Women’s sport has traditionally occupied about two seconds worth of the non-Woke population’s attention. The Olympics. World championships. In Canada, the annual grudge match in hockey with the Yanquistadores. Then, oops, where did they go? 

The media keep trying to hype them, however. The instant the World Cup of soccer ended, Canadian sports networks dropped soccer to show WNBA hilites. Huh? What you should know is that the WNBA (and most major women’s sports) has been a loss leader for NBA teams, networks and DEI infected corporations. They’ve never turned a profit in 30 years. Papering the house is an art form they’ve perfected. 

But if they lack general support, these folks sure know how to work the news-media pump. Where women’s sport was once the earnest, underpaid domain of tom boys and vertically challenged ladies women’s sport in America, at least, has evolved into a firecracker 500 of radical politics and racial disharmony. Players wear T shirts on court demanding equal pay to NBA stars. And still the cultral elites protect them.

Take this weekend’s WNBA All Star Game in Chicago, Please. It comes on the heels of another show trial of the sport’s most popular player, Caitlin Clark, for the crime of being white in a predominately black league. The dynamic Clark, who has been the target of resentful black and lesbian players since she left college for the pros, had the afrontery to vigorously argue referee’s calls in a game. And complain about bias against her. Which, as this shows, is a real thing.

Like soccer players doing the dying swan, arguing referee’s calls in basketball is a time-honoured tradition. But with Clark, a straight white Christian, there is no tradition. When it comes to the Left, she’s an outsider, an infidel. Her demise is the antidote to slavery.

Or so white writer Nancy Armour is suggesting in a USA Today column. Armour, who has the patented Elizabeth Warren hair bob and the AOC world view of radical feminists suggests that when Clark berates referees’ calls it’s deeply, deeply problematic for the black and lesbian majority in the WNBA.  According to Armour, Clark’s “victim” pose is going to incite violence— not against Clark but against the blacks and lesbians who started the WNBA.

(Apparently the WNBA agrees with Clark about refereeing. Just before the All-Star game on Saturday night, commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that the league will be introducing a centralized replay centre beginning with the 2027 season.)

Armour the Race Warrior was not done there with her blackface fantasy. She then goes on to note that the All Star game was in Chicago, home of Emmet Till, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1952 for allegedly coming on to a white woman. Clark’s demand for equality from referees— we kid you not— reminds whites of Till and is likely to stir up those old KKK sentiments, says the obsessed Armour. 

Armour then says that Clark should realize her actions in yelling at refs have wider consequences for minorities. Armour typifies the state of overeducated gender-wobbly women on the American Left who get their virtue from assuming America’s long history of racial strife on behalf of blacks or lesbians or trans. Makes them feel virtuous. Even if trans people represent 0.004 percent of Americans, their struggle is universal for Armour, warranting blanket coverage.

As proof, their high priest, the ubiqitous former president Barrack Obama invited the WNBA All Star’s to his new ChiTown mausoleum to play a little pickup hoops and avoid the building’s creditors— to whom he owes millions. And to chase the perfect photo op. While the black and lesbian women swarmed him Obama sought out Clark for a photo op. And offered soothing words about keeping on/ keeping on.

Which should only double the intensity of her opponents’ furore. But you have to hand it to the WNBA. Outside Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem in San Fran or NHL players refusing to use Pride symbols the legacy sports leagues generally stick to their knitting.  But the political narratives around the NBA and women’s sports in general are a constant storyline. While Nancy Armour was fitting Clark for a white hood, Clark’s teammate Sophie Cunningham, another white straight Christian, remarked that men don’t belong in women’s sports. 

Cunningham doesn’t take crap from nobody in the WNBA, She didn’t mince words. “They just don’t like white girls dominating their game… Let’s just call it what it is, Racism” This was a blast at the mentally unstable trans lobby that promotes dysphoric behaviours. “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men."

Cunningham’s succinct request brought annoying soccer diva Megan Rapinoe into the fray. Now wearing pink hair since her divorce, the ever-so-empathetic activist told The View, “I’m sickened that trans women can’t compete in women’s sports. Trans women are women. The Supreme Court got it wrong” 

Denial being the surest sign of psychotic vanity. Nonplussed, Cunningham replied, “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense. … I think it’s really important to protect children… I don’t dislike anyone. … I’m there to love, but I’m also there to love biological women. …”

The Left loons then tried to cancel her support for biological women. Instead her Adidas sneakers sold out in under 24 hours. Then they tried burning her jerseys. That was another big pay day for Cunningham. Hopes that the indulged bullies on the Left will ever see this wisdom of this stunt— let alone follow it— are scarce. 

For now Clark is ignoring the noise. “I’m all about growing the women’s game, and I’m glad I’ve given something that little girls can scream about at the top of their lungs. I can imagine when I was younger, I was doing the exact same thing: watching TV. It’s pretty fun.”

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

Honestly, the world game of soccer did itself a lot of good in the past six weeks. And then, like the scorpion, it reverted to form. It blew away virtually everything else on the media carousel. A Norse Viking, a dilutive Argentinian, the Cabo Verde party bus and the predictable collapse of England led the bill de faire.

They even answered the question “What ever happened to 67-year old Madonna?” (They were less successful answering why we should care.)

