone calling every pitch could be next.

Why is this important? Because baseball is on a hot streak making the game better. The pitch clock, Shohei Ohtani, the ghost runner in extra innings, the expansion of the base sizes themselves, legalized betting and now ABS. Plus, they have had some terrific World Series recently. 

As well, Venezuela’s win in the World Baseball Classic final was the most-watched game in WBC history— more than doubling the viewership (4.48 million) of the 2023 final. Last fall, Fox recorded its highest average World Series viewership (15.7 million) since 2017, propelled by global superstar Ohtani and the Dodgers beating Toronto, and exceeding the seven-game average rating of the 2025 NBA Finals (10.2 million).

And Toronto’s drive to within one win of the World Series set Canadian records for ratings and streaming, too. It’s moved The Athletic to ask, “Has MLB overtaken the NBA as America’s No. 2 league?”

That’s a big comeback from the early part of the decade when MLB took the All Star game away from Atlanta and gave it to Denver to placate radicals complaining that the state of Georgia had adopted new “Jim Crow” voting laws. As we wrote in April 2021, announcers were cautioned not to mention “the subject of the move meant to placate black militants and their corporate Gepettos by transferring the game from a city with 50 percent black population (Atlanta) to a city with nine percent black population (Denver). 

Or that the Democratic Party that urged this move realized— too late— that the move would devastate black businesses in Georgia disproportionately. In their plucky praise for costing Atlanta an estimated hundred million in business impact the talking heads were instructed not to cite President Joe Biden’s hyperbolic comparison of Georgia’s democratic voting law to Jim Crow. 

It will be all sweet diversity as MLB commissioners Rob Manfred pretends that he acts independently of sponsors such as Delta and Coca Cola who yanked his strings. 

Despite MLB’s pretensions to a national platform baseball has become a regional sport in 2021, defined by strong rivalries but absent any compelling national voice. While there are wonderful players like Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, none have a national profile à la LeBron or Tom Brady. Its population base is greying at a rapid clip.

The slow-moving sport had earlier been saved from obscurity in the late 20th century by its early adoption of fantasy sports (Rotisserie baseball etc.) and its development of sports analytics via the stats pioneer Bill James. But now, as the pandering to politicians on Georgia voting proves, it’s floundering to find a voice with younger Woke fans.”

If The Atlantic is correct MLB might just have rescued itself from self-imposed destruction five years ago. Who knew that all they had to did was call the balls and strikes correctly. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

In the words of the old torch song, “Spring can really hang you up the most.” For the fans of Canada’s hockey teams in 2026 the results of their best international efforts so far are bracing. Based on what we know of Canada’s not-so-magnificent-seven NHL teams, the news is not going to get any better.

Beaten (no medal) by Sweden in the IHF World juniors. Beaten by the U.S. (silver) in men’s Olympic hockey. Beaten by the U.,S. (Silver) in women’s Olympic hockey. And now just two NHL teams— Edmonton and Montreal— are likely playoff spots in the first round next month. In the East Ottawa has a faint chance at the postseason, three back of the final wildcard at this writing. In the West Winnipeg is five back of a final spot.

To put the Oilers’ playoff placing in the tepid Western Conference into perspective, they would be seven points back of the final wildcard spot in the East. Ergo, no postseason. No wonder Connor McDavid described the West as a “pillow fight”. But Gary’s Gods of parity will give them a shot at a third straight Final spot. With their star Leon Draisaitl injured and unlikely to help much come Round One. Good luck.

If you’re looking for a symbol of all that’s gone wrong in Elbows Up since the turn of the calendar to 2026 look no further than Toronto’s captain and occasional superstar Auston Matthews, the American captain in the Olympics. After years of speculation Matthews had decided in 2024 to stay in Toronto on a four-year contract to see if he could get the this current iteration of the Buds to their first Final series since 1967. (Their first Cup? Let’s keep it real, folks.)

After a seven-game beating from Florida in the second round of the 2025 playoffs— in which Matthews’ team entered as the top seed in the Eastern Conference with 108 points— Leafs Nation decided to beat up on departing star Mitch Marner who hightailed it to Las Vegas while claiming he couldn’t function in Toronto’s hockey market. This despite Matthews scoring just once in the seven games against the Panthers and just 33 in the regular season— after a 69-goal season in 2023-24.

With Marner gone and Swede William Nylander becoming a larger key to the Leafs’ offence, Matthews entered the Olympics as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Would he step up to deliver the goods for his home nation or muddle along as he’d been doing all year?

Canadians— Leafs fans in particular— don’t need to be reminded what happened next. The image of a transcendent Matthews with the gold medal around his neck, celebrating with his team after the OT golden goal from Jack Hughes was extra galling for Toronto fans— who then heard Matthews’ teammates extoll his leadership in the Olympics. Coming just two days after the U.S. women’s team defeated Canada in OT it was a February to forget.

Hopes then turned to a strong finish to the season and playoff redemption for Toronto and the rest of Canadian fans. Guess again. Matthews’ Olympic nemesis Radko Gudas of Anaheim took out Matthews’ knee, sidelining him for the remainder of the Leafs’ season. Which now looks to be over by mid-April. Adding salt to the wounds, Marner is now poised to make the postseason with a dangerous Golden Knights squad.

Feelings are no less bitter in Winnipeg, where the Jets— the top seed in the 2025 playoffs only to lose in Round 2 of the playoffs— saw their maligned goalie Connor Hellebuyck backstop the U.S. in the Olympics with a spectacular performance against Canada in the gold-medal OT game. The highlights will haunt Canadian TV forever. 

Any hopes he might repeat the performance for the Jets in the playoffs are faint and growing fainter as Team Wab Kanew is likely to get an early sayonara sans playoffs.

The most contested battle for Canadian hockey fans might taking place at the bottom of the Western Conference, where the Flames and Canucks are playing tank-a-thon in hopes of getting the top pick in the Draft come June. At a putrid 50 points (as of Sunday) Vancouver is currently the greatest embarrassment yo BC since David Eby, offering little resistance to opponents as they peruse the Top 5 prospects come June. 

Calgary dumped much of their expensive veterans before the trade deadline and now wallow in the depths, hoping for a Top three draft pick of their own come June. For the Flames it’s all about having a competitive squad when their new arena opens for play in the fall of 2027. 

Which leaves the Canadian team that last won the Stanley Cup in 1993, the Montreal Canadiens. Like Quebec separation the Habs are always promising big things to Quebeckers. Usually disappointing. Since Patty Roy stole the Cup for Montreal in 1993 Montreal has seen the Final once (2021) when Tampa waxed them 4-1. They’ve missed the playoffs 13 times in that same interval. 

The Habs are a skilled team with some interesting bits like Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson. Whether they can sustain the six-week meat grinder that it takes to win the Cup is another matter.  The team’s motto is “To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high”. In 2026 they are virtually the only ones in Canada still advancing at the enemy in hopes of salvaging something from the rubble of Canada’s misbegotten year. Bonne chance.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Across North America this month thousands will sit down for an annual rite of passage, the preseason Fantasy baseball Draft. There are many versions of these baseball drafts, each with its own calculus (single-season leagues) and history (perpetual leagues). Scoring formulas can be simple as adding home runs and RBIs or as algorithmic as a stock-market play.

The format can be a snake draft or a mirror draft. The names of teams are fanciful or straightforward. Ohtani-Wan Kenobi, Harper’s Bizarre, Acuña Matata, Soto Speak. Trading and drafting are a constant source of debate and teasing. While the money got from winning is important, bragging rights are even more cherished.

At the same time hockey fans will also assemble for another tradition, the NHL playoff pool. Groups of friends and chains of strangers will sit down together— or online— to select teams of random playoff performers. No Canadian team can win the Stanley Cup? So what, if you win your fantasy pool. Like baseball Fantasy teams these puck pursuers are dedicated to their systems and their lore.

NFL Fantasy leagues are also prodigious as the fall season approaches. No doubt NBA fans will likewise parse their sport for fantasy purposes in postseason pools as well. All geared to enhancing watching your favourite sports through the championship season.

What is beyond doubt is that the Fantasy sports phenomenon— inculcated by the famed NYC Rotisserie league onvented by sports journalists in the 1970s— has re-invented how sports is perceived and consumed by North Americans fans. From a diversion for sports nerds to enhance their fandom it has grown to today’s multi-billion-dollar legal sports betting universe than blankets the broadcasts and dominates the internet.

Where in the past there was only one’s favourite team, today’s sports fans monitor multiple pick-up teams on a number of platforms. Water-cooler talk is now peppered with happy discussions of how Aaron Judge or Connor McDavid racked up a big night against your sentimental childhood squad. The notion of absolute fandom was shattered forever. Insider information became the lingua franca. Those of us in the sports media were gurus to thousands with our own picks and parlays. 

The revolution began shortly after Roto sports became a cult hit in the 1980s. Soon, the rules and regulations governing Fantasy were heard at dinner parties and dives. Everyone from judges to Wall Street hustlers to Hollywood luminaries was in on it. “Who’s your number one draft pick, Bonds or Maddux?” 

While gambling had always existed in the criminal underground and in above-board NCAA basketball pools, the appetite grew for the middle-class sports fan to profit from his/ her obsessive appetite for sports. But outside of Las Vegas, there was no legal sports gambling in North America. (Europe and Asia have long had legal sports gambling)

Leagues mortified at the thought of games being fixed pressured Congress and Parliament to halt any incursions into using their results for gambling. The first major attempts to successfully circumvent this monolith were quasi-betting pools such as Draft Kings and FanDuel who created daily “pools” where fans could assemble teams for that day. Winners were based on one-day production. Prize pools were divided among winners.

The formula spread to just about every sport from golf to auto racing to soccer. Algorithms based on successful business investing schemes were developed. The sports TV networks noticed. Soon, there were shows dedicated strictly to the craft and culture of “who my backup third baseman should be” or what prospects were on the horizon for wily GMs to pick from.

The networks did not go so far as to insert any of this into their coverage of games live, of course. It was all euphemisms and wink-wink from folks such as Al Michaels or Brent Musberger. While the pressure to make sports gambling legal in the U.S. and Canada built steadily though court cases and government bills, they played hear no evil/ see no evil. Like Pravda or Tass they were censoring the reality everyone saw around them.

But it was a losing proposition. The leagues they covered saw an obscene amount of profit from pairing with the corporations that ran gambling. The advent of proposition betting further primed the pump. Needing money to pay the sky-rocketing price of superstar talent teams and leagues saw arms-length gambling as a solution. Don’t take money from betting, Take it from there people who run betting. 

Early in the century the dam finally broke for gambling with Supreme Court decisions that paved the way for, now, 40 American states to allow sports betting. Of them 32 allow online or apps for betting. While sports betting is legal in Canada, so far only Ontario has a fully competitive private industry. Individual provinces operate their own systems and many offshore online sites are accessible. (Alberts is ready to allow private competition in 2027.)

Thus, online touts and info are blanketing sports content with pop-up odds or banner ads running under the action itself. Traditionalists are horrified by this incursion, but it’s clear there’s no getting this tooth paste back in the betting tube. As seen by the high-profile cases of Shohei Ohtani’s translator or the point-shaving of former Toronto Raptors this has also not made sports gambling foolproof. 

