“The Ears Have It”  is perhaps the most indicative thing about scoring said on HNIC in these playoffs. The new shooter’s target is not between the legs or under the armpit of goalies. No, it’s that tiny space right next to a goalie’s ear. And with the traditional targets cut off by butterfly goalies the best scorers are honing in like drones on the lobes.

That scoring in the NHL is reduced to such a tiny target reflects the radical shift in skills for goalies. With the tumult of crashing players around the net goalies have gone from the smallest player  to the tallest, able to cover virtually all the shooting target. And strong enough not to get jostled out of place. 

If goalies take away sniper’s spot by standing up— as used to be the style—then elite shooters will put the puck between his legs or inside the posts. As happened for a century. Till goalie coaches changed the equation.

It’s a change that dates back to the 1990s and it has caused an evolution in the sport. One person not fond of the Goliath goalies was the late Ken Dryden, the Hall of Fame netminder with six Stanley Cups. He described it as, “The problem isn’t the game. The problem is the goalie, who is changing the game”.

In our column from 2018 we recalled a unique encounter with Dryden. “In 2001 I was driving to the media hotel in Sunrise, Florida, on my way to covering the NHL Draft. My passenger as we drove through a teeming downpour was Ken Dryden, then president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who’d grabbed a ride with me on a rainy February afternoon.

As we made our way though the monsoon we talked how the game was being played at that time. It might have been the ugliest brand of hockey in the modern era— a suffocating brand of rugby on skates, slower players restraining skill players. Unlimited interference in the offensive zone. Unreliable refereeing. Fighting still an integral part of the game’s strategy.

What I remember most about the drive was Dryden talking about the size of NHL goalies. Which should have been unsurprising. After all, the former All Star goalie and six-time Stanley Cup winner had been publicly examining and re-examining the role of his position on the ice since he arrived in Montreal in 1971. His book The Game is the definitive sports autobiography.

So it was hardly surprising that he had returned to the subject of goalies  in The Atlantic in 2018. As he was in 2001, Dryden was concerned that hockey’s fine balance of skill and imagination is out of whack. The title of the piece “Hockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie Problem” sums up his thesis. 

“While scoring remained near its typical levels, the art of scoring them was more luck than skill. In short, if today’s padded-up giants can see the puck they’re going to stop it. “This game, one that allows for such speed and grace, one that has so much open ice, is now utterly congested… Never in hockey’s history has a tail so wagged the dog.”

Dryden reviewed the evolution of the position from goalies’ bodies protruding above the cross bar to having their entire body blocking the ice surface below them. “Pads that had been made of heavy leather, deer hair, and felt were replaced with nylon, plastic, and foam rubber. These lighter materials, which made the pads less awkward to move around in and less tiring to wear, could then also be made bigger. And bigger equipment, covering a body now in position below the bar, filled even more space.”

Dryden explained how a properly positioned 6-foot-3 (or taller) goalie can now block all avenues for the puck— from his knees. “But really, in that equipment, with those body strategies, why get up? Why move? What better puck-blocking position could he take?”

The response from coaches and shooters? “Rush the net with multiple offensive players, multiple defensive players will go with them, multiple arms, legs, and bodies will jostle in front of the goalie, and the remaining shooters, distant from the net, will fire away hoping to thread the needle, hoping the goalie doesn’t see the needle being threaded, because if he does, he’ll stop it.”

It’s not a formula Dryden liked. “All the players’ amazing skills, developed in hours of practice, visualizing and dreaming in basements, on roads and local rinks, in drills with coaches and expert teachers, their minds and hands now able to move as fast as their feet, to find and use all the open ice that is there. But with so little open ice where open ice matters, for what?”

He contrasts how basketball solved its size problem: introducing the three-point line to open up scoring in what was becoming a stalemate beneath the hoop. “If a big guy can’t pass and shoot, there’s no place for him. With big guys dispersed and away from the basket, little guys now even get rebounds. All 10 players are involved. All 10 players can have a role. All 10 players, on the best teams, and on even better teams in the future, need to have a role to win. This NBA game, played on a much smaller surface than a hockey rink, is now far more open, much less congested.”

Dryden’s solution was a reluctant one. “The clever cat-and-mouse game between goalies and shooters has run its constructive course. The goalies, by winning, have changed the game. So the net must be made bigger. Maybe only six inches or a foot wider, maybe only six inches higher. And only for those in junior and college leagues and above.”