As we detailed here the quadrennial exhibition of excess and gaudiness was perhaps the biggest takeaway.. “One of the joys of the current World Cup soccer event is seeing the unbridled joy of the Europeans who have decamped to North America to follow their teams. The Caledonian Crusade of kilted Scots in Boston. The Hup-Hup Orange flood of Dutch fans in Dallas. The massed Norwegians pulling en masse on the oars on a Seattle escalator.

Peak Euro summer has to be the German tourist meandering around North America to follow the Mannschaft while discovering the sheer joy of fast food. Bucc-ee gas stations. Endless interstate highways. Ordinary stuff that Euros can’t believe. Liker Waffle house. And Wal Mart. And drive-thru restaurants. 

Because their own media only spins leftist slants, Euros were expecting the America of race-crank, Joy Reid: “Nobody black I know is really excited about the 4th of July." It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire.”

nstead they got friendly restaurants, 100-stall gas stations and fabulous stadiums. Which they will take back to their home countries. @pstonge East Germans snuck to West Germany and were blown away by capitalism. Today it's the Europeans who are blown away by America.”

But like any visitors the soccer crowd  started to rot by the end of the first week. As the field narrowed and the skies darkened with Canadian smoke the event began pushing its luck till there was nothing left but the game that the America media and public ignore for most of the intervening World Cup years.

As the French seemingly threw away the third-place game to England, and Argentina outlasted a passive Argentinian squad, the event itself was becoming a turgid festival of the same-old same-old. Cliches about the refereeing and the art of the dive started to predominate. None of which was helped by the sore loser rumble of Messi and Argentina at the end of the game . Punctuated by Argentina turning its back on the Spanish team receiving its medals.

Amazing thing about how talented soccer players are. They're athletes. They're lawyers. They're tragic actors. They're cheerleaders. They're fashion models. They’re sore losers. Truly remarkable.

Retired legend Roy Keane comes at it from a bias as an Irish international and former coach during the days of soccer hooligans and fans mocking black players, But he was less than impressed with the hyped Final played before Donald Trump and his bridge buddy Mark Carney. Especially the referee’s attempt to keep the total goals under 2.5 by disallowing a likely game-winner late in the second half. 

“I’ve just seen the biggest robbery of this World Cup. The ball comes into the box, nobody touches anybody, everyone goes up for it, then one Argentina player starts shouting. The next thing you know, two defenders are on the floor appealing, Nico Williams has scored, and Emiliano Martinez … who wasn’t even touched… is somehow lying there as well asking for a foul. The referee blows immediately. No VAR review. No replay. No check to see if there was actually any contact. Just disallowed. 

Apparently if enough Argentina players fall over at the same time, that’s now considered conclusive evidence. If we’re being honest, Paredes shouldn’t even still be on the pitch after some of the tackles he’s made today. Yet somehow the only thing the referee managed to spot instantly was an invisible foul.”

Okay, Roy is a biased hot head. But having him sum up the final stanza of FIFA2026 is not a good look for the organizers who’ve just fleeced Canadian and American cities for billions. The disallowed Spanish goal was far from the only flash point — hello, fouls 100 yards from the goal—but It raises integrity questions about a highly questionable organization that lets nothing get between itself and mountains of cash. 

While Trump’s America at any price can be understood in a mercantile fashion, the FIFA  crowd are the people who’d sold their brand to Qatar— going so far as moving to November of 2022 to rake in the euros. So any suspicion that the event wasn’t square are legit. 

(Not to be outdone on the Fawlty Towers hospitality award, the Globe & Mail’s Irish columnist summed ups the entire event for Canadians by saying they will never be any good at it, and why not just take up hockey sticks? Probably just upset that Ireland gagged their qualifier.)

So best that the orgy of soccer that endeared itself to fans goes away for a while to let quasi-fans forget what they saw at the end. Perhaps the best summation of the outcomes comes from @MsMelChen World Cup Exit Reactions: 

 South Korea: immediate national inquiry, special tribunal. Coach canceled from polite society

 Norway: Massive rowing party in downtown Oslo. Everyone’s drunk on aquavit and happy 

 Germany: Emergency DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund) Summit to analyze what went wrong with soul-searching German efficiency and thoroughness. Already produced tactical white paper titled “Gegenpressing 2.0: Rebuilding the German Soul.”

 USA: sorry? what is this sport? oh right, it's gay anyway.”

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

People in Canada’s sports business were shocked to learn that Rogers shuttered six of its sports talk radio stations across the country, in what it apparently considers to be smaller markets like Vancouver and Calgary, the nation’s third and fourth largest cities. 

Predictably Toronto programming was spared the death penalty, as owners preferred to slowly starve those parts of their stressed business model— now being propped up by the feds. Look for simulcasting or online to take up the slack for play-by-play obligations. Either way, coming in the wake of Rogers’ recent $5.3B acquisition of the remaining shares in MLSE, it’s not a good look. 

We can speak to this subject as we earned out PhD in sports talk radio from the mid-80s to the 2020s in markets across the country. When we started as the sports anchor on CBL Radio in Toronto there was no such thing as a dedicated radio channel talking sports 24 hours a day. Even in sports-crazy markets like Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver— where people were obsessed with the Habs, Leafs or Canucks— sports was a subject that dare not speak its name in prime times.