But it’s too late now. Newer sites such as Kalshi and Prophet X allow you to bet on any prop or sport. Dedicated betting internet sites go 24/7 to guide live in-game betting. Cash-strapped governments needing tax revenues are opening up the sluice gates.

“Root-root-root for the home team”? Never going back.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Quinn Hughes: "The last time the men [won a gold medal] was 46 years ago." 

Hilary Knight: “And the last time we did that was two whole Olympics ago.” SNL February 28/ 2026

“Someone left this outside the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto this morning: a Quinn Hughes Vancouver Canucks jersey defaced with profanity-laced insults aimed at a 26 year old Olympic gold medal champion. This is Canada in 2026.”— Ted Bird.

If you’re waiting for the giant media pushback against entitled women hockey players tossing barbs on SNL you’ll be waiting a long, long time. Somehow the players on the men’s gold medal team bit their lower lip, took one for the nation on live from New York TV. And the frantic sports media corps could find nothing for which to blame Donald Trump.

Forget Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Modern sports press is a captive of Donald Trump Relativity. If you’re a mewling social justice warrior in the press box everything in the universe if now connected through the cantankerous U.S. president. 

The bombing of Iran is an adjunct to Trump’s connection to the Epstein files. Capturing Maduro from Venezuela is related to the deaths of two frothing ICE protestors. And now the celebration of the U.S. men’s hockey team is connected to stagnating financial approval in the polls. Or something like that.=

For some reason, Canada’s established gentry have a particular fever over him. Well before Trump jibed about Canada as a 51st state, the Laurentian elite that gave flibberty-gibbet Trudeau not one, not two, but three terms as PM has had a unique animus to him. The gall to invite the winning men’s team to the White House and the State of the Union? Heads are exploding, despite the attempts to calm the mob.

Team USA GM Bill Guérin called Trump’s comment “off-coloured” but then added, “There was nothing that was set out to be political. There was nothing that was meant to harm anybody. But people take it that way. What I can tell you is that, I’ll just say our group, we have unconditional love for our country. And what we did was for everybody.

“I don’t care what your political stance is, what your gender, race, view on anything is. I don’t care, this win was for you.” Maybe, but why let a good sulk go to waste? As Toronto radio host Greg Brady joked, “This so-called attempt to ‘liberate the Iranian people’ is obviously just a distraction for Trump to turn the attention away from Auston Matthews playing at home in Toronto this evening”.

Love Trump our hate Trump—and boy, does Robert DeNiro hate him— he is now the pole star in Canadian affairs, a plough bulldozing Confederation while levelling the border. Or so you’d think from some woman TSN reporter in Ottawa asking Senators captain Brady Tkachuk about Trump’s offhand reference to being impeached if her didn’t invite the women’s team. , “I know you supported the women’s team — I saw you watching their semifinal. Would you understand how they could feel pretty put down by that moment?”

When Tkachuk responded “I have no other comments than for the things that we control, and that was that we supported them and they supported us. You can’t control what other people say — that’s just life.” The reporter continued “Why would you laugh when they got invited?” Etc.

She was soon topped by Stephen Tustin: “The criticisms directed at the tone-deaf, immature, willfully underinformed (sic), priviliged (sic) U.S. men's hockey team are earned and justified. It's called accountability. They acted like spoiled jackasses, and are being treated as such. Accountability. #NHL"

Bruce Arthur: "Some U.S. men’s players apologized; even more talked about how much they respected the USA women’s team. What they didn’t seem to realize was that if you respect them and don’t apologize for the Trump debacle, it actually makes embracing Trump worse.”

Chris Selley: “How do you come back to Canada as Auston Matthews and stand in front of Canadian fans in Toronto and promote yourself and wear quite literally the maple leaf on your jersey, while at the same time supporting a Trump White House? I don’t know.”

@IanKennedyCK “Remember that they've all had plenty of time to speak out, to apologize for laughing, to condemn that type of misogyny, and to tout the achievement of USA's women's team. They haven’t."=

Liberal wind therapist Laura Babcock: “Canadian Men’s Hockey lost the Gold medal game but unlike the US Men’s team they didn’t lose their integrity.” 

This Leafs fan not happy with captain Matthews. “Trade him. I don't give a fuck if it's for a bag of used pucks, I want the spineless pedophile supporter gone.”

But you knew that already. For those who don't know how news works. The @USOlympic women's hockey team was expected to win. They made it close but still won gold. Excellent story, but not great. The men's hockey team was not expected to win. An underdog result is always better. Especially after first gold since 1980. Great story. 

Listening to butt-hurt liberals, the men should apologize for having the bigger story. Having struggle sessions with indignant liberal women reporters who are working the insult narrative. Madness. And the women? An off-hand comment in a noisy dressing room about being invited, just like the men, is too much to bear? Becuase Trump hates women athletes? Oh, like below.

This should have been a ten-minute media ripple. But Canada’s TDS sufferers insist it’s still a story because people are discussing it a week later. Been discussed by whom? Progressive media and echo chamber radicals online. But that’s how Canada’s UniParty media rolls these days. Somewhere Pierre Berton is appalled.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Well, the Little Banker is going to have to postpone the snap election call for a couple more weeks. Instead of pushing his grinning mug next to gold medals where it doesn’t belong Mark Carney will have to content himself with bribing Conservative member to cross the floor in Parliament. 

Cry harder. 

Yes, Canada lost both the men’s and women’s gold medals in hockey in OT. We feel for both teams who are filled with great people. But, outside the speed skaters and snow boarders/ arial skiers, it was pretty dry for Carney’s Elbows Up at these Olympics. In 2018, Canada won 29 medals. In 2010, Canada set a then-Winter Olympics record by securing 14 gold medals. 

The team returning from Italy won 21 medals, just five of them gold— only the curling gold in an event played in Vancouver. This in a Games with 118 golds awarded compared to 86 in Vancouver— in an Olympics where Russians were banned in a number of events. Hardly the big push for a call to the polls.

But instead of sulking Canada can always stage another struggle session with defrocked national hero Wayne Gretzky. In case you missed it, the CBC/ Rogers hockey panel paused from the men’s semifinal medal game on Friday to subject Gretzky to a loyalty oath. All it lacked was Gretzky wearing a sign saying traitor as he was grilled between periods.

For those not closely following hockey Gretzky has become persona non grata for his friendship with duly elected U.S. president Donald Trump. Since their bond was first revealed during the 2024 election cycle we have followed the fallout here as a national hero is torn down by his miffed countrymen. 

The full weight of Trump Derangement Syndrome has fallen on the Great One with columnists, TV panelists and Trudeau/ Carney making him out to be the Benedict Arnold of hockey. “Wayne, it’s because of Donald Trump," wrote Bruce Arthur, the Toronto Star TDS expert. “Yes, you’ve been friends for years, even decades. Yes, you tell people you know that you are not someone who is interested in politics. Well, about that. Donald Trump isn’t just politics. He’s the clearest danger to Canadian sovereignty in our history. You should understand that, actually.”

Others were less tactful. “@HenriAGS Fuck off, Wayne. You're a traitor. And why is the CBC still putting this turncoat on TV? He's American now, let him go on American networks instead.” (Note: Gretzky has not taken out American citizenship. The rest of his family was born in the U.S.) So, unsurprisingly, when Gretzky showed up in Milan to see the medal-round games for Canada it wouldn’t’ do but to have Canada’s subsidized media quiz again about his affinity for America, where he’s lived for almost four decades.

There were problems, starting with the live between-periods format. Even if he was warned about host James’s Duthie’s questions in advance (a journalism no-no), live between periods of that game was not the venue for a serious geopolitical loyalty test. It belonged away from the rink. As well, Duthie’s characterization of the present world situation was his own opinion and tipped the scales. 

Not always a good speaker, Gretzky (wearing a Canada lapel pin) handled the grilling pretty well. “I’m a hockey player. I’m a Canadian, a true Canadian. I want Canada to win a gold medal. I’ve never wavered from that. I’ve been friends with prime minsters and presidents. 

“Somehow there’s been a little bit more tension than normal. At the end of the day, Canada and the U.S. are like brothers and sisters, they’re gonna fight and argue, but eventually they’ll come together. That’s the way I see it.”

As an investigative journalist we would be the last to say don’t ask touchy questions. We’re also big fans of Duthie. Our point is the producers set him up in a situation where they’d never put a lefty liberal on the spot. For instance, panelist Kevin Bieksa, who was sitting on the set watching, lives and works in the U.S.  Why doesn’t he, as a Canadian citizen, stay in Canada? Isn’t his California choice a statement about Canada? Who does he vote for? Using the Gretzky criteria don’t we deserve to know?

Or how about grilling Kurt Browning, the brilliant figures skating legend and now TV commentator. Browning took the time to praise LGBTQ figure skater Amber Glenn, an American “pansexual” who  roasted the Trump presidency then flopped in her short program. “It’s been a hard time for the (LGBTQ) community overall in this administration,” she’d said. Browning expressed support for Glenn’s take.

Should we not inquire as to why Kurt sympathizes openly about trans issues during a skating competition? You know that’s never going to happen in DEI Canadian TV. There’s a double standard for the liberal Canadian actors and celebrities like Mike Myers and Samantha Bee who are indignant about Trump’s America but remain there to live and work. 

Who do they vote for? If you’re holding Gretzky to account for where he lives and what political people he follows shouldn’t it be the same for those others who’ve fled to America? Fat chance. 

But that’s the impact of Elbows Up. Trump told Justin Trudeau that after ten years in office his country was a dumpster fire of Chinese coercion, drug running and money laundering. That they’ve left the Arctic wide open. He pointed out that Canada shows up at the party with six beers then proceeds to drink nine. He said he’d put on tariffs if the situation wasn’t resolved. 

Yes, it was brutally honest. Confrontational. But instead of considering the opinion of Canada’s biggest partner, Trudeau’s successor Carney pitched a fit, promising retaliatory tariffs and whipping up a crying chorus of people who wailed “I thought you liked us!” He talked of rallying a group of non-existent nations who agreed with him under a Canadian banner.

Which is where we stand as Carney contemplates an early election call. His polls are soaring while the punditry rakes his opponent Pierre Polievere for being a MAGA clone. (They still haven’t forgiven his BC “apple” interview where PP roasted a reporter trying to score a cheap hit on him.) No doubt one or even two gold medals in hockey would have been a final touch on this election call.

Now Trump gets to host the victorious USA hockey gold medalists at the White House or— he’s sending a plane!—Tuesday’s State of the Union. He’s bringing in the women’s gold medal winners, too. While Carney nurses what could have been. But hey, let’s go to Mexico. We hear it’s beautiful this time of year. If you don’t don’t mind the narco-state drug wars.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Olympic watchers hearing the term “illegal touching” can be excused for thinking that someone had broken into their broadcast of the Winter Olympics with news from the Epstein scandal. But No! Week One of Canada’s Games was ripped apart over a case of curlers illegally touching their stones.