If Ken and I were riding in that same car again, I’d tend to agree with him about a bigger net. But I would offer one other suggestion to open up the game. As soccer does with its striker, station your top scorer at— or near— the opposing blue line, even when play is in your own zone. Make the opponent choose between a 5-on-4 attack or allowing a breakaway at his own end of the rink. Stretch the rink.

As 4-on-4 does now it will reduce the congestion in the scoring zone, promote skill, create the drama of breakaways and goals off a rush and eliminate all but the best skaters. (Much culling of slow skaters has been done but more remains). I might also put forward that skaters cannot leave their feet to block shots and passes. 

Hockey’s thinkers have some challenges ahead. Conversations must address those challenges. Like a conversation on a rainy day 25 years ago with hockey’s most fertile mind. 

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 a 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/106980270

Life is a game. Money is how we keep score. — Ted Turner

Some will tell you that modern history is only the past 15 minutes, never more. If you don’t believe that you can thank Ted Turner,, the Mouth of the South, who died this week at 87. When we started in the news business, a story that arrived five minutes after the 11 PM news show was tomorrow’s news. Everyone went home till then.

But Turner’s creation of Cable News Network (CNN) adjusted the clocks from a 12-hour work day to a 24-hour cycle. If a big story broke after 11:30 PM you ordered a pizza for the news room and kept going. Most of us thought the idea crazy, how would you supply enough stories to fill 24/7? How many fires and car crashes are there? Who would monitor this satellite-powered beast slinking towards Atlanta?

But work it did, creating a private cable network apart from the Tiffany bunch in NYC/ DC. Speeding up the distribution of news and sports to provide an alternative from Atlanta Turner pressured the cozy world of Walter Cronkite reality. He also created worldwide 24-hour satellite news serving Asia, India and Africa as well as Europe and North America. A close friend got his break in the business working at the Hong Kong branch of CNN.

At first the old boys predicted his demise, but Turner was determined. “"We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.. we’ll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off."

The logical extension of this impertinence arrived in 1994 when the network dedicated itself to wall-to-wall coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. It was breaking news as reality show with car chases, legal analysts and an NFL/ movie star on trial for murdering his wife and a friend. The Simpson trial is now seen as a political, cultural and legal watershed in communications, launching imitators and competitors into a multi layered competition for eyeballs.

Turner didn’t stop there. He created WTBS, a superstation that cracked the dominance of local channels. He also created TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and, for us late-night film buffs, Turner Classic Movies. In between he feuded with British tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who used the FOX brand to create a conservative TV/ newspaper empire to rival Turner’s.

For those born in the 21st century the best comparison may be Elon Musk— if the Starlink creator had been from the Dixie South, not South Africa. While Musk is constantly reviled by progressives for his wealth and power (remember the fake Hitler salute?) , Turner basked in his millions. For a time he was the target private land holder in the U.S. He was an active philanthropist. And of course, he married Jane Fonda for a time. The biggest controversy was doing the tomahawk chop at games of his Atlanta Braves when white liberals called him a racist.

In his catalogue of enterprises, the Braves and his other holdings in the NBA Hawks, the NHL Thrashers, the Goodwill Games and World Championship Wrestling provided national satellite windows that broke territorial borders and filled hours of programming. At one point he jokingly asked Braves pitcher Andy Messersmith to change his number to 17— the same number as his TV station. On another his replaced Dave Bristol as the Braves manger for 10 days.

He later admitted his hands-on approach was a disaster, and let the sports professionals take over. In 1995 the Braves, managed by Bobby Cox— and with Turner and Fonda cheering— won the World Series. (Ironically Cox died just days after Turner.) He burst the dam holding back TV rights, foreshadowing the enormous billions now paid for rights to sports teams and their digital footprint. 

Within decades satellite outlets created or owned at one time by Turner would bid on the rights to major team sports such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. 

His wrestling outfits showed Turner was a huckster and blue collar. When he decided to colourize the old films he’d purchased from MGM’s back library, the the movie critic toffs were aghast. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that broadcasting a colourized Casablanca "will be one of the saddest days in the history of the movies. It is sad because it demonstrates that there is no movie that Turner will spare, no classic however great that is safe from the vulgarity of his computerized graffiti gangs."