Different markets had evening shows, some weekend talk (usually purchased) and a handful of local stars like Bob McCown, Ted Tevan, Scott Taylor, Billy Powers. Typically they were there to supplement the broadcast rights to the local NHL, MLB or CFL team— where the real money was. 

But if a sports story broke it had to be huge to warrant interrupting the Music Of Your Life or call-in political shows. If there was a big trade or signing you damn well had to wait for it on a 6 PM newscast or in the dead zone after dinner. Or catch it the next morning on your favourite wakeup show. (Where we started on CBL in 1984.)

So the advent of sports talk radio was a revelation to fans. At first it started small with guys like McCown on Foster Hewitt’s old CKFH. But the advent of the Blue Jays pushed advertisers to the stations carrying the games. Rights migrated from music stations to dedicated all-sports talk. As first one then another market converted to all sports. It was like Xmas every day. But would it last?

The stations were influential. The opinions of the lead voices were repeated across the fan base. In more than one city the loudest voices reverberated in the owners’ box. They had to grin and bear it. Often the stations were owned by friends or partners of the owners, usually one of the chains, and the music/ news people were happy to get sports out off their hair. 

The 1980s/ 90s/ 2000s were the glory days of the format as rival Rogers, CHUM and Bell competed for ears to supplement their TV packages. In addition to doing ten shows a week on CBC YTV, from 1995-96 we produced a 9-11 AM show with Steve Paikin on The Fan 590 and we were a presence on panels or co-hosting shows at the station. Spoiler: It was fun.

As the 90s ended, we were also hosting morning sports updates for the CBC Radio chain. When the very early morning alarm clock got to be too taxing we took a position in Calgary with the Herald. That allowed us to have a steady presence hosting or guesting on the FAN 960 with people like Mike Richards and Boomer Molberg . Just as in Toronto we found the Calgary sports radio audience to be passionate and engaged. 

The problem was always making enough ad money to keep the station going in the NHL offseason or MLB sked. While the morning drive hosts made a decent buck the rest of the staff were paid in best wishes and proximity to pro sports. Even then it was a struggle. As the legacy media came more and more to rely on government handouts you knew it would be just a mater of time till the suits in Toronto, saddled with the massive NHL contract, sacrificed sports radio to save themselves. 

If you want to know how bad the status quo has become then take a quick peek at the stock price for Corus or the other big boys. As we warned back in 2019, the cost of Rogers acquiring exclusive rights to the NHL in Canada was a death wish. 

“For a short time it was great to be able to put two words together on air. Then bad luck hit Rogers. In the contract’s second year no Canadian teams made the 2016 playoffs— the breadbasket for TV revenues. Ratings cratered, ad revenues suffered. (Only one year— 2017— has seen more than three Canadian teams make the postseason; none have made the Cup Final.) Digital numbers were acceptable; digital revenues were not.

Worse, fans never shook the habit of turning to TSN on Draft Day or Trade Deadline Day. Rogers’ expensive experts could never seize the advantage of having all the prime games. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was unsympathetic, demanding that Sportsnet continue expensive initiatives it had promised as part of winning the contract.”

Heads rolled, services were cut, the new tech proved a disappointment. Most of all, however, was the inability/ unwillingness to cope with new world of the internet and podcasting. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the collapse came slowly at first and then, suddenly, very fast. The Calgary audience built slowly by Mike Richards disappeared overnight. Did we mention the disappearance of Don Cherry? 

Which resulted (according to Rogers), “from October to May of this past year, its Calgary sports radio station had an average of just 1,200 listeners. The Vancouver sports station had an average audience of 2,100 listeners during that same period.” Cleary off-hours and the offseason were dragging down the numbers, but a sunset format on struggling teams was unsustainable. 

Consumers had alternatives to conventional sports talk. SiriusXM had a menu of sports properties and personalities. Games could be viewed on laptops and watches. The American giants encroached into the cozy world of local sports. While fans remained as dedicated as ever to their teams, the locals carriers had to accept incursions into their monopolies on talk.  

Resulting in last week’s inevitable blood bath. Having seen— and been a victim of—several format changes/station closures we know how badly those involved feel. Sometime it’s just one person making too much money. More often it’s the indifference of people who are not sports fans or local. As one CBC suit told us when they cut our three award-winning sports at once (in favour of a traffic/ weather format), “You’ll be okay. No grass grows under your feet.” (Their new format lasted six months.)

Gee, thanks. The only consolation we can give the affected people is we had a range of experiences after the fall. You can too. In a wide-open world of X and others there will be opportunities for them. Seize them.

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

For the millions who’ve discovered the FIFA 2026 World championships the past two weeks you’re entitled to ask “What in the name of Diego Maradona is offside, and why are they taking away all these goals with it?” To the initiated and uninitiated it seems that you can’t take a breath till you’ve seen whether the guy with the flag is ruining all the fun.

To underline VAR-iability just ask Egypt. In which the Phaorohs lost a goal on a penalty 100 yards away against Argentine. Shazam, a 2-0 lead disappears in 13 minutes to Messi & Co. Egypt goes home. Welcome to Close Encounters Of The Sporting Kind.