Okay, maybe we should clarify. The men’s team, favourites for the gold, were accused by the Swedes of touching their shot rock with their hand after they’d released it. By rule that means the stone is “burned”, ie. taken off the ice that end. Team Canada’s Marc Kennedy vociferously denied the charge. There was some very salty language exchanged on the sheet and after the match in what is usually a gentleman’s game.

In the end videos did seem to support the claim by the Swedes—who were going to get rinsed anyway. But Kennedy wasn’t relenting afterward, except to say his “You can f--- off” language was uncalled-for. For some polite Canadians the outburst was a bit much. Although some saw the humour in the situation.

Sooner than you can say “double-raised take out” a second Canadian touching brouhaha emerged. This time it was Rachel Homan’s team being hit with the double-touching accusation by the Swiss in the first end! The charge, later verified by video, was received about as well as the men’s accusation. The controversy distracted Team Homan, who lost 8-7 in an extra end. 

Afterward Homan was bitter about the charge, denying she’d double touched. In a frosty interview with CBC she made it clear that Canada does not cheat. Or believes it does not cheat.

Had it been like the 2010 Vancouver Olympics where Canada was running the medal table the entire episode might have been brushed off. Pun intended. But the first week of the Cortina/ Milan Games was a death valley for Canada’s medal hopes. Until Mikael Kingsbury finally notched a gold in moguls on Sunday Canada had just eight medals, none of them gold. Here’s the comparison with Vancouver where 12 golds were eventually won. [Update: Canada has won three golds now through Wednesday.}

Yes, the men’s hockey team can erase it all with a golden win over the U.S. But Homan’s favoured team now will be lucky for a medal. Jacobs ditto for a gold on the men’s side. World’s No. 1 short track sipped skater William Dandjinou went 0 for 2 in his singles events. And on it went. 

In a winter of discontent back home, typified by the tragic shooting in Tumbler Ridge, it’s been hard to find any good news. Canada’s political leaders— who are petrified of taking on the issue of dysphoria— literally joined hands at the memorial service for the dead in that B.C. town. While it was a proper gesture of solidarity the issue of trans needs more than one of Carney’s patented photo ops.

But in Canada’s frozen political landscape of 2026, where opposition to the Liberals’ Elbows Up gesturing is vilified by the UniParty media, there seems to be a stasis that’s at odds with the progress of populist reform elsewhere. Here’s what we wrote last September.

“The two sides of the West are beyond speaking terms. Hollywood doesn’t miss a day without demonizing MAGA. But with populist right-wing governments now running Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Finland, Poland and Hungary plus electoral breakthroughs in Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Britain, the populist wave in Europe is undeniable. 

Strangely immune from this looming trend is Canada’s ruling minority Liberals. Here’s Trudeau groomsman and cabinet place holder Sean Fraser. issuing the all-clear. “This isn’t the Wild West. It’s Canada.” All Canada needs apparently is more tender ministrations from Carney’s army.  Elbows Up, dudes.

As we noted in the 2025 spring election campaign, the Liberals won by ignoring the under-50 demographic while scaring the bejabbers out of white urban Boomers with the spectre of Orange Man Bad. Trump had the temerity of telling Trudeau/ Carney that, after their efforts, the nation’s stock is so low on multiple fronts internationally that it would be better off as a U.S. state. 

For Canadians still reading their 1980s copies of Macleans and watching Knowlton Nash this was a heresy. Led by vituperative cries of “fascism” from Andrew Coyne they’re still blaming POTUS 45/47 for the collapse of Canada under a tidal wave of immigration, money laundering and climate lunacy.  

Reports Sam Cooper: "Trump and US law enforcement agencies know exactly what's happening in Canada. So when the RCMP blocked the DEA from investigating fentanyl networks located here, it was just another nail in our coffin”  Others have, like Trump, noticed that the Canada of hockey and equalization payments is not the Canada of the present. Here’s Joe Rogan saying he’s now changed his mind about ever moving to Canada.

Some, like noted Canadian Malcolm Gladwell, are finally waking up to the pressure of his nation’s sanctimony. Gladwell is now recanting his support for trans athletes in women’s sports. He says he was cowed into saying so. In fact, you can be arrested for hate speech in Trudeau/ Carney Canada if you follow Gladwell’s example. He now lives in NYC. 

It would be understandable if no one had warned that their infatuation with Woke would catch up. But Canadian writer Mark Steyn foretold today’s insanity. “… the history of our time is that the mainstream is lunatic, which is why, in any recognizable sense, both North America and western Europe are on the brink of the abyss.”

An abyss that the West’s elites— particularly in Canada— refuse to acknowledge, preferring the dewey dawn of the Clinton or Obama presidencies. Writes Tristan Hooper: “The problem Canada faces is lies. Entrenched, institutionalized lies enforced through fear and intimidation. I'm seeing a lot of people struggling with whether they can keep their favourite lie but call out the others, but it doesn't work that way… Men can't become women. There is no Gazan genocide. There weren't 215 graves in Kamloops. We can't have a functional country again until the truth is allowed to return.”

Canada might start by admitting that its curlers touch their stones. And go from there.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. It’s a little hard.” Snowboarder Hunter Hess

On the surface the 2026 Winter Olympics look like any old Olympics. Canada’s women’s hockey team outshooting the Swiss 55-6. Jamaica’s bobsleigh team back for one more (futile) try. Canada’s team outfits puffy. Snoop Dog watching curling. 41-year-old Lindsay Vonn trying to compete in the women’s downhill. 

But like the torn ACL that caused Vonn to crash in Sunday’s downhill, the Cortina/ Milano (should have been in Calgary) Games are limping around in a politically charged atmosphere. Having been shut out on pithy quotes at the Australian Open Tennis tournament, the world’s progressive sports media are fishing for gotcha’ quotes from athletes. And they’ve hooked a few.

Athletes like snowboarder Hunter Hess (above) and the #TDS segment are using the Games as a platform to whinge about not getting their way in Donald Trump’s America. "Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the US,” said sad-face Chris Lillis. Here’s the elitist daughter of doctors brought up on ski hills reading her prepared grievance script. Gus Kenworthy urinated “F*ck ICE” in the snow.

US Olympics figure skater Amber Glenn says gay people are having a hard time in Trump’s administration. (Does she not know gay people are treated in the vast majority of Olympic countries she’s competing against?) The New York Times blasted “Americans at the Olympics Can’t Escape the Politics at Home: Opposition to President Trump’s policies has followed the U.S. team to Italy, and athletes, coaches and American fans are facing the backlash.”

The AP objects that countries like Team Sweden were "overwhelmingly white and lacking the immigrant representation”. Painfully hip CBC TV anchor Adrienne Arsenault and Toronto Star scribbler Bruce Arthur are monitoring Opening Ceremonies applause levels for the U.S. team and VP Vance like it was the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. “Oh there we have it… some booing, yes they’re booing the vice president…” 

Those with long memories will tell you that this potage of Olympic protest doesn’t hold a candle to the fuss in 1968 when Tommy Smith and John Carlos gave the black power salute on the podium after winning medals in the 200 metres. (They were sent home from Mexico City for insubordination). 

International judging in figure skating often ripped apart previous Games during the Cold War as Iron Curtain apparatchiks put a heavy thumb on the scales for their own competitors. Then there were the political boycotts of Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) where global politics inserted themselves into Summer Games.

So far, nothing like that. Yet. But it’s never smart to underestimate the invidious powers of those trying to import their cable-news grievance banners from America to Italy. Having lost decisively to Trump in the 2024 federal election on the issue of removing illegal aliens from the U.S., they’ve staged a non-stop tantrum in the ultra-liberal city of Minneapolis, employing hapless nebbishes to harass and interfere in the process of collecting those aliens— many of whom are felons with violent pasts. 

Much to the sadness (wink, wink) of the organizers funded by trust-fund billionaires a pair of these amateur detectives were killed when interfering in seizing felons hiding in that sanctuary city. Murder! they cried. In the best Alinskyist tradition the video of those deaths was then blasted 24/7 around the world. Shocked Euro liberals— themselves drowning in immigrant onslaughts— picked up on the anti-American rhetoric to deflect from their own problems. 

Which is how we found ourselves in the opening days of the Winter Games, parsing applause levels and monitoring DEI immersion among the competitors. While taking every opportunity to bask in the wonderfulness of diversity, the organizers inevitably face a dodgy problem. 

Sport is a merit-based enterprise where the best of the best overcome all the noise and faux equality to triumph. You can gerrymander the competition and include groups who might otherwise not have a chance to parade in the march of nations behind their flag. But reality finally insets itself and you see Switzerland get out-shot 56-7 and the Jamaicans finish up the track in bobsleigh. 

Unconsciously, the debate over the proper DEI levels coincides with the demise this week of the venerable establishment rag The Washington Post. In an effort to cut monumental losses at the paper the entire sports section was gassed— along with many on the foreign desk. To say the Post’s sports section was impressive is understating matters. Writers like Tom Boswell, Tony Kornheiser, Christine Brennan, Michael Wilbon and more were top of the trade.

But that was no help when the rest of the paper lost contact with its audience. Despite being in a government town WaPo’s point of intersection with the community was lost. First to social media. Then to stories such as Covid, where they bought the Anthony Fauci line on isolation, vaccines, children’s vulnerability to the virus, origin of Covid etc. 

It was reminiscent for us, to the time in 1996 when CBC cut sports from its national newscasts and current affairs. All the while insisting it needed to preserve its news divisions and foreign bureaus. We had three shows cancelled as CBC chased the business audience. A year later they were back to including sports in their news division again. Too late. The audience deserted to TSN, Sportsnet, The Score. 

CBC has the same issues— and the same attitudes. Canadian woke peddlars like George Strombolopoulos complain that not wanting to watch Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl halftime show is racist. According to the former CBC meat puppet, @strombo “Of all the things I’ve seen said about the [other] halftime show. This seems to be the [most] accurate.… the people who want “their own” halftime show are the same people who wanted their own drinking fountains.”

It’s almost comic to see how far from reality the TDS sufferers have drifted. Even as DEI, Covid and climate fade as hot-button issues they will still pushing the old agenda. Because you can always tell a liberal. You just can’t tell him much.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

The Olympic hockey break begins this Friday as the best players in the world (minus the greatest scorer in NHL history and his Russian teammates) head to Torino. There won’t be NHL hockey again till February 25 as the gold medal is decided in Italy.

No doubt there will be memorable moments for one nation and heartbreak for several more of the major contenders— Canada, USA, Sweden, Finland. Already Team USA is priming the pump with commercials showing Jon Hamm exhorting Auston Matthews, Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy, Jack Eichel and Brady Tkachuk. “You’re going to Milan to bring home the biggest prize of all.

“Canadian tears,” Eichel interjects.

“Exactly…Wait, what? What did Canada do?” The Mad Men actor questioned.

“Stuff,” Tkachuk states.

If you need to ask what “stuff” you need to get a life. Stuff means the Four Nations tournament held this time last year. Canada persevered over its goaltending and more to beat the USA for the title, one invented by the NHL to fill the All Star gap. If that formula sounds like a recipe for half-hearted effort you’d be wrong. 