But Turner was not above slumming with the fantastically rich sailing crowd. In 1977 he skippered his boat Courageous to a win in the America’s Cup and later the Fastnet Cup. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated after his America’s Cup win. 

He also moved with the elites in the political and philanthropic world, boosting a number of causes including the climate, world population and nuclear proliferation. They proved less successful, and Turner’s lavish spending on his causes later led to selling off properties to hold onto his empire.

Turner called his autobiography “It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks”. Perhaps. But in succeeding more often than not, he set the communications stage for Musk and the social media he spawned. His motto: Do something. Either lead, follow or get out of the way.

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 a 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/106980270

It used to be said that Canada is run by just 15 families. It wasn’t pretty, but they didn’t bring attention to the fact. The current ruling compact has no such compunction. They splash their names and authority everywhere. The broadcast giants may be the least reserved.

But it has been a tough week for Rogers, the “your business is important to us” folks. Okay, tough week is relative when you own sports properties worth an estimated $25 billion. Still. The owners/ sponsors/ broadcasters of the Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators watched as their teams bit the frozen dust in the NHL playoffs. The demise of Connor McDavid’s Oilers, finalists the past two season for the Stanley Cup, was a bitter blow. 

That leaves just one Canadian team, the appropriately named Montreal Canadiens, as the only survivor of seven Canadian franchises to advance in the 2026 playoffs. Public Service Note: No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since the Habs did it in 1993. But you knew that. In any event, the Habs bushwhacked Tampa and so the Cup dream lives on in the one domestic team.

This brutal triage of no Canadian contenders was not a comforting thought. From now till mid June, the panelists on Hockey Night In Canada will be talking about the Habs and teams in TrumpLand. Much of the endless non-hockey portion of the games is already strained enough with bro talk and white board eye glazers. Poor Scott Oake deserves better as he retires.

Over in the NBA, the sole Canadian team, the Toronto Raptors at least made the playoffs. The problem being that Rogers shares broadcasts of the Raptors with their former MLSE pals at Bell. So any glory has been parsed with the lads who have been snipping at Rogers with predatory pricing. How unfriendly. And now the Raps are eliminateed in seven by Cleveland.

And let’s not forget the Toronto Blue Jays, another MLSE chattel who came within one spectacular catch by a Dodgers outfielder of winning the 2025 World Series. So far 2026 has not been as kind to the Jays as was last season. Beset by injuries they’re a game below .500 at this writing. But, as they said in Monty Python, “there’s hope for a constitutional settlement”. 

In the Rogers company offices on Mt. Pleasant, the plan is to now buy the remaining 25 percent of MLSE from Toronto businessman Larry Tanenbaum then bundle all these non-winning sports teams into one Hulk Hogan consortium. When that’s done they can sell off small pieces of the whole to offset debt load. Nice work if you can get it. 

None of this fun ’n games was any consolation last week, however, as Rogers offered buyout packages to half its 20,000 workers. Vladimir Guerrero and Auston Matthews are not among the 10K targeted for the pink slip. But plenty of others drawing a company cheque will be. Apparently the most expensive carrier service in the Western world (almost) and showing up six hours late for a service appointment for which you booked off work isn’t what it used to be. 

Not for them a Blue Jays World Series or a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup. But as the venerable NFL legend Vince Lombardi said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. Except in this case Rogers is going through Ottawa to see if they can get a piece of the free money sloshing around in the journalism racket. They’ve seen how even pipsqueak outfits like The National Observer are on the Heritage Ministry’s Local Journalism Initiative dollar-grab.

As Blacklocks has reported on the National Observer haul. “Payments totaled $1,377,773 in direct wage subsidies. The federal aid was in addition to $643,743 in separate grants paid by the heritage department to the National Observer under a Canadian Periodical Fund program, and $435,400 in sole-sourced federal news clipping contracts.” 

Unreported are the amounts it qualifies for from the Google fund - $185,822.33 last year - and tax credits up to $29,750 per newsroom employee. The National Observer informs readers on its website that the government provides 20 per cent of its revenue. 

So you can see why Rogers and Bell, the two behemoths in the cramped Canadian media world, would tell their friends in Ottawa that what’s good for the goose is good in Gander. And North Bay. And Wetaskiwin. Or where ever else they send their signals. Their estimated remaining 10,000 employees need love too.