The offside formula has been around almost as long as soccer/ football itself. Yet it flummoxes fans and players alike. The rule is simple. No player may precede the ball across the final line of defenders. In hockey terms, the offside line is like a moving blue line that defines offside. If you get there too early— even by an eyelash— your beautiful goal is kaput. Just ask Cristiano Rinaldo. 

We’ve seen variations of all kinds as we head into the final eight teams. But the reaction is almost always the same, “Wha’ happened?” Now, there’s the new outrage wrinkle. The advent of VAR technology that is able to show precisely if a player is onside or not. Using a chip in the ball it can sense if the ball touches even a hair on a defender’s head as the scorer goes by. Just ask Luka Modric who’s Uruguay team lost a VAR tying goal with a second left in extra time— and was eliminated from the tournament. 

It can also detect if the ball has fully entered the net. In the hot-white passion of the tournament the precision of the technology has eliminated factual arguments. That’s been replaced by tension between traditionalists and the modern set in soccer. “Can we have sorta’ accuracy?”

To anyone hearing these debates about the intrusion of video reviews and minuscule measurements in other sports it will all seem familiar. Whether it’s a ball/ strike in MLB or a TD in the NFL or an offside in the NHL, sweats urge leniency in the calls.”I mean we wanted video review, but not that kind of video review”.

Alas, once you go video you can’t go back to settling plays with an eye test . Especially with legalized gambling and fantasy sites paying you billions to guarantee the integrity of results. It was all supposed to go like tennis where the Hawkeye technology has eliminated the McEnroe tantrums about line calls.

Different sports have had different results. As we describe here , MLB has incorporated the ABS tech this season for allowing challenges to ball/ strikes. While pitchers like Detroit’s disappointing starter Framber Valdez claim the newnstrikes are erratic— “It has pushed men to pitch higher in the strike zone” — it seems to be working. 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. There will be complaints from old timers,  but they are quickly disappearing. 

Video challenges for outs on the bases, catches, baselines are sometimes tedious because they rely on camera angles, but the games move along. Why is this system important? Because it has allowed fans and players to see the came in greater detail. Result? Baseball is on a hot streak making their 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.

Hockey has had mixed response from its system which only relies on camera angles, not chips in the puck. The NHL’s experiments with using chips in the pucks have borne no fruit, but it has succeeded in developing offside tech that has led to a number of close calls eliminating goals. Pucks over the glass has a good record. Less successful is the tech to determine goals where players’ bodies and goalies pads obscure the overhead and rearview angles. Again, a working chip in the puck might solve this. 

The NFL has been the least progressive of the major sports. While it has incorporated VAR tech to determine first downs, it still relies on referees’ eyesight to spot the ball. Calls on TDs at the goal line are similarly obscured by the dog piles of bodies blocking camera angles. The tedious reviews of catch-or-no-catch still satisfy few, but they’ve had more success using tech to determine fumbles.

Likewisde the NBA, a league that needs to speed up its gamnes, is still reliant on camera angles to decide plays. But it all seems primitive in a world of robotics and chips that the league bringing in billions for its media rights can’t seem to solve the problems without a lengthy review of camera angles. Its problem is more the number of timeouts and reviews in the final minutes.

The only sure thing is that virtual offside calls, strike zones and hockey goals are the future. Its all just a matter of when.

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’s been a year of mixed messages for Canadian mens hockey in 2026. The defeat at the hands of the Americans in the Winter Olympics was added to the loss in the Mens U18 at the World Juniors. No Canadian team made it past the second round the NHL playoffs. 

In the postseason, NHL clubs began shedding their American stars to America rivals. U.S. star Brady Tkachuk forced a trade to join his brother Matthew on the Florida Panthers. America stars on Canadian teams like Auston Matthews and Connor Hellebuyck were also said to be looking for trades to warm-weather states that have no income tax. 

To top it off, Canadian NHL teams at this past weekend’s draft were weighing the risks of drafting American players who might scram south when their rookie contracts are done. Canadian NHL teams not willing to waste resources on developing players, wrestled with the dilemma of expending a top choice on any American prospect who might leave when his options. 

Only one of the seven Canadian teams drafted an American in the first round, opting for Swedes and Finns instead. And that was a second choice of Calgary after choosing a defenceman in the 30th spot. Finding franchise players is harder as the percentage of Canadians has nosedived from the days of Canadians exclusively,

The current demographics for NHL players is 41 percent Canadian; 29.6 percentage American; 9.5 percent Swedish; and the rest spread out over Europeans. In 2022 American players represented 28.4 percent of all players in the league while Canadians— who were once 100 percent of players— constituted just 43.2 percent of players

The flight or fight dilemma is not new. It was also an issue in July of 2022 as we followed the free-agent defection from Calgary of American Johnny Gaudreau, now deceased. Gaudreau made it clear he wanted to take a free agent deal from a team, any team, in the U.S. Northeast. 

“The canary in this coal mine was the wrenching decision by UFA Johnny Gaudreau to take a $15 M haircut to leave western Canada for the Excited States. After much stalling the star winger claimed he wanted to go home so his wife could have their baby in the USA. (Ironically Gaudreau’s parents are Quebecois.) Fair enough. 