The first USA/ Canada showdown in the round robin is probably one of the Top 10 most memorable men’s games ever. Played against the backdrop of incoming POTUS Donald Trump musing about Canada being a 51st state, it resonated like few games in history. Here’s how we described the win by Team U.S. 

“You wanted a border war? You got a border war. And just like the political conflict this one came down to Canada’s defence. Or lack of same.

After weeks of a phoney war of words between Canada’s abdicated leadership and America’s newly elected Trump administration, the question of Canada’s sovereignty crystallized Saturday on a hockey rink in Montreal. It was a night few will forget. The 3-1 score of Team U.S. over Team Canada being secondary to other outcomes.

Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada’s invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S.players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.) 

Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy. 

Those who’d expected a solidarity moment pregame to counter booing the anthem had been optimistic. “Kinda think it might be more fitting for the U.S. team to go stand shoulder to shoulder with the Canadians, under the circumstances. That, I’d cheer.,” said Andrew Coyne. Wrong again.

Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult was shocking as referees tried to start the game .

But in these unprecedented times who could have predicted the outcome? Under-siege Canadians were represented by fans wearing flashing red lights. They’d been urged on by yahoos in the Canadian media to boo everything American they saw, unaware-but-uncaring if it ruled out Americans playing in a Canadian city when they get the chance in the future. 

“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was,” bawled Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur, “because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the anthem.”

He got what he asked for. It was as if large dozing segments of Canada had suddenly awoken to their fate in the weeks since incoming POTUS Donald Trump’s tariff threats forced PM Justin Trudeau to resign and prorogue Parliament so his Liberals could stage a succession plan. 

Instead of looking inward to examine what Canada had done to invite trouble the target was instead on Trump, who many believe is supposed to act like a beneficent older brother to Canada. Indignant Canadians are suddenly cancelling winter vacations to the U.S. while boycotting American chain stores like Home Depot and Costco. 

Even though Canada’s military is a token force following years of Trudeau downsizing and DEI incursions, the sunset media, without irony, invoked Vimy Ridge and D-Day in their disgust with Trump, who wants Canada (and NATO allies) to actually pay for their defence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

The TV commercials from Canada’s corporate side also waved the patriot flag, too. Leading one to wonder had they really missed the Trudeau decade that prompted this? How he’d lowered the flag for six months in penance for racism and genocide? Did they not hear him talking about Canada having no culture now? How it was now postmodern? How it was now 40 million narratives?

Apparently not, as they revived narratives from the 1980 Quebec referendum to stir the crowd.” On this night it was wasted, as Canada’s goalie Craig Binnington   was outclassed by America’s Connor Hellybuyck in a stunning loss. Canada got revenge five days later, winning the tournament with a 3-2 OT triumph.

Leading to the likely 2026 Olympic showdown between Canada and the U.S . “Are we sure we can’t just hug it out?” Hamm asks. Not these mad men, Jon. Once certainty— if the Four Nations was any indication of the rivalry between the U.S. and Canada  fraternal feelings will be on hold for a while.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

The contestants for the Super Bowl were decided Sunday in Denver and Seattle.. One in a raging snowstorm, the other in a blizzard of TDs. Outside a Keystone Cops call/ non call on a Denver fumble/ pass, for once the referees managed to curb their addiction to covering the field with flags. But people were still buzzing about a controversial call in overtime in the Buffalo/ Denver Divisional matchup the previous Saturday. 

The video of Bills receiver Brandin Cooks apparently catching the ball, having his knee touch down and then having the ball stolen by defensive back Ja’Quan McMillian received Zapruder-like scrutiny.

In a rushed decision (the game was threatening to run long into the second game Saturday) the referees awarded the ball to Denver. To coach Sean McDermott, who sat on the NFL competition committee, the play needed more study. The grateful Broncos then went on to kick a field goal to win the contest 33-30, crushing the Bills’ hopes of a Super Bowl yet again. 

While the decision was controversial, what followed was no less so. A frustrated Bills owner Terry Pegula, seeing his weeping players in the dressing room, fired longtime head coach Sean McDermott. Then he promoted GM Brandon Beane, equally culpable in the disappointment, to president of football operations/ GM. Needless to say the Bills Mafia was incensed and the football world baffled by the move. 

Pegula intimated that had Cooks been awarded the ball and the Bills won the game, McDermott would have coached the AFC Championship game against New England and maybe kept his job for 2027. So much resting on a single debatable play that was dissected endlessly in the media. Others said that video replay is ruining the game with endless interruptions and time wasting. 

The real takeaway from Too Many Cooks is how slim the margin of winning is in today’s NFL. Gone are the days when Buffalo surrendered 55 in a Super bowl. The current Bills might have gone to four Super Bowls were it not for a half dozen plays over five playoff seasons. The Kansas City Chiefs might have missed one or two of their titles. And so on. The day of decisive wins has given way to the cliffhangers decided on a play or two.

But there’s a price that’s paid for parity, stretching the talent thinly over 32 teams. The margins between top and bottom teams becomes razor thin. Lesser players are far more likely than stars to cheat to make a play. The more teams, the greater the chance of narrowing the gaps via fouls. The more referees take centre stage.

Or as the NFL says, On Any Given Sunday the best can be worst and the worst be first. More and more those plays are left to the referees' discretion as they sort through a thicket of rules handed down by the competition committee. Needless to say flag day leaves no one satisfied— as the Bills/Broncos demonstrated.

It leaves a lot of ill will among fans and plenty of skepticism from bettors and fantasy players about the integrity of the product. While it’s likely that this past Sunday’s games will garner huge ratings (especially with the arctic cold outside) there is some question as to whether the NFL might be heading for the fate of others sports.

Remember that, until the Super Bowl era, the big American sports events were boxing matches, the Triple Crown, the World Series and college bowl games. (In Canada it was the Grey Cup, the Stanley Cup and the Brier.) Most, if not all, have been pushed aside by the NFL marketing colossus. 

But who’s to say the NFL might not simply revert to simply a gambling proposition when fans tire of the seeming injustice of referees deciding everything in an over-adjudicated game? Or when the personal connection of having played the sport, is eliminated?

As far back as 2016 we wrote, “Canadian author and social behaviour wonk Malcom Gladwell famously remarked that, in 25 years, no one will play football. In the weeks after making the remark, Gladwell expanded his hypothesis to say that the NFL is living in the past and has no connection to the society it inhabits.

This attention grabber seemed a little far-fetched when Gladwell spoke. The NFL has lapped the field in popularity among team sports and rakes in over ten billion dollars a year from TV networks anxious to broadcast the games. If ever there were a lock cinch for security it’s the NFL shield and its attendant communication, marketing and gambling tendrils. 

But now the first chinks in its armour are perhaps starting to emerge.” Can you say Bad Bunny in a dress as the Super Bowl halftime show?

Writer Chuck Klosterman’s new book Football sees football’s problems in comparisons to horse racing. “In the 1920s, the average person still had a real relationship to the culture of horses. They had a blue-collar job, and horses were still doing some of the labor… They definitely saw horses all the time. The horse was part of the world in which they lived.

That is no longer the case. Now, horse racing is just for people who own horses and people who gamble on it. That's really all it is. My fear is that football's gonna put itself in a position where it's too big. Its tentacles reach too far. And people will say, "Well, I guess we'll choose something else." And when it collapses, something that size collapses hard. It kind of implodes on itself.

“What's happening with the way money operates in pro and college football, it seems precarious to me. The financial side's changing in an exponential way. And when society shifts, it's the big things that can't. They're not nimble. The small things can.”

Remember. Things change. Back when the Patriots started their Super Bowl run Democrats were in favour of deporting illegals. So for now enjoy the games. Tolerate the refs. And pray that leagues go to divisions like soccer does.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

If you were planing to do a tour of all 32 MLB parks in 2027 maybe you should tell your travel agent to pause before he presses BUY. The prevailing feeling a year out from the start of the 2027 season is that MLB owners are going to go full Gary Bettman in pursuit of a salary cap.

That’s the reason many contracts are scheduled to expire by the Dec. 1, 2026 deadline for the latest CBA. It’s why broadcasters are quietly assembling alternate programming to fill the weeks and months of a lockout, which is expected from owners to freeze all league business including trades and signings. 

It’s nothing new. The obsession to get some sort of restraint on salaries has led to work stoppages in nine separate strikes/ lockouts to break the back of the MLB Players Association, formed in 1967 by the formidable Marvin Miller. Where NHL players caved and NFL players split between stars and regulars Joes, the MLB players never wavered. They paid a price for their successors.

None of the stoppages worked in MLB getting a cap. Still, the teams tried and failed, getting only a luxury tax as a result of shutting down seasons and losing hundreds of games to stoppages. Most notable to Canadians was the stoppage in mid-1994 that resulted in the now-defunct Montreal Expos losing a shot at the World Series.

Where other leagues are bound by draconian cap rules and regulations MLB has used the luxury tax to govern its salary grid. We wrote about the evolution of this feud in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Ruining Sports (brucedowbigginbooks.ca/capinhand) 

The problem for MLB (for all leagues really) is that caps can work when revenues are stable. The balancing act between small and large markets can be managed. But when new revenues come in, ballooning the difference between large and small markets, the rich are willing to pay the luxury taxes and upend the competitive balance caps allegedly provide. 

George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees teams were prime examples of spending to the hilt from 1980-2010. They used their advantage in cable TV to underwrite high-profile free agents and manage lopsided trades for stars. They were soon followed by a like-minded group of other large markets.

Still, smaller markets— unburdened by the salary cap floor constraining NHL teams— managed to win World Series for a time. But now the staggering new revenues from networks, cable TV, digital, logo rights and the betting industry have blown a gigantic hole in the cozy MLB competition. It is funding contracts that boggle the mind. They include Juan Soto's 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets, Shohei Ohtani's 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, Mike Trout's 12-year, $426.5 million extension with the Angels, Aaron Judge's $360 million deal with the Yankees and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s $500 million extension with the Blue Jays. 

They have corresponded with a time in which the World Series teams have come from the largest markets or from owners willing to underwrite the economic levers. You have to go back to the 2015 KC Royals to find a small-market winner and the 2020 Tampa Bay Rays as a Series finalist.

The latest arguments for salary caps is the World Series winning L.A. Dodgers—who’ve won three of the five World Series in which they’ve appeared since 2017— signing prime free agent slugger Kyle Tucker to a four-year, $240 million contract. (He’s reported to have turned down an even larger 10-year $300 million offer from Toronto). Added to the Dodgers already formidable lineup it seems unfair to baseball fans who still think fair is a concept in sports.

The problem that leagues hope a salary cap will address is how to have huge markets to compete will small markets in the same economic model. No one argues that Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Tampa or St. Louis are in the grouping of top teams. Were teams to allow open competition for talent— as soccer does to a large extent— you’d probably only have a 20-team MLB or an 18-team NBA.

But greedy owners want to bloat their leagues to 30 (MLB) or 32 (NFL, NHL, NBA) teams to capture the domestic and global marketing opportunities afforded by more teams. Their least concern is for fans who want to see the best but are fed watered-down competition. 