As former CRTC vice chair Peter Menzies notes, “Multiply that by the $29,750 annual value of the Journalism Labour Tax Credit and the Big Telecom giant is looking at adding just under $30 million to its bottom line. Throw in access to the Canada Periodical Fund and Local Journalism Initiative and its take could be north of $40 million annually.

“Thus will the nation’s legacy media status quo become more firmly frozen in time, making it even more difficult for anyone trying to conduct journalism without the government’s approval and assistance.” In short, CBC is everyone now. 

Here comes our predictable lament for journalism. Having convinced the federal government under Mr. Katy Perry that, unless it spread its arms wide, the feds would be blamed for the demise of services that fewer and fewer people consume. Gasp, no more Schitt’s Creek reruns? Because the Liberace’s like nothing more than a self-induced panic, it wasn’t long till we had journalists covering elections covering the people who were funding them. Pretzel journalism

In the beginning around 2019 we were told this baksheesh was to protect the minnows in the pond. But anyone who followed the Trudeau years could see that the line was written in sand. Soon then big boys would asking fr their share. And that day is now. Everyone will say there is no corruption in such a system. But they didn’t live through the Trudeau denouement and the media’s celebration of Elbows Up Carney. 

So here’s the Habs in their quest for a Cup. If it’s true the winners write history then they will be well served by Rogers.

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 a 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/106980270

“We’ll be eight degrees hotter in 10— not 10, but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable.” Ted Turner on climate change April 2008

Not sure if they’ll do it, but when Mark Carney and King Chuck III next meet they should start with “Got your back, pal”. No two public figures are more invested in keeping their limping Climate Disaster scenarios going than Canada’s PM and the King of Canada.

Who can forget July 2009, when Charles asserted the planet had 96 months to avoid decimation: “…irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” Carney, meanwhile, sees a threat of climate catastrophe so urgent that  “65 percent of all oil and gas reserves and 90 percent of all coal reserves must be left in the ground …. and there is no need for any exploration of new oil and gas fields.”

All of this would be risible except that Carney— and his climate extremist wife— have Canada moving toward financial ruin so their carbon fantasies can all come true. That would be the NetZero emissions by 2050 that 78 companies have already signed up for. They are nothing if not audacious. 

How audacious?  Canadian psychiatrist Jordan Peterson pointed out in early 2025 that Carney’s mission stems from his spectacular NetZero fund failure. “His international career has collapsed in failure. So now where is he? Might as well go to Canada. You can tell Canadians you are an outsider, and there will be some kind of economic revolution...you can do that while lying about your actual goals; which are Net Zero."

Canadians look at Carney, Peterson added, “and we don’t pay any attention to politics and we certainly don’t read his goddamned book, and so we see someone who looks like a banker from the 1990s, when everything was just fine in Canada and Canadians were just as rich as Americans and the whole country was stable and peaceful.”

Which it no longer is after a decade of Mr. Katy Perry. But presto-change and Elbows Up! Carney was inserted by the Liberals into Canada’s top job to revive his quixotic goal. Soon he was using alleged “climate collapse" to say things like, “The effective carbon price in this country is actually quite low relative to the headline price in the $20 to $30 range in most Canadian markets. And that's something we're working to rectify.” 

WTF? How can you launch a new sovereign fund if you have no surplus funds on hand? Funds that should have been coming from the energy sources you want to leaver in the ground. You’d almost think that sovereign funds was a staple of Goldman’s business portfolio.

Even the most dim Canadians must now recognize that Canada’s is at the forefront of this movement, because the rest of the world has walked away from bankruptcy-by-climate. But the urge  for a Boy Scout Leadership badge is strong in Elbows Up, and thus they keep plugging away, spending your money on their compulsion.

The Toronto Star, loyal as ever to the climate hustle, keeps finding new means to scare the gullible. This time it’s the climate-induced Big Water. ”Residents in Toronto’s flooding epicentre gather to prep for ‘when the Big Water comes’” But they must hector citizens, who have come to realize that the only place the Climate  Hoax exists is in the Media party and the corners of government who are very easily intimidated into funding the operation. 