While he didn’t end up in his preferred venues of Philadelphia or New Jersey, Gaudreau did make it as far as Columbus, Ohio. The optics were terrible for Calgary which pulled out all the financial stops to induce him to stay. What message did it send to other RFAs about the market if stars like Gaudreau will take a huge financial hit just to escape a smaller Canadian market? Or to players  drawing up No Trade clauses? 

Making it even more galling for Calgary fans, their provincial rivals in Edmonton had sewed up their franchise stars, Canadians Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent Hopkins plus German Leon Draisitl, on long-term deals.

Things then got worse when Gaudreau’s linemate and pending UFA Matthew Tkachuk also told the Flames to send him stateside. Calgary GM Brad Treliving turned Tkachuk lemons into lemonade, obtaining three players from Florida, including pending UFA Jonathan Huberdeau who matched Gaudreau’s 115 points in 2021-22. But it was a near-run thing.

The gasping sound you heard as all this was playing out was from Toronto fans, whose franchise star Matthews is heading into his UFA season unsigned. Might California-born Matthews leave millions on the table to return south to America? Toronto has many advantages over, say, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa or Winnipeg. But if the desire to play in the U.S. is strong, how can the Maple Leafs deny Matthews his desire to flee south and escape Trudeaunomics?

Which leads us to the sticky wicket of what should Canadian franchises do about drafting or trading for American players, particularly those with leverage? With the current Canadian government intent on making cross-border travel into a Kafkaesque experience there are many reasons U.S. products can cite for preferring to play outside Canada. 

Predicting Gaudreau-like success at the Draft is problematic. But what about free agency and trades? How many American players have Canadian cities on their no-trade lists? Will the seven Canadian teams be starved of a chance at top U.S. players going forward? It’s not just Winnipeg and Edmonton as cut-outs anymore. Quebec’s new language regimes have put the Habs in the Danger Zone. 

On the flip side, will the success of American prospects lead American owners to order their management to favour U.S. players over Canadians in the draft and trading? Outside the first round, if prospects seem even, who would that chauvinistic owner prefer to sell to his season-ticket holders? Ditto in trades. If it’s a question of similar players why would they not want Americans. 

Of course winning reigns supreme in Club Gary. But with 31 teams disappointed every year owners may look to other means of entertaining the fans. As has been noted in the past no one ever went broke in America waving the flag. Think of the time saved singing only the Star Spangled Banner.  If the percentages of Americans/ Canadian reaches level it could prove very bad news for Canadian NHL teams searching for Mr. Perfect. Or Mr. Tkachuk.”

Sure enough, both Tkachuks have fled. Matthews, Hellebuyck and others are on the way. Canadian NHL owners are now learning the price for owning a team where Americans have better options. Good luck.

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

There has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the news that the Hockey Night in Canada brand is no more. CBC is holding onto the name even as the Saturday games migrate away from the broadcaster. For the millions who watched the Saturday night staple since it came in air in 1953 it was a constant in turbulent times. As one of our family likes to say, the only constants left from the era of Danny Gallivan and René Lecavalier are HNIC and the equalization fund. 

In the age of over-the-air TV and transmitters CBC was the only broadcaster who could guarantee national coverage of the NHL games. So it maintained a distinct advantage over its rivals. But the changes in technology to digital and satellite knocked the legs out from that advantage. CBC was hard pressed to justify tens of millions to show professional hockey, no matter the legacy. 

This week’s announcement that HNIC will no longer be a Saturday night fixture is reminiscent of the 2008  sale off the HNIC musical theme when TSN bought the iconic tune for its own hockey telecasts. Many felt that HNIC could not be HNIC without Deloris Claman’s 1968 intro music. Claman forced the move, claiming CBC was using her music in all sorts of unauthorized ways, including as a ring tone. 

That dispute forced the move. But it wasn’t long before no one really noticed. They were there for the hockey. And, in the last 30 years, they were there for Don Cherry, who needed no background music. Cherry’s name popped up last weak as his former sidekick was being raked for idiotic remarks about date-rape drugs. The gist being Maclean was forgiven while,Cherry was booted. 

While the end of the HNIC brand came this week, the death notice for HNIC came decades ago when the Canadian TV (and later digital) rights to NHL hockey started escalating in cost. For a while CBC was able to hang onto its flagship program while losing the rights for other games and the postseason to Rogers and Bell. But even that fragment couldn’t last.

In the last number of years CBC had no ownership in the NHL rights but, in a deal with Rogers, kept the HNIC broadcasts on CBC to extend its reach. Which led to confusion as many viewers did not realize that the editorial control was at Rogers while the studios were at CBC’s HQ in Toronto. This led to Rogers dodging complaints about everything from Maclean’s puns to editorial bias on the shows.

Our own experience with HNIC was legally fractious as we pursued stories that got in the way of the What Me Worry? slant of the telecasts. Our stories on CBC’s news side from 1990-1998 about the criminal corruption of Alan Eagleson at the NHL Players Association, as a player agent and as the chief honcho for Canadian international men’s hockey at Hockey Canada were largely buried or dismissed for years. Ditto allegations against agent Don Meehan’s shady dealings and conflicts.