After years of accepting the model of endless regular seasons followed by playoffs, fans have forced leagues into creating mid-season competition (4 Nations Challenge) or international events (Olympics, World Cups) to keep their massive inventory of in-season games relevant till playoffs. But owners would prefer to keep the old models going.

That’s why the 2027 MLB labour stoppage could go as long as two seasons should players stay together. (Two years was what former NHLPA director Bob Goodenow estimated in 2004 before his members turtled.) As strong as the MLBPA has been it’s hard to see global superstars like Ohtani and Soto putting on the hair shirt for long with hundreds of millions at stake for them. They do not emerge from the culture of loyalty Miller created 60 years earlier. 

It will be a hard sell for players denying fans their sport. Fans would likely revive the “greedy players” rhetoric the owners feed them as a disincentive. (As if only owners should profit from new revenues.) The owners, meanwhile, are likely also counting on the pressure of broadcasters and sponsors who’ve invested billions in MLB to pressure players into surrendering a cap. 

As well, the union and executive director Tony Clark are in the middle of a federal investigation into MLBPA finances that launched around May 2025. Any pursuit of a prosecution by the government could have a demonstrable effect on union leadership and, potentially, its positions in bargaining.

It’s a shame to shut down the sport at a time when baseball has improved its product substantially with a time clock, ABS and ghost runners for extra innings. So soak up what you can of 2026 and hope that sanity prevails before there 2027 season is lost. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

In our book The Meaning of Puck” How Hockey Explains Modern Canada we talked about the role of Don Cherry and Hockey Night in Canada in shaping how the nation sees itself as it drifts, like an abandoned schooner, toward the rocks of post-modernism. (As Shoresy would say, “He set the tone.”)

Since that book, Cherry has been purged for mixing politics with hockey analysis once too often. We discussed the noisy departure here. What was unquestionable then and is undoubtable now, Cherry’s stark code of honour and responsibility  represented a significant swath of the Canadian population. For that reason he was loathed by the CBC’s elites and listeners. The gap, if possible, has grown wider in the age of Trump.

Alternative views now lurk on social media. Since that point HNIC has become, Kevin Bieksa aside, a gentle ode to the Liberal worldview. A bit of boyish humour, a ton of whiteboard analysis, some trade rumours and nostalgia for the Elbows Up set from Ron Maclean.

Which leads us to Shoresy and the phenomenon of Heated Rivalry with its gay theme and its huge female crossover audience. Having dealt with Heated Rivalry here, we decided to belatedly catch up with Shoresy, binge-watching on a long flight. What we discovered was perhaps the most Canadian television program ever since Trailer Park Boys.

Created by Montrealer Josh Keeso (and directed by Rivalry’s director Jacob Tierney) it’s a wildly funny, irreverent, authentic, profane, sexy and addictive watch now headed to its fifth season.

It is populated by people, male and female, who talk hockey with its Franglais, profanity and endless insults. It would be futile to reproduce the deluge of lines that fall like leaves in autumn but here’s a sample. “My Only Regret Is Not Serving My Country, And I Think About It Every Time I Go To War On Your Mom's Ass.’” And them there’s 'What Was It Like Seeing All Your Friends Move Up A Grade Without You And Do You Use It As Motivation Today?”

Like its missing teeth, what makes Shoresy authentic is its disdain for political correctness. Starting with the speed-talking Keeso the putdowns fly. He introduces Newfie Ted Hitchcock by explaining, “If you say it fast it sounds like ‘ten-inch cock’”. His young indigenous sidekick Sanguinet, nominally the coach, is always ordered to shut up. Until he finds the courage to fire back and joins the putdowns.

Shoresy is a love note to the segment of Canada being ignored by the current fashion of faux diversity. These people are diverse as hell, but no one in authority ot the media sees them. They don’t use their diversity as a lever tho extract more power. They’re cut-throat and conniving in favour of their own interests. And viewers love it.in the melee.

Everyone is in on the putdowns, no one appeals for mercy, and the indigenous characters are bold, sexy and empowered. Characters talk only French and everyone seemingly understands them. Quebec vedettes Laurence LeBoeuf and Marie-Mai Bouchard play love interests of JJ Frankie JJ, an enormous bear of a man who only speaks French —when he speaks. And there are hot bodies male and female, everywhere.

Where most sports movies and TV shows fail in reproducing on-ice or on-field action, Shoresy’s producers have former pros who can skate, shoot and fight like the real thing. The many game sequences show the beer-league hubris and recaptured glory of guys playing for the love of it— and for each other.

The engaging engine driving the show, Keeso plays the aging Shoresy, milking the final years of his youth in a fictional senior hockey league, the North Shore League, comprising Sudbury, Timmins, the Soo and North Bay (a fifth team, from SSM, Michigan is added later). His team in the NoSho “whale-shit hockey” league never wins and is about to be folded by an indigenous family of three young women. 

He exhorts the players to do better from his seat on the toilet between periods. To no avail. He’s mocked by a teenaged cable new kid. “What Advice Do You Have For Other 40-Year-Old Balding Losers Going Through A Tough Time?' Faced with losing the team he vows to “never lose agin”. He recruits some wildly questionable ringers, “sluts” he calls therm, and some local prison guards, all named Jim. And they fight, man, how they fight.

The cultural references abound. The prison guards play a version of jailhouse Reach For The Top with inmates. The names of famous NHL players are dropped relentlessly and with awe. There are rude jokes about hand jobs at Wasaga  Beach, Ont, Timmins’ Mennonites all named Appeldorn and life in the shadow of Inco, For all its nonsense this is a show that lives in a real world, not a Hallmark Xmas card.

If the stated goal is to offend everyone then Shoresy succeeds brilliantly. In one scene the former coach, now goalie, converses with the team owner, played by the smoldering Tasya Teles, with his penis hanging out of his underwear. They do a sexy “tarps-off” calendar shoot that appeals to both straights and gays. This is a horny show.

But offence isn’t the point. (Although it makes Mike Meyers Elbows Up seems ridiculous by comparison.)  Like the telephone calls to their parents after wrecking opponents. Shoresy is a love note to the segment of Canada being ignored by the current fashion of faux diversity. These people are diverse as hell, but no one in authority ot the media sees them. They don’t use their diversity as a lever to extract more power. They’re cut-throat and conniving in favour of their own interests. And viewers love it.

And yet there’s a real sense of companionship and love among the brutes and brawlers, the groupies and hangers-on. One wishes they could devote an intermission a week on HNIC to these guys, although their authenticity might embarrass the current stakeholders. And Cherry’s infamous seven-second delay would get a workout.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

Adin Hill. Jordan Binnington. Logan Thompson. Sam Montembeault. Four goalies considered for Canada’s Olympic mens hockey roster. 

One of these players is not like the others. In fact, one of them is unlike anyone else on Canada’s team announced last week. Sam Montembault— who was on the Four Nations roster last February— would have been the only French Canadian player on the roster. The absence of Quebec players marks the first time no Quebeckers made a Canadian Olympic team. (They’ve averaged four players per Olympics post 1998.)

It’s no better at the junior level as only Caleb Desnoyers made Canada’s roster for the 2026 World Junior championships in Minnesota. Who knows if a couple of French players might have saved them from a third-straight ignominious exit at the WJC.

How is it that the province that has produced so many stars is now reduced to no Quebec players representing the country? Montreal author Brendan Kelly called the shutout an “indictment of Hockey Quebec… Why is it that the province is not producing NHL stars any more? Quebec is not producing the goalies like it used to?”

What is surprising is how little competition there is in Quebec for that Olympic berth these days. Hockey is blood and bone (sang et os) in Quebec. Always has been going back to the days of Aurel Joliat. It was built on the legacies of Rocket Richard, Jean Beliveau, Mario Lemieux and Vincent Lecavalier. 

On defence there was Denis Potvin, Serge Savard, Jacques Laperriere and Guy Lapointe. There have been great goalies such as Jacques Plante, Bernie Parent and Patrick Roy. Now?

It’s probably safe to say the best French Canadians in the NHL at the moment are Jonathan Marchessault and Pierre-Luc Dubois. But they were hardly favourites to play in Turin. Ditto Calgary’s Jonathan Huberdeau, who once scored 115 points in 2022-23. Last February’s Four Nations Canadian roster had the single Quebec product— and that was goalie Montembeault.

It’s not like the QMJHL doesn’t produce players. Three star Maritimers on the Olympic squad— Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon and Brad Marchand— are products of the Quebec League. Since the NHL began allowing teams to send players to Olympic rosters, Canada has averaged four Quebec-born players per squad and each year featured at least one goalie from the province.

And it’s not like there are no Quebec players in the league. Last year, 6.1 percent of the NHL was Quebec-born players. That was the second-most of any region behind only Ontario (17.6 percent), and it's up from the 5.3 percent from last season. And yet, you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the overall stats.

To find the root of the drought you can look at the draft where only one French Canadian player— Alex Lafreniere— has been taken No. 1 overall since Marc-Andre Fleury was taken in 2003. (No one seriously considered Lafreniere for Team Canada.) In 2025 three QMJHL players went first round. In 2024 none. In 2023 none. In 2022, two. In 2021 four (one non Quebecker). You get the idea. 

Now look back a  decade or longer. Only one French Canadian other that Dubois went in the first round in 2016. Just one French Canadian went in the 2017 first round, two in 2015, none in 2014, Drouin and three others in 2013, none in 2012, Huberdeau in 2011 and none in 2010.

As Boston star Michel Bergeron showed, you don’t have to be a first rounder to become a star. It’s also true that prospects are emerging from everywhere in the world, and so French Canadians— who used to have better odds— are having to compete in a far bigger talent pool. But that hasn’t kept the OHL from turning out a motherlode of young stars.

The culture of hockey in Quebec is in turmoil. Former Montreal goalie Jocelyn Thibault resigned as head of Hockey Quebec, citing a “resistance to change” among the regional associations.

There are many other factors in play. Access to elite training, cost, warmer winters eliminating outdoor rinks, cultural preferences for other sports— all play some part. But as we said in 2019, “the days when Canadiens GM Sam Pollock getting the top two French Canadians as protected draftees was considered a steal are long gone.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

There’s an observation that only two things bind modern Canada. The federal equalization scheme and hockey, The past year illustrated that equalization is on tenuous ground with talk of separation in Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Hockey, conversely, drew the nation closer at the moment that Donald Trump read the riot act to Canada’s elites. After the mens junior squad bombed out of the Junior Hockey championships for a second straight year, a new crisis emerged. To cover their purging of Justin Trudeau and insertion of Mark Carney as PM. the notorious Mike Myers’ Elbows Up homage to Gordie Howe’s elbows was appropriated by the Liberals (In true Woke wonk fashion, Howe never carried his elbows in Carney’s crash position. He kept them by his sides for greater power.) 

In February’s Four Nations Cup, played at the height of tension between the two nations, Americans launched a Shoresy brawl in the first game, won easily by Team USA 3-1. As we wrote at the time, “Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. 

Three fights to be exact when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S.players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)  Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.”