Like the Vancouver-based climate news site National Observer that is receiving $1.3 million in wage subsidies—enough for 23 full-time salaries—plus $643,743 from the Canada Periodical Fund and $435,400 in government subscriptions, per access-to-information data obtained by Blacklock's Reporter.

Ordinary Canadians ask how carbon dioxide is a silent killer if it has made the world 20 percent greener since they stigmatized the gas. Why the beaches and islands near them are virtually unchanged in the 50 years since they were predicted to disappear. Who is actually benefitting from the NetZero ankle bracelet Carney has slapped on Canadians?

In the United States— where Al Gore famously projected that unless drastic measures were implemented, the planet would hit an irreversible “point of no return” by 2016—  corporations and the average citizen have taken a step back on the threats of imminent peril. Al’s getting off the heat train to nowhere, promising another ice age.

EPA administer Lee Zeldin sums up the spirit oif the day on climate fraud: “I’m also done with the likes of AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry, and the rest of the lying cabal that make stupid climate predictions, plunder tens of billions of tax dollars, enrich their well-connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy.”

Thank goodness for greenies, Billie Eilish is still on the case. And some wackadoodles in the Congress remain wedded to the hustle. Here a Connecticut congresswoman with purple hair— who has not read the climate law— is lecturing the head of the EPA about that law she has not read to someone who has read it. The entire exercise is so she can call him a climate denier for reducing the budget of the agency. 

Outside of Canada time is running out for climate apocalypse. It’s hard not to get the feeling that Canada’s toffs and grandees won’t get ther message till it finally hurts them where it hurts. And it’s too late for second chances.

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 a 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/106980270

a February 1979 story: “Climatologists Are Warned North Pole Might Melt,” featuring a jarring opening paragraph: “There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.”

You have to admire the owners of pro sports leagues like the NFL. “Captains of capitalism”, this past weekend they engaged in a distribution of players that Avi Lewis would like. Every team according to its needs. Every player according to his desire to play football. Just as the NHL, NBA and MLB do this televised triage, the NFL works a formula they’ve used since 1936.

This being the NFL they’ve turned this enforced employment scheme into an huge entertainment opportunity in the offseason, drawing hundreds of thousands to see names called, tears cried and excited rookies buy twin Maseratis (@200 K) for their Mommas and sister. ( Note: The most the rookie will make in signing his deal is $1.2 M.)

But if it all looks traditional, beneath the surface of this and every pro sports draft is a seismic change . After years of litigation undrafted college and amateur players earned the right to their Name, Image, Likeness. It refers to a person's legal right to control how their image is used, including commercially. In the world of TV, digital and AI sports that’s a huge amount of money. https://www.todayville.com/destroying-the-development-system-expect-turbulence/

TV rights to the NCAA March Madness brought in over a billion US dollars last year. The rights to its other properties earned them $1.5 B in 2025. This meant that athletes who previously received nothing but a scholarship could now get a piece of money their schools or teams made from broadcasting and media deals. Ka-Ching! Suddenly players went from being supplicants to being recipients. 

It was not just TV deals. Media sponsorships also filled their wallets. As one example, Falcons running back Bijan Robinson began selling Dijon mustard, marketing it as Bijan Mustardson in Texas. Not all are big deals. Louisiana Tech receiver Decoldest Crawford (his real name) capitalized on his name to earn some extra money while injured. The wide receiver partnered with a family-owned air-conditioning business to make a commercial based around the pun.

And NIL gave them the independence to shop schools for the best deal in the “transfer portal” Now every offseason in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL sees a Jenga game of players dumping their last school for another with more money snd— just as importantly— better coaching to refine their resumé. Many of the players taken in Pittsburgh this past weekend have had multiple college stops before hearing their name called. 

As NFL GMs and personnel executives noted this past weekend, particularly at the back end of the draft, the NIL effect gave athletes the option to stay another year in college, collect a tidy paycheque and then apply for the 2027 Draft. In one case, Tua Tagovailoa's brother Tai was reportedly offered $6.5 million to stay at University of Miami. He might not make that much in the NFL this year. So he stayed in college to try his luck.

Why not? Here are the top five NIL payouts in NCAA football for 2026: 1. Texas QB Arch Manning ($5.2 million) 2. Ohio State WR Jeremiah Smith ($4.2 million) 3. LSU QB Sam Leavitt ($4.0 million) 4. Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby ($3.1 million) 5. Michigan QB Bryce Underwood ($3.1 million).