On one hand the desire to concentrate on the hockey was understandable, Advertisers and most fans don’t like bad news. But the frequent intersection of Eagleson in so many areas of the sport could not be ignored or downplayed. On many occasions over that long stretch they were ignored. (Thankfully CBC News did not acquiesce to the see-no-evil approach.)

When we brought up this negligence to some producers and executives we were told we were just jealous of the success of HNIC. It was only in the final years before Eagleson went to jail that the story was given oxygen on HNIC. (In their defence the other sports networks also stuck their heads in the sand about Eagleson and other contentious legal stories in hockey.) 

When we migrated from CBC to the Calgary Herald and later the Globe and Mail our source if friction was the bombastic Cherry. Like Donald Trump today, you either loved him or hated him. While we disagreed with much of what he said about hockey’s Slap Shot code of honour and violence we never advocated he be taken off the air. Even after he told the TV audience we didn’t care about kids with cancer or would not defend our own kids in a fight.

Where we disagreed was with HNIC’s obsession with Cherry’s brand to th detriment of the show. While Maclean was the nominal counter to Cherry he mostly succumbed to Cherry’s predictable bromides about fighting and honour. There was little attempt to expand the editorial content past the 1960s-70s old guys’ rants. New voices and new ideas were ignored. (Technical innovations did not suffer the same fate.) 

If the show truly had its finger on growing the audience the erotic gay pop phenomenon of Heated Rivalry wouldn’t have been such a secret to the prudes. It takes a lot of hubris to think you can ignore hundreds of thousand of consumers of romantic hockey fiction. Needless to say this concept was poorly received by execs who want women doing white board instead of white heat. 

If we had our way the show would be hosted by Shoresy and his bilingual pals.  But that ship has sailed. So now we are left with a defunct brand but many of the same voices as always. The downside for Boomer hockey fans is the loss of the memories of Danny Gallivan, Jim Robson, Bob Cole and others. The upside is that, in a digital era, the games will still be on other outlets and most of the on-air talent will be the same Rogers DEI mix of names. 

Maybe Ron Maclean will finally find some gay hockey players. 

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

Well, Canada— and Toronto in particular— now has an idea what $1.2 B paid to FIFA buys you. It buys you Canadians flying in from elsewhere to prove their bona fides to a nation that they left behind long ago. It bought the best seats for VIPs. It bought butt-hurt Canadians booing the U.S. flag. Some deal, huh? 

It’s not all negative. What Friday’s tie between Canada and Bosnia Herzegovina bought for the billion-plus was a ticket back to a time not that long ago when plucky Canada meant something different from today’s Elbows Up victimhood. In 2010 the Vancouver Olympics might have reached peak positive self image with 14 gold medals and a rush of pride not felt since the 1972 Canada/ Soviet hockey series.

Men won the first hockey gold medal at home since the 1950s. Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue won Ice dancing gold. Charles Hamelin won two golds in short-track speed skating. Christine Nesbitt won the 1000 m long tack gold. And Jon Montgomery launched his career on The Amazing Race by winning skeleton gold. 

The Canadian maple leaf was a unifying symbol that year The words to O Canada were the ones everyone remembers from growing up. Not improvs from Chantal Kravaziuk or Rufus Wainwright. Best of all, everyone thought Vancouver and Canada were cool. The views, the musical talent, the 70-cent dollar. Suddenly Canada and Vancouver went to the top of cool places for international tourism. 

And that might have been the problem. Taking a step up in class might have created false expectations for a country that still had some self awareness left. Before Canada knew it they had a raging case of FOMO. Fear of missing out on the next great thing. 

Nothing epitomized that misbegotten FOMO impulse more than the decision to elect Justin Trudeau as prime minister. Not once. Not twice. But three times. Never mind that there wasn’t a thought in his head beyond getting a GQ cover. The son of a debonair, razor-sharp father, he would force the glam media to pay attention to him. And in FOMO Land that’s better than the Order of Canada.

Justin was to be the Northern Barack Obama. Social justice warrior. Hipster. Binary sex symbol. In case anyone missed it he pronounced Canadian culture dead. The nation was now a Yan Martel fantasy hotel of cultures where, to paraphrase the Eagles, you can check in and you can never be forced to leave. 

For a while it fooled the gullible. Before Covid. Before the Truckers Convoy. Before Blackface. Before “she saw it differently from me”. Trudeau made the rounds of American media with his pouty little smirk and his asinine wardrobe malfunctions. The fashionistas ate up his pedigree— fed by the Liberal war room. 

No need in repeating what led to him sneaking out the back door in December of 2024, buried by polls that had him destroying the Liberal brand if he remained. Suffice to say good will and good governance had disappeared from the national discussion. Beloved symbols were pulled down, sprayed with paint or, like Sir John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson or Lord Dundas, expunged. The esoteric was in vogue. So was rooting for Hamas and climate anarchy with a convocted criminal as environment minister.

This produced a few ruffles of discontent. Separatists in Quebec were joined by Albertans “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”. The country’s defence and economy were such a laughingstock that a president of the U.S. joked they should become America’s 51st state. Which sent the FOMO crew into a sulk.

So you can see why the idea of paying a ransom to stage the World Cup was a convenient diversion to the FOMO crowd. Like flying private or $2000 catering bills. If you can’t bring Canada to Ryan Reynolds then bring Ryan Reynolds to Canada. 