Perhaps the least-appreciated aspect of the tension was the booing of the Star Spangled Banner.by Canadians who have many Americans playing in their nation’s NHL squads. Leftist Toronto Star scribbler Bruce Arthur, bristled, “You’re damn right Canadians should boo the anthem.”

But in the rematch for the tournament title Canada reversed the tables, winning 3-2 in OT.  The rush of nationalistic pride— from people who just weeks before were at each other’s throats over Indigenous claims and pipelines—fed a demographic topsy-turvy that swung Liberals 20 points in the polls, defeating the stunned Conservatives and coming within a few seats of a majority under Carney. Such was the hockey-fed insanity that NDP voters abandoned their far-left mantras to vote for a man who’d only weeks prior was a director of international giant Brookfield Investments.  

One other byproduct of the Four Nations was the defrocking of Canadian legend Wayne Gretzky, who’d made a public show of his support for Trumping the 2024 presidential election. He was coldly rebuffed as he shook hands with the Canadian players before the Final game. It was not the finish for Gretz. He was reviled for golfing with The Donald in November, and then mocked for his faceplant appearance at the FIFA 2026 World Cup men’s draw. We wrote, “Gretzy apparently thinks there are countries called “North Mack-a-donia” and “Cur-ack-ow.” Other stabs at geography were almost as tortured.

Bitter Canadians could put up with him sucking up to Trump (he was mentioned as being in the crowd at the DC Xmas tree lighting) but failing geography is unforgivable. The week that started with Gretzky in a photo golfing at POTUS’s Jupiter, Florida, golf course was ending with him pummelled for his abuse of nations with different-sounding names. The Wayne Gretzky Center For Kids Who Want To Talk Good. “

In between the Gretzky episodes, two men who’d shaped modern hockey passed away. In September, on the anniversary of his participation in the 1972 Canada/ USSR series, Ken Dryden died at age 78. “For a generation that watched him develop he was likely the quintessential modern Canadian. Son of a charitable community figure. Educated in the Ivy League. Obtained his law degree. Served as a federal cabinet minister. Author of several definitive hockey books (The Game is perhaps the best sports non-fiction in the English language). Executive of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And more.

“He was on the American telecast of the 1980 U.S. Miracle On Ice at Lake Placid. And the radio broadcast of the 1976 Canada Cup. Ubiquitous media source. Loyal to Canada. And crucially, a son, husband, father and grandfather. If you’d created a model for the citizen of Canada of his times it was Ken.”

A less-loved figure in hockey— but no less significant— died the week after Dryden with the passing of former NHL Players Association director Bob Goodenow, who led the union through three momentous labour fights. Our take: “Tenacious, fearless and bold describes his style. Cuddly and sentimental he was not. The former lawyer and player agent for Brett Hull was not impressed by NHL self-dealing, and he said so. The Harvard product made a bad enemy after he succeeded Alan Eagleson in 1992.

“Today’s players owe him so much for finally giving them self respect. While players in other leagues ate steak, NHL players ate KD. Our book on the topic Money Players is an exhaustive catalogue of dirty dealing and deceit.

“Goodenow convinced hockey players that to earn their worth in the market they had to stick together in negotiations. It would be trying as fans and the media took the owners’ line under new commissioner Gary Bettman when they locked out players in 1994. He didn’t suffer reporters who were NHL echo chambers or old-timers who pined for there good old days of making $1000 a year.

CBA negotiations have never been the same. Player salaries have never been the same. Media covering hockey has never been the same. Eagleson was criminally convicted in the U.S. and Canada for the self dealing revealed by Conway and us. That’s an impressive legacy. RIP the man who reformed pro hockey from within.”

In a hangover story stretching back seven years, the sexual assault trial of the World Junior Hockey gold medalists of 2018 was a field day for narratives in the media and the courtroom. The facts, meanwhile, were stowed away beneath the surface of social media. As we reported in our June 28 column: “Outside diligent reporters such as Katie Strang of The Athletic and Rick Westhead  of TSN, the media universe simply assumed guilt in the five players, because. hockey… Social media liberally smeared them as rapists, symbols of women’s degradation.

The five players on trial had been unfairly branded as criminals by Hockey Canada which rushed to condemn them in a quick civil settlement of EM’s charges. HC never consulted them about their side of the story before surrendering the cash. In the end, Ontario Justice Maria Carroccia found EM not "credible or reliable” enough to send the players to jail. While scolding their behaviour she declared the young men not guilty. It was a courageous decision, knowing it would prompt backlash. The Globe&Mail led the charge, declaring “After the Hockey Canada verdict Advocates fear survivors will fall silent”. 

As 2026 dawns the outlook for Canadian NHL teams looks bleak. Just two teams would make the postseason today— Edmonton and Montreal— while Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver wallow below the cut line. Which leaves the Elbows Up crowd pining for a replay of the Four Nations as Canada heads to the Olympic tournament. Don’t expect Wayne Gretzky to ride to their rescue.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

We talked with our friend, fellow author Jim Malner (Big League, Royal Box), about sports books. He asked, “What are the most popular hockey books of all time?” Jim was asking, because he’s one of the very few sports action fiction authors. Our first guess was Ken Dryden’s The Game. Wrong. Or Theo Fleury’s Playing With Fire. Nope. We won’t go through all the other guesses, except to say they were wrong, too. 

The answer, said Malner, is hockey romance fiction. Bodice rippers such as Wicked Games, bestselling author Maureen Smith’s “sizzling new interracial romance series featuring four sexy-as-sin hockey players who lose their hearts on the road to winning the Stanley Cup…” Don’t worry, there’s many more where that came from.

The books sell like hotcakes. We bring this up because of the kerfuffle over Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry, now a movie showing on Disney, HBO Max and Crave. It’s a hockey saga about two beautiful people—one Russian, one Canadian— brought together in desire. The kicker? Both are male hockey rivals . Yes, a gay hockey theme. Brokeback Zamboni. And, says the New York Times, “Since its Nov. 28 debut, fans have gone back to devour the books — “Heated Rivalry” is the second of six steamy romances in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series — outpacing supply and forcing Harlequin, the publisher, to play catch-up.”

Harlequin has now reportedly sold more than 650,000 books in the Game Changers series. Well, then… (Ironically, Heated Rivalry is a production of Jacob Tierney who’s also part of the alpha male comedy Letterkenny.) In almost every realm outside male sports and the priesthood this might be ho-hum. But in men’s hockey? The NHL? The omertà on LGBTQ content is the same as it was in the days of Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe. It’s stunning that in the 50 years since gay came out of its closet no active NHL stars have taken the opening. Nor has anyone in the LGBTQ community outed anyone famous. Crickets.

Across all sports a few prominent stars came out as LBGTQ (Bruce Jenner, Carl Nassib, Jerry Smith, Jason Collins), but during the prime of their careers? Forget it. We have often  written on this sexual tension in sports (lately Caitlyn Clark vs. the WNBA lesbian culture) but rarely putting names to it in sports. And almost never male names.

In 2019 we did a column about Blue Jays announcer Scott McArthur coming out with all the same questions we had then. “While other segments of the world have adjusted themselves to the notion of LGBT, you wouldn’t know it in the dressing rooms where MacArthur works— and where he will now likely face some reluctance in acknowledging the reality of an openly gay man in their inner sanctum.

MacArthur knows this, which made his coming out a serious issue in how he does his job. And a bold statement. Baseball dressing rooms— like NHL, NBA and NFL dressing rooms— are a cross-section of many cultures. Latin, black, Asian and white players work side by side. But the idea that they agree about much beyond winning is a fabrication.

Many of the men he covers come from conservative religious cultures. Others from macho cultures that abhor homosexuality. (The inability of presidential aspirant Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay, to attract even a tiny portion of Democratic black voters is just one symptom of that cultural resistance.) Few of them will give MacArthur props for his decision— in the public sphere, at least. 

MacArthur will now be judged in a different vein as he travels with the team and works in the change rooms. There isn’t much dressing-room “intimacy” anymore— players don’t shower or dress in the open, and are rarely seen naked as in the past. Women reporters forced that change. 

 But the motto of “what happens here, stays here” remains. And that includes who is sleeping with whom.

With so many other distractions— salary, playing time, promotional apperances— teams have discouraged any domestic dramas in rooms that threaten unity. The few that have surfaced— the Gary Leeman/ Al Iafrate conflict in Toronto in the 1980s comes to mind— are strictly heterosexual. And poisonous to team unity.

Homosexual relations are still taboo. And there doesn’t appear any cultural or legal framework that will challenge that soon.

Which puts them at distinct odds with the women in sports. As the U.S. women’s soccer team showed, women’s sports are very liberated from the conservative standards of men’s sports. Led by the ubiquitous Mega Rapinoe, women are open about their homosexuality. They flaunt it. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a lesbian in a women’s sport.

There are couples on the same team and married couples on opposing squads. Canadian hockey star Gillian Apps married rival American player Meaghan Duggan . While the subject of intramural liaisons is taboo in mens’ sport, the drama in women’s open dressing rooms is a real thing. It can be manifested in any manner of bondings— straight on straight/ lesbian on lesbian/ bi with any of the above.

Who wouldn’t be enthralled to hear from modern coaches on the balancing acts they perform amidst jealousies, fights and distractions brought on by the recognition of romance between the players? How do they keep team unity in the face of a public split between line mates or defence partners? I know I would.

But, amidst the media’s sexual liberation theology on everything else, there is a distinct lack of coverage of how unique team building is in women's sports. Why?  As the soccer players showed, the athletes are quite willing to discuss it. Some want to shout it from the roof tops. 

Or is it that a media that acts so brave in blaming “the patriarchy” for everything that goes wrong is reluctant to report anything tnegative hat might makes the LGBT women look unfavourable or emotional?” 

Virtually nothing has changed in men’s sports since that writing. Perhaps Heated Rivalry will encourage someone to come out while playing mens’ team sports. Maybe gay NFL cheer leaders will have some effect. Till then it will remain— in the words of that old cliché— the subject that dare not speak its name in men’s sports. dressing rooms.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books.

Oh, the weather outside was frightful. But the football was so delightful. Week 15 of the NFL season was a cryogenic success of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Here were the temperatures at game time this weekend. 

Chicago: -11 degrees C. 

Cincinnati: -12 degrees F. 

Kansas City: -8 degrees C. 

New England: -2 C (with an 87 percent chance of snow). 

Philadelphia: -2 degrees C. 

New York -1 degree C. 

Pittsburgh: -7 degrees C. 

For fans of NFL football none of this seemed out of character with late-season football. There are legendary games played in arctic conditions. The windchill for the 1967 Dallas/ Green Bay NFC championship was -25 C.  

Chargers at Bengals: Jan. 10, 1982 (-24 C, feels like -39 C). 

Seahawks at Vikings in NFC wild-card matchup Jan 10, 2016. -21 C with wind chill -25C

Dolphins at Chiefs: Jan. 13, 2024 (-4 degrees, feels like -27 degrees)

As recently as last week’s Bills win over the Bengals games are often played with drifts of snow on the field and the mercury bottoming out. While Canada’s Grey Cup game is played at the end of November it’s still had some brutal weather history of its own.