To put it mildly NIL has scrambled all boats in the sports industry. That includes the NHL, where the combination of NIL and the end of restrictions on players with CHL experience getting scholarships has been lifted. Now top prospects of college age can play in the CHL a couple of years and then flip to the NCAA for grooming, higher profile and money.

This season emphasized the change as Gavin McKenna, a forward widely projected as the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, left the CHL to commit to Penn State, while Keaton Verhoeff, a defenceman also projected as a top selection, landed at North Dakota. 

It’s early days in the hockey experiment. The NCAA and CHL are contrasting models of development with the U.S. leagues playing fewer games. Travel, facilities and educational opportunities can favour the NCAA. “I do think that is the single biggest development in college hockey probably in my lifetime, and I’m 41,” Chris Peters, an NHL draft and prospect analyst for FloHockey, told Cronkite News.

“Now they have the option to go the NCAA route where there is going to be more opportunity for exposure, development and other things that allow them to potentially earn a better pro contract.”

The disclosure of the money used to lure players will also prime the pump, says Shane Malloy, host of Hockey Prospect Radio on SiriusXM. “Everybody’s going to eventually figure out what players are getting what, and then it’s going to get tracked and it’s going to be on a website.  Somebody out there is going to start tracking that.” 

The NIL dollars in NCAA hockey are a fraction of the major sports, but they are growing as the U.S. Olympic gold medal inspires the sport in America. Early in 2026, nearly 75,000 people watched a Penn State college hockey game, held in the nation's second-largest football stadium. 

The CHL model will survive, but perhaps as an adjunct to a larger prospect model. If enough of the top prospects leave the CHL it will hollow out a model that has been too bloated (63 teams) for decades. Some suggest they may merge with the United States Hockey League as a separate tier in the chain. 

But there’s no doubt that NIL is cutting a swath through the development system. How deep it cuts remains to be seen.

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 a 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/106980270

Who doesn’t like a little salacious story to spice up the NFL offseason? Last week the New York Post printed photos of New England coach Mike Vrabel and NFL reporter Dianna Russini holding hands, hugging and spending time together in the pool at a "luxurious" Arizona hotel.

The reports and photos sparked speculation of whether the Super Bowl losing coach and the glamorous reporter, who are both married, were involved in a relationship, spending time together one-on-one. The pair quickly issued replies that said the get-together was innocent, there were others around at the time and whatcha’ gunna do? Vrabel": “These photos show a completely innocent interaction, and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. This doesn’t deserve any further response.”

For an innocent “interview” opportunity it certainly drew the interest of Vrabel’s owner Robert Kraft, who had his own little crisis in 2019 over his preference for happy-endings massage with immigrant Asian women in Florida. According to In Touch , Kraft “had his honchos pressure The Post before they published and tried to kill the story,”

“The Post gave Vrabel a longer time to respond than what is considered industry norms, and Kraft took advantage of that extended timeframe to put pressure on the reporter and the newspaper. A notorious crisis strategist made the call but was unsuccessful in neutering the story.” Seems like a lot over nothing, no?

Maybe not. Veteran loudmouth Skip Bayless claims that some female reporters cross the ethical and professional boundaries with athletes and big names in the sport. He calls it “the game within the game.” That insults the many pros like Doris Burke, Pam Oliver, Hannah Storm, Erin Andrews, Andrea Kramer, Judy Battista, Kate Beirness, Laura Diakun and Stacey Dales— among many others. 

But it appears that The Athletic, Russini’s employer, thought otherwise, suspending Russini before the writer offered her resignation. For the truth we here at Not The Public Broadcaster recommend finding out the size of the diamond Mrs. Vrabel gets for her birthday this year. (Hey, it worked for the late Kobe Bryant )

Laughing at all this from his corner of hell, Harold Ballard is saying “I told you so” about women covering men’s sports. We remember the day in 1987 where the Maple Leafs owner refused to let a woman reporter into his team’s dressing room at the Gardens because, in his estimation, they wanted to window shop, and had we seen the size of certain players’ paraphernalia? 

While it does offer a titillating angle to the mostly routine business of chasing a story the Vrabel/ Russini relationship shouldn’t condemn the practice of women reporters covering male sports. (Although we do recall a now-famous baseball reporter jumping into the arms of a head football coach during a scrum.) 