The FOMO got their voters money’s worth on opening day for Canada down by Lake Ontario. Canadians and Bosnians gave a good imitation of the League of Nations, finding love, peace and racial harmony through the “beautiful game”. And when you think about it, a World Cup was a perfect metaphor for Canadian elites. They became completely besotted with a sport about which they knew nothing 20 minutes ago— except it's the flavour of the day. (Just as they're suddenly instant experts on Alberta who are the villains du jour.) 

For those Canadians who’ve always loved the game and withstood its tortured path to 2026, seeing the entrance of the maple leaf on players in the retro-fitted BMO Stadium was pure joy. Singing the anthem as if it was 2010 again was a gas. Seeing Cyle Larin save their bacon was rhapsodic.

Best of all for those in the stands is they didn’t have to watch interminable ads from CDN government saying, "Hey we screwed the pooch the past twelve years, but we are really, really focused on getting off our ass now". Unless they're ads from the Ontario government saying, "Hey we screwed the pooch the past twelve years, but we are really, really focused on getting off our ass now”.

While the desperation comeback to tie Bosnia (population 3 million) was not the win experts had expected it was good enough to prevent an epic faceplant. (Don’t forget the last time Bosnia upset people’s plans it led to WWI.) A loss in such a close Group was likely fatal. So, take a bow Cyle Larin.

God or Allah willing, Canada can scrape past feisty Qatar while Bosnia gets smoked by Switzerland to advance to the knockout stage where the big boys come out to play— or use the women’s washroom. 

You never know what kind of team Canada may or may not have in the 2030 WC in Morocco, Portugal and Spain. But for one day it was great to see Canadians all pulling together on the oars,

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

The news that former NHL player Claude Lemieux had taken his life shocked many— including those who barely knew of the 60-year-old four-time winner of the Stanley Cup. For those just discovering the tragic story, Lemieux was the featured carrier of “The Torch” before Game Three of the Montreal/ Carolina Eastern semifinal. 

Televised images showed him overflowing with pride and excitement as the Canadiens crowd welcomed his entrance onto the ice surface at the Bell Centre. It was a great moment for a son of Quebec to feel the love of the Habs fans. Even though he played for six teams he was remembered as the dynamic upstart whose scoring led Montreal to the Cup in 1986 and the Final in 1989.

Lemieux— whose younger brother Jocelyn also played in the NHL— was also known as a fiery, take-no-prisoners competitor. Most hockey fans will recall his edgy, sandpaper style epitomized in the 1996 playoffs when, as a Colorado Rockies player, he brutally checked Detroit’s Kris Draper from behind, smashing his face on the boards. The act produced a vicious rivalry between the clubs.

Symbolic of his nasty side, he and son Brendan (an NHL player himself) became the only father and son combination to be suspended for biting an opponent. But when he wasn’t driving opponents crazy, Lemieux was a prolific scorer, tallying 396 scores. It was in the playoffs, however, that he thrived. His 80 playoff goals are ninth-most in NHL history. He was at his best when the lights were bright in the spring.

After his playing career he went on the become a player agent. (Ironically one of his former clients Frederick Anderson, was the starting goalie for Carolina last Monday.) Those who knew him also recognized an artistic side. During CBC’s Battle of the Blades he skated with Canadian champion Shae-Lyn Bourne to a version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah which he’d recorded himself. In retirement he was a frequent guest on hockey TV panels, valued for his honesty.

To many, Lemieux’s death so soon after a huge public recognition reminded them of Maple Leaf great Borje Salming’s farewell visit to Toronto in 2022. Terminally ill with ALS, Salming basked in the warmth of his former team and fans. Shortly after it was revealed the Hall of Fame defenceman had ended his life after leaving Toronto.

If he was controversial Meieux seemed to embrace his mixed reputation. Except when it came to being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Lemieux felt his accomplishments— especially in the postseason— warranted him getting a place at the Hall. Some in Quebec’s media are speculating that, after the tumultuous reception last Monday, his bitterness at rejection might have triggered his suicide in Florida days later.

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What many also thought when they heard the news was the possibility that “Pepe” was another victim of CTE, the brain condition suffered by so many athletes in contact sports. With that in mind, the family revealed Lemieux’s brain has been donated to @BU_CTE’s study at Boston University. “No conclusions should be drawn at this time,” advised his son Brendan, who discovered his father’s body in Florida. 

Certainly Lemieux’s physical style in that era, combined with a greater incidence of NHL fighting in his career, would lead to suspicions about the effects on his brain. And as we noted in 2020, it would focus on the NHL’s Department of Player Safety and its passive approach to fighting and head trauma. 

“We use the expression player safety advisedly, of course. Traditionally the NHL Department of Player Safety is to safety what Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety was to justice. Just ask Paul Kariya. The brilliant Anaheim forward was crosschecked in the face by Gary Suter in 1998. Brian Burke, then deciding discipline for the NHL, gave Sutter just four games for the vicious attack. (He admits now that had he known the severity he’d have given more games.)