The point of this meteorology meandering is that, according to our good King Charles III and many other  doomsday cultists the concept of snow and cold was supposed to be a figment of the past by now. For almost half a century Michael Mann and the climate prophets of IPCC have been predicting the end of snow and the onset of warmist floods and burning forests. They gambled trillions of the public’s dollars on the certainty that the public would buy computer modelling and data-distortion predicting doom.

For decades it has worked. The careers of people like critic Mark Steyn have been ruined, heretics declared and fortunes dissipated by the trust-fund fanatics who bankroll wackadoodles like Stephen Guilbeault, the convicted felon who Trudeau made Minister of the Environment. No matter how absurd or devious the source, it was a gospel that the fiery inferno was coming next Tuesday. But the weather has remained stubbornly resistant to Elizabeth May’s catechism of climate. 

Yet, some dedicated climate advocates and their followers are finally changing their tune in the face of their own observation of lying liars like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. The share of Americans who say climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring decreased from 37 percent in 2021 to 32 percent this year. A similar October study from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that “belief in human-driven climate change declined overall” since 2017.

Reports the uber-liberal L.A. Times: “The unraveling of climate catastrophism got another jolt recently with the formal retraction of a high-profile 2024 study published in the journal Nature. That study — which had predicted a calamitous 62% decline in global economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were not sufficiently reduced — was widely cited by transnational bodies and progressive political activists alike as justification for the pursuit of aggressive decarbonization. 

But the authors withdrew the paper after peer reviewers discovered that flawed data had skewed the result. Without that data, the projected decline in output collapses to around 23%. Oops.”

Even stalwart media apologists for climate hysteria like the Times are starting to have doubts. Under the headline “The left’s climate panic is finally calming down” they describes “Erstwhile ardent climate-change evangelist Bill Gates published a remarkable blog post addressing climate leaders at the then-upcoming COP30 summit. Gates unloaded a blistering critique of what he called ‘the doomsday view of climate change,’ which he said is simply “wrong.”

Trump-besotted American Democrats seeking to soften their Woke image before the 2026 midterms are likewise carving out more moderate positions on climate “that could well deprive Republicans of a winning political issue with which to batter out-of-touch, climate-change-besotted Democrats. But for the sake of good governance, sound public policy and the prosperity of the median American citizen, it would be the best thing to happen in a decade.”

Sadly Canada under Mark Carney remains a staunch climate warrior. The removal of Guilbeault as federal Environmental Minister may have seemed a step toward sanity, but there is no hint that the billions of dollars from hidden money spigots will be closed down any time soon. The B.C. government’s acquiescence to the climate propaganda of Indigenous bands shows no sign of abating. Indeed, it is just ramping up in the land claims that threaten to make home ownership a thing of the past. 

PM Mark Carney is a dedicated temperature fabulist going back to his days as governor of the Bank of England. His first fights in Canada were over taxing carbon and hobbling her energy industry. As we wrote in this November 2024 column, the certainty in which the Canadian Left revels is actually dividing, not uniting citizens.

So perhaps if enough citizens spend an afternoon shivering in the stands of a wintertime football game we might achieve a small piece of sanity and learn that that , while climate is always changing, it’s not worth the price we’ve paid this century. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books.

It’s a big day for the Who’s of Whoville. Mayor Augustus Maywho is now polling at 62 percent approval. Cindy Lou Who and Martha May Whovier can barely contain their trans-loving heart that finally the Pierre The Grinch is done.

Okay it’s not WhoVille. It’s Canada and it is leader Mark Carney who’s zooming in the polls against Pierre Poilievre. But it might as well be the real nation that Carney commands today. As 2025 comes to a conclusion Donald Trump seems the least of Whoville’s perils. For example:

The NDP government in B.C. has now declared that future legislation must be interpreted through the lens of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. According to Chief Bent Knee (David Eby) this means that the province cannot act independently of the progressive diktats of Sudan, Nepal, Moldova and other international titans. Having been informed of Canada’s “genocidal” behaviour by Trudeau in the Rez Graves pantomime, the UN folk will no doubt look upon Canadians as worthy of punishment.

The UNDRIP menace has been around since the days when Skippy Trudeau was wielding the mace in Parliament. On June 20, 2021 the federal government passed UNDRIP into law by a vote of 210 to 118. (The Liberals, NDP and Bloc all voted in favour.) The only party that opposed it were the Conservatives. In defence of those hapless boobs none of them voting yes ever expected a province to align itself with such legislation. That’s the Canadian way. Act on conscience. Retract on self preservation.

But on the heels of Eby’s unopposed capitulation to B.C.’s many “peoples” in recent land settlements, ones that threaten the legal right to properties of home owners, the wholesale framework for governing the province now will be determined by appeal to the UN.

The Carney crew — who act as though Canada’s indigenous communities are now equal partners in Confederation— assure Canadians that judicious lawyering by government savants has everything under control, but anyone trusting the Liberals after the past decade is in need of counselling.

The B.C. conundrum plays into another of the challenges (read: disasters) faced in B.C. by the Elbows Up brigade. Namely the much-heralded memorandum of understanding on energy policy between the feds and Alberta. Canadians were assured by Ottawa that this federal government sees pipelines as a priority, and getting Alberta’s product to tidewater as an urgent infrastructure need. Carney described the MOU as if it were a love-letter to the restless West. How as he going to get pipelines through to the B.C. coast when Eby and the indigenous said it was a no-go? Trust us, said Carney.

Before you could say Wetaskiwin dark clouds gathered on the deal. Smith took it in the ear from Alberta separatists for compromising anything to the feds. Carney, meanwhile, ran into the predictable roadblock from B.C. Eby talked of maybe allowing pipelines in the future, but the ban on shipping off the province’s shoreline was verboten. 

To test the resilience of the MOU the federal Conservatives (remember them?) put forward a motion to build the pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast. Even though the motion used the same language of the MOU itself between Danielle Smith and Mark Carney, the Liberals and their hand maidens defeated the motion. Carney himself abstained because, hey look at that shiny object.

Immediately the Trudeaupian Deflection Shield was employed. Here’s Liberal Indigenous Service minister and proud Cree operative Mandy Gull Masty "Today's motion that's being put on the floor is not a no vote for the MOU. It's a no vote against the Conservatives playing games and creating optics and wasting parliamentary time when they should be voting on things that are way more important.”

Robert Fife, the highly rated G&M scribbled who just won some big award, led the media pack, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country, Bob? Where? Into the ground?

Let’s not forget the $1.5 billion bloviators at CBC. They, too, say the vote is a big loss for the Tories. “It risks putting them offside, what is a very top priority and frankly, was considered a big win for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.’" said Janyce McGregor. Here’s Martin Patriquin on one of the Ceeb’s endless panels. “It's embarrassing, man. I don't see any sort of political advantage to what happened today.”

Embarrassing? The Libs have committed to re-building gas pipelines in Ukraine, even as they stall on developing pipelines in Canada. Luckily CBC washrooms have no mirrors. And there’s always Donald Trump to deflect from the pantomimes of Canadians Laurentian debating club. 

Here, CTV hair-and-teeth Scott Reid is nursing a Reuters poll that has Trump’s approval at historic lows of 36 percent. Reuters is a firm that predicted Kamala winning the presidency. Until she didn’t on Nov.4. Meanwhile Rasmussen, which correctly had Trump ahead the entire campaign, has his current approval at 44 percent while the RCP average is 43.9. 

But corrupt data to make Trump seem odious is no sin in WhoVille Ottawa. Keep feeding the Karens bad data.  At least Canadians have their beloved healthcare to fall back on. Or maybe their beloved MAID. A Saskatchewan woman suffering from parathyroid disease has revealed that she is considering assisted suicide, because she cannot get the surgery she needs.

“Jolene Van Alstine, from Saskatchewan, has extreme bone pain, nausea and vomiting. She requires surgery to remove a remaining parathyroid, but no surgeons in the province are able to perform the operation. 
In order to be referred to another province for the operation, Van Alstine must first be seen by an endocrinologist, yet no Saskatchewan endocrinologists are currently accepting new patients.

The pain has become so unbearable that she has been approved for Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide programme, with the ending of her life scheduled to take place on 7 January 2026.” 

Well. Happy New Year, Canada. May no one offer you MAID in the next twelve months.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Inquiring minds want to know: Why did FIFA (Federation of International Fraud Artists) award American president Donald Trump a new “Peace Prize” at the Washington D.C. draw for the June/ July tournament? The usual suspects are paralyzed with rage. Everyone else is laughing at the kabuki theatre stunt.

The short answer is that if you were FIFA and you were receiving a reported billion or more dollars from the U.S. and the Canadian/ Mexican cities hosting the 48-team tournament you’d give the host more than a bottle of wine and flowers as a thank-you. Thus the ugly statue and the Boy Scout medal. The obsequious awarding of the prize and match medal were proportionate to the greed of FIFA in extorting the cash.

(America’s fainting goat media immediately complained about unearned awards for little virtue, forgetting as usual that the Nobel folks gave Barack Obama a Peace Prize after nine months in the White House for simply being a black man.)

Trump getting a peace award from FIFA, the most corrupt sports body in the sports world, is mint, however. You can’t write this stuff. (They should give it to him on a speed boat heading across the Caribbean.) The Donald then playfully suggested that Americans leave the name football to the soccer folks because, you know… feet and a ball. More outrage from NFL fans.

So what was the gift for the two Canadian cities hosting games who have also coughed up plenty? Toronto says its estimated budget is $380 million for six games/ B.C. tax payers are obliged to cough up an estimated $580 million for Vancouver’s five games). For cities with, how shall we say, bigger fish to fry.

Sadly all they got was a little farce in which a delighted PM Mark Carney was allowed to Canada as the first ball to start the picking, evidently unaware that all the balls he had to select from also said Canada.  Carney’s joy was tempered when he saw Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum draw a ball that said “Mexico” while Trump— in on the fix— got one entitled “United States”. 

In a final attempt to curry favour with the fleeced nations FIFA boss Gianni Infantino gathered the world leaders for a painful onstage selfie, marking the first time Trump and Sheinbaum had ever met in the (orangey) flesh. Call it National Lampoon’s Soccer Vacation.

Having exhausted itself with the peace prize falderol FIFA evidently forgot to put any more thought into the rest of the 55-minute run-up to the draw. While soccer/ footie fans around the world ground their teeth in impatience the organizers presented a combination Eurovision/ People’s choice Awards ordeal of failed cues, untranslated interviews (the Spanish translator showed up about 30 minutes late) and pregnant pauses. 

Host Heidi Klum’s stunning gold dress nearly made up for her wooden repartee with comedian Kevin Hart (“not sure why I’m here”) and co-host Rio Ferdinand, former star English defender who, alas, never won the WC. But that was all an appetizer for the real low point, the introduction of global brand stars to pick the draw. NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal and NHL… er, player Wayne Gretzky.

Their task, hectored by the hosts, was to draw a ball, unscrew the thing, withdraw a nation’s name and so on. While there may have been some tension in the audience there was no appreciation of that on the screen as more clunking dialogue and curious pronunciations (Ferdinand kept referring to Group “Haitch”) landed dead on the floor.