Having said that it seems that major media outlets have gone Warp Five speed toward integrating women into their coverage of men’s sports. The more Woke the network (ESPN, Disney) the more likely the chance of having eye candy hosting or standing on a sideline or doing whiteboard on panels. 

It’s not unlike morning radio shows with their formula of guys named Dave and a woman named Dusty yukking it up. The difference is that the audience for FM radio shows skews heavily female while the audience for men’s sports is predominantly male.  (Flash quiz: Why did CBC/ Rogers have women on the panels for mens’ Olympic hockey but only women on the panels for womens’ hockey?)

But DEI has had its way, and many on-air women are consigned to window dressing. Just as blacks, gays and women are over-represented in commercial TV production (relative to their POP). Which leaves the truly talented group mentioned above feeling like their achievements are somehow tainted by the lack of merit-based hires among them. 

Sexual politics aside the Vrabel/ Russini story also speaks to the issue of how stories are got by an number of women and men. We see the Elliotte Friedmans,  Ian Rappaports, Adam Schefters and Brian Windhorsts breaking stories all the time but few others seem to get their beak wet.

How’s is it that a small coterie of reporters dominate the scoops? As we noted in May of 2024   “In today’s sports journalism, where social media has replaced newspapers, scoops are governed by a protocol. There are the heralds— in the NHL it’s currently Johnston and Dreger— and then there are the disseminators. The days of a rabble of reporters all scrambling to get a story bigger than who-will-play-in-tonight’s-game are gone. Today, it’s a very narrow funnel for scoops.

It’s the same in the NFL where Ian Rappaport (NFL Network) and Adam Schefter (ESPN) monopolize the tasty scoops on behalf of their employers, who also happen to be NFL rights holders. In the NBA, Brian Windhorst (ESPN) has the inside rail when it comes to the LeBron James/ Steph Curry scoops. In MLB it’s probably Ken Rosenthal  (The Athletic) but no one cares about that much about baseball anymore, do they?

The leagues like it this way, doling out stories to guys they can trust. None of this is criticism of Johnston or Dreger, who have deftly maneuvered themselves into the coveted “from their lips to your ears” spots. From our own experience we can remember the exhilaration of having the best source or sources on the really big stories. Like Johnston/ Dreger, we worked hard for a long time to develop those sources and only very reluctantly let anyone else horn in on our stories.”

But now there are the Diana Russinis caught in a lingering kiss with a man who was NFL coach of the year. The power dynamic seems clear. Russini has a direct line to an influential coach who can spin her or reward her. Others need not apply. 

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 a 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

The NHL playoffs are set to start next week, and for Canadian fans there are three— country ‘em— three home teams with a shot. Montreal and Ottawa will try their luck at ending the 23-year Stanley Cup drought in the tough Eastern Conference while Connor McJesus will look to slingshot Edmonton into the final in the weaker Western Conference again. 

Considering that the Oilers would not have qualified in the East and that Ottawa only just crept into the posteseason any real hopes for a Canadian Cup lie with the Canadiens. (They’ll have to overcome the Carney Curse after letting the PM photo-bomb their dressing room.) 

When all is said and done— and when the venerable Scott Oake signs off from HNiC— the season will probably be known for two bigger stories than just another Stanley Cup. Foremost was the underdog U.S. men’s team getting the game of a lifetime from goalie Connor Hellybuyck as they won the Olympic gold in February. “Do You Believe In Three On Three?”

The heart-stopping hockey made the game a thing in America, a banner story. Needless to say politics also piggy-backed on the win with president Trump supposedly insulting the U.S. women’s gold medalists by mentioning them as an add-on during a raucous dressing-room celebration. The players, too, were excoriated by the Trump Derangement banshees of correctness for visiting the White House. But not for showing up on SNL.

As we wrote March 2, the hysteria peaked in Ottawa (where else) when Trump was made the story. “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?”  Inanity.

As we reported breathlessly on Dec. 22 in Brokeback Zamboni, the other milepost hockey story was “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 Shoresy.) 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.

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 . 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 negative that might make the LGBT women look unfavourable or emotional?” 

All that remains to be seen is whether the director of the FBI decided to party with the Stanley Cup winner should Canada’s entries fall by the wayside again.

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 a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . 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

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