Kariya missed the 1998 Olympics and the rest of that season— and was never the same star again after suffering post-concussion syndrome for the fourth time. “If the league wants to stop that kind of conduct, it will have to punish players,” Kariya said at the time. “Ten-game suspensions ... and more, have to be brought back to help wake up players.” There was much noise at that time about agreeing with him. But it melted like ice in July.”

Fighting is the most high-profile example of brain risks in hockey. Even as the effects are known, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman continues to parse his words over ending the practice. It’s nothing new. As we wrote in February of 2022, “it needs to be pointed out that the NHL continues its own nonsense over brain injuries. Knowing what is known now the league still allows fit, powerful players to punch each other in the head over… no one is sure. If Don Cherry were still the measuring stick he’d say it’s about honour. 

NHL commissioner Gary “The Good Doctor” Bettman somehow can say that the link between punching a man in the head and brain trauma is still unproven. He seems unaware that protecting the NHL’s sluggo past may make him popular with his owners, but sponsors and fans are no longer with him.”

It’s a scourge that populates the lower levels of hockey where ambitious young prospects still duke it out to prove how much they’ll sacrifice for a shot at the big time. Even last week, stories and ads showing players fighting at the Memorial Cup reinforced the primacy of fighting in the game’s culture. 

As a player Lemieux walked the tightrope between competitive and reckless. It’s time the NHL stopped doing the same.

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

“You know, this is a Muhammad Ali moment. This is a Bill Russell moment. It’s a Jackie Robinson moment.”— U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on SCOTUS removing gerrymandering.

Sports and politics go together like a fish and a bicycle. But that doesn’t stop those in public office from trying to bend sports to their bidding. The popularity of sports in America makes it a lucrative target for radicals who want change “by any means necessary.”

The latest attempt at using athletes to influence public policy comes from the house leader of the Democrats in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries. You’d think he’d be happy as polls show his party aimed at winning back the house of Representatives in the midterm elections this November. And maybe even the Senate.

But now redistricting in a number of states has thrown a curve at Jeffries & Co. The Republicans stand to win as many as 15 districts that once had gerrymandered borders in Texas, Florida, Georgia and Missouri to allow for “black” sure things. Democrats stand to win 6-8 seats from redistricting in their blue states like California and Virginia. In a House with a slim five-seat GOP margin this is significant.

For Democrats who obsess about politics 24/7/365, getting tripped up by Republican pushback would be doubly galling. Because GOP don’t live and breath politics arcane electoral processes have favoured the Dems for decades. Racial discrimination was tolerated in the name of diversity or equity. 

But then came the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health in which SCOTUS returned abortion decisions to the states. And now Louisiana v. Callais has ruled against racial quotas in drawing up districts. Sure things are anything but for radical feminists and racial-grievance scolds like Jeffries.

Oh, did we mention that almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found that racial quotas in university admissions violated the 14th Amendment? “The court later declared all racial preferences to be unconstitutional.,”says legal scholar Jonathan Turley. “Yet, for decades, a form of political affirmative action has persisted under the Voting Rights Act, where federal courts required racial gerrymandering to guarantee the election of minority members to Congress.”

As a result of unlimited immigration being shut down, the Democrats are vowing to use other methods— stacking the Supreme Court and granting statehood to Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia— to find votes. In that vein Jeffries is now demanding that black athletes boycott playing for SEC schools in states that support Louisiana v. Callais .

If ever followed this boycott would send black athletes north of the Mason Dixon Line to play for schools in blue states. The SEC could turn into a white-dominated conference across all its sports.Jeffries acknowledged that such moves will “require a level of courage and character and conviction,” but he added that it would be worth it. Because he’s a millionaire with a public profile. The tipoff is that all this heat was delivered on ultra liberal Chris Hayes show on MSNOW

Don’t laugh. Using sports as a whipping stick has worked in the past. For example, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made the decision to move the 2021 All-Star events and the amateur draft from Atlanta when progressive critics complained in 2021 that voting-rights changes in Georgia were too restrictive. (MLB later returned the ASG to Atlanta in 2026, because something, something, something. 

Then, in 2016-17, the NCAA stripped North Carolina of seven championship events to protest the law, which required transgender people use bathrooms matching the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity. The ban has since been reversed, but not before hot national gender debate on the topic. 

Jeffries’ firebrand rhetoric is apparently a family thing. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an Ohio State University professor, is the brother of Hakeem Jeffries. He has joined the mantra on the left for citizens to rise up and fight the system “by any means necessary.” He menacingly called for others to emulate John Brown.

Brown is best known from the song about his “body lying a-moldering in a grave" after being hanged in Virginia in 1859 for the murders of pro-slave owners and sympathizers. Since that time his bloody reputation has been excused with racial-justice initiatives.  Still, Hasan Jeffries riling up the loners with guns in America is a scary proposition, as seen all too often of late.

A final irony in the invocation of Jackie Robinson, a college graduate from UCLA, being used to ask blacks to sacrifice their futures?  Robinson was a Republican in a time when the GOP introduced Brown v. Topeka to end segregation in schools. And the DEMs were the Dixiecrat party of the KKK, Jim Crow and coloured restaurants, washrooms and water fountains.

As Chekov said, "You will not become a saint through other people's sins." But Hakeem Jeffries is willing to give it one more try. 

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

“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