The nadir of the ceremony—indeed of his career— was Gretzky’s contribution. Brady and O’Neal had managed to survive their task of unscrewing the ball and pronouncing a name, but Gretzky was brought low by the stage business of the balls and the nations he was forced to announce. 

The clearly flustered Gretz (he insisted he’d practiced all morning) wrestled manfully with the balls. Finally the producers went with a long shot of him fumbling in the dark. Then he topped that.  Gretzy apparently thinks there are countries called “North Mack-a-donia” and “Cur-ack-ow.” Other stabs at geography were almost as tortured.

Bitter Canadians could put up with him sucking up to Trump (he was mentioned as being in the crowd at the DC Xmas tree lighting) but failing geography is unforgivable. The week that started with Gretzky in a photo golfing at POTUS’s Jupiter, Florida, golf course was ending with him pummelled for his abuse of nations with different-sounding names. The Wayne Gretzky Center For Kids Who Want To Talk Good.

The moral: Never send a centre to do a netminder’s job. Makes you understand why Bobby Orr has laid low since his Trump endorsement came out. 

With that bracing date with immortality disposed of the draw proceeded. We had been pounded for an hour about how great the tournament was, and finally footy fans got what they wanted. As a host Canada got a bye into the field. Their reward is playing the tenacious Swiss and, gulp, probably Italy, which is forced to qualify after playing with their food for too long. (Insert your Stanley Tucci joke.) 

If not Italy then one of Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Northern Ireland. Oh, right Qatar is in there too as fodder. Been nice knowing you, Canada. The Americans somehow drew a creme puff quartet of Australia, Paraguay and Slovakia, Kosovo, Turkey or Romania. Money can’t buy you love, but it can get you a warm hug from FIFA. 

In the end it’ll be one of Brazil, Argentina, Germany or France for the final in the NJ Meadowlands on July 19. Maybe they’ll have a spelling bee at halftime. Or maybe they’ll bring back Trump for the final game to give him another peace prize. Just don’t ask Gretzky to announce Lothar Matthaus, Bruno Guimaräes or Gabriel Magalhäes.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

@PaulChampLaw So, Wayne Gretzky flew on an FBI jet in April 2025 with Kash Patel to watch the Capitals? We all make choices…

Canadians always liked to see themselves as a reflective people. Not hurried into extremes. Slow to anger, quick to act on danger. Humble guys like Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr.

If there’s one thing that pissed them off it was anyone sucking up to Americans. Unless… they make it BIG in the U.S.. There was a big exemption for Canadians like Gretzky or Orr or Mike Myers who went south to make a fortune. For them the standards didn’t apply. They were heroes of the nation.

Until Donald Trump. Any Canadian hero not calling him Cheeto or Orange Man Bad or Hitler can expect to receive the mark of Cain from the Left huddling in the Great White North. Anyone excoriating POTUS 45/ 47 , however, is given a lifetime hall pass. No exceptions.

As Gretzky has learned again. Sunday a new photo emerged of the greatest offensive star in NHL history playing golf with the president at his Jupiter, Florida, golf course— the one where Ryan Wesley Routh tried to assassinate Trump.  This led to the same predictable rending of garments and clutching of pearls that greeted Gretzky’s earlier declaration of loyalty to The Worst Human Being Ever®. Traitor is now the mildest description of 99 chez nous.

Give the Gretzkys credit, they didn’t disguise their decision. After Trump’s stunning (to some) win last November, Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend . May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”

The incensed Canadian left swung into action. “University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.” “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones. 

The bile harkened to Orr supporting Trump in 2020. In our column at the time we noted the furious aftermath from Canadian hockey worshippers. Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out politically.

Orr has taken a low profile since, as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”

As with everything in the current McCoys vs Hartfields feud between the countries the venom launched at Gretzky’s decision to support Trump is underscored by the quaint notion that Canada is anything like it was when Gretzky’s 1988 wedding was a national celebration in Canada. 

As the polling from the 2025 Canadian federal election showed young people are fed up with their Boomer parents’ nostalgia for the nation that smuggled the American diplomats out of Iran in 1979. They want economic opportunities and the ability to buy homes. What successive Liberal governments have given them is trans insanity, cities overrun by Hamas protesters and national debt backloaded on their shoulders. 

To say nothing of Chinese infiltration of the economy and trade. No wonder they keep trying to change the words to O Canada all the time.

The decisions by Gretzky and Orr, among many expats, is partially due to Trump’s contrarian stance. But it also reflects a distance from the land where they grew up. Mike Myers and Elbows Up played on this sentimental loyalty to help Mark Carney succeed Justin Trudeau. But as more and more financial and talent stacks head south for opportunity (see Nutrien’s decision to ship Saskatchewan potash via the U.S., ignoring B.C.) it’s becoming clear that a reckoning is coming.

Trump’s brusque brushoff of Canada as no better than a 51st state was like an intervention with a friend or family member who’s gotten lost. It was a chance for self examination as we said in this 2018 column, Sometimes An Ingrate Nation.

Instead they bought the fake line that Trump would “invade” the country. Canadians lamented their treatment of “loyal old friend Canada”. But since the Iran heroics what has Canada done to help the U.S.? America has guarded Canada militarily. It has protected the trade lanes where Canadian goods are shipped. It has accepted hundreds of thousands of health patients unable to receive timely treatment in Canada’s single payer system. 

It has encouraged Canada an automobile industry. It has allowed Canada’s film and TV industry subsidies. It has (so far) tolerated Canada’s dairy cartels. And it has welcomed Canadians by the millions to holiday or invest in America.

Now list the selfless deeds Canada has performed for America since Ken Taylor squirrelled the diplomats out of Tehran. Um… give us time. We sent Orr and Gretzky to the U.S. to jumpstart hockey. And all the SCTV folks. Canada also became the home for every foaming leftist in America seeking to escape Trump. Beyond that? Diddly squat.

So instead of the prolonged lamentations of the women and men and others of Canada, perhaps Elbows Up should listen to VPOTUS J.D. Vance. “And with all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you to blame. The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

The week after Grey Cup is always a good time to look in for our first serious analysis at how Canada’s NHL teams are doing. So let’s take a quick… WHOA… what’s happening here? 

If the playoffs were to begin next week (we wish) then it would be a cold breakfast for teams in Elbows Up. Just two clubs—Winnipeg and Montreal— would even qualify for the postseason. And the Jets have just found out their star goalie Connor Hellybuyck is unlikely to play much before mid-January.

The two putative Canadian hopes for a first Stanley cup since 1993— Toronto and Edmonton— are sucking on vapour trails. After being raked 5-2 by Montreal, the Leafs have just a 24.9 percent chance of making the playoffs. Conor McDavid’s Oilers have a better percentage but their same old goaltending woes and a ticking clock on McDavid’s back. 

Granted that, going into the weekend, no team in the East was more than four points out of the wild-card spot while all but three teams were within three points of a playoff spot in the West. But the Canadian teams are stuck behind some premium teams and need lotsa’ luck so they end up like Max Verstappen  not Lance Stroll.

Maybe a Canadian men’s Olympic gold medal can reduce the sting of no Cup, no future for another season. But it won’t save the jobs of coaches in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver unlikely to survive also-ran status. Let’s take a close look at the not-so-magnificent seven starting west to east.

Vancouver:  The Nucks have a sterling 4 percent chance of making the postseason as of this writing. In the powerful Western Conference that’s still an insult to a franchise that hasn’t recovered from the hasty 2013 firing of GM Mike Gillis—who won… let us us see… two Presidents Trophies and six Western Conference titles in a row. Since then? Uh, bagel. 

It’s nice that Elias Petterson has come back from the morgue this season. But it will come down to goalie Thatcher Demko staying healthy and whether ownership wants to go full tank or just a quarter-tank for a draft pick. Hard to see Adam Foote surviving as coach.

Calgary: Speaking of tanking, everyone in Calgary wants the Flames to do a teardown for the top picks in the 2026 Draft. Everyone, except, for the Flames absentee owner Murray Edwards and his robo-spokesman Don Maloney. They want the five percent chance at a playoff spot and a mid-round first draft pick. The Flames missed the chance to restructure in 2023 when Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk departed. But again, denialism in the management suite tried to make it an even trade with Florida, sign huge new contracts and keep pushing. Bad decision.

Only question here is when does the purge begin and what can they get to help Dustin Wolf— signed for seven more years—  in net?

Edmonton: We’ve written at length here and here about the McDavid saga. He and the management team halved the baby with a short-term deal to pretend he’s staying in the Chuck. Their healthy chance of making the playoffs (75.5 percent) says one thing. Their play in the putrid Pacific— they’re given up six-goals-plus five times in just 24 games— says another. But as long as McDavid and Leon Draisaitl stay healthy they might still finesse a ticket to a their third straight Finals ride. 

But if they get near the trading deadline and the postseason is a mirage the noise to trade McDavid will be deafening. And the offers staggering for a capped-out team.

Winnipeg: Last year was supposed to be the Jets big year. Okay, that didn’t work out so well. The Jets kept their core together for another chance at finally making a serious playoff run. So it will all come down, as it has in the past, to the health and playoff juju of Hellybuyck. Their ticket out of the Central Division lies in beating powerful Colorado and Dallas and, if that happens, staying healthy. 

The Jets would probably just as well their stars didn’t go get beat up in the Olympics, but that’s unlikely.There’s always been a karma about Winnipeg breaking the Canada Cup jinx. Still a long shot. 

EAST

Toronto:  So you’re saying Mitch Marner wasn’t the problem with the highly rated Maple Leafs never getting as far as the Conference Finals? They’re 3-5-2 in their last ten, their captain is still a sulky figure— only now his output doesn’t make it worthwhile. And the Toronto media is trying to do the players’ will to get coach Craig Berube fired for them. The same problems remain from years previous: dubious goaltending and a shallow talent pool on defence. 

The biggest problem for the Leafs is their closing window for success. They’re old, have few tradeable assets in the system and have traded top picks away for short-term gains that never appeared. Expect fireworks after the Olympics if this crate doesn’t get moving. New MLSE boss Keith Pelley has no ties to the current administration and will sweep clean. 

Ottawa: The Sens have managed to survive the loss of captain Brad Tkachuck to a broken finger. How? Ottawa have gotten goals from 17 different players which means they have balance. And so far they are above average 5-on-5. All good. They’ve also taken advantage of the mediocrity of the Leafs and other Eastern teams to stay afloat.

Their Achilles heel? Between the pipes. Both goalies have a save percentage under .875 and that ain’t going to cut it come spring. As always finances will limit their trades and manoeuvrability. 

Montreal: The Habs were the fashionable pick before the  season as the Canadian team most likely to get to the Cup they last won in 1993. Defenceman Laine Hutson is all that he promised last year. The dynamic top line of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky have cast back to the days of the Flying Frenchmen. Managing expectations in Montreal’s rabid hockey culture— where a misplaced apostrophe can cause chaos—means never taking anything for granted.

Now if only goaltender Jacob Dobes can keep up his play long enough for Sam Montembault to regain his form the Habs could be a thing in the spring.  At this rate they might be the only thing.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.