Bruce Dowbiggin
Call Me: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

With just seconds left in the third period of a 1-1 Game Six elimination game in Tampa, Brandon Hagel of the hometown Lightning made a move at the Toronto blueline to get by Toronto defenceman T.J. Brodie. Beat on the play, Brodie let his stick get up in Hagel’s face.
The Bolts’ forward’s head snapped back as he’d been clipped in the ear with the stick. Normally, this play is an automatic two-minute penalty. Unless it’s a four-minute penalty. This time? Despite the presence of a referee about ten feet away it was not a penalty, however. Not in the final moments of Game Six.
Instead of the Lightning beginning OT on the power play, it was even, 5-on-5 instead. Toronto scored the series clincher from John Tavares shortly after. Tampa was left with nothing but sour grapes.
Why no penalty? Why do birds sing so gay and lovers await the break of day? It’s all part of the NHL’s fungible notion of justice. Rules are rules. Unless they aren’t. In search of an even playing field we must first consider timing. Like comedy, NHL penalties are all about timing.
Let us explain. In the first period of a tie playoff game, referees can call 1) puck over the glass 2) too many men on the ice 3) slashing a stick out of an opponents’ hands. 4) a stick to the face. Anything more requires special dispensation from Gary Bettman’s barber or the NHL’s head of competition.
If a team manages to get a one-goal lead, only they can be called for rules 1) through 4). Trailing teams must be allowed to even the score at all costs. If the lead stretches to more than one goal in the second period, the trailing team must emulate Vlad the Impaler to visit the sin bin.
By contrast, the team with the lead is also vulnerable to the whole rule book. Slashing, holding, interference, passing bad cheques. The price of success is to be hobbled by the striped men Because of something Brian Burke said 20 years ago, but we forget now.
Should there still be a two- or three-goal lead come the third period the rule book is now the size of a first-class postage stamp. As we saw Saturday, carving your rival with a composite blade renders referees sightless. Refs pray for a puck over the glass so they can call something unimpeachable. Anything.
None of the paid TV panelists are allowed to mention this charade, unless they are Kevin Bieksa. But social media does. And so every spring the cry of Reform! shakes the hockey landscape. After many heated columns and radio diatribes the fuss then dies away when the Stanley Cup is awarded. The reformers, exhausted swimming in the oatmeal of NHL rules, fall away.
Attrition is always the league’s best friend when the product is questioned. Even when public opinion achieves a change in how rules are called the NHL knows time will have its way. These 2023 playoffs provide a few examples of previous reforms gone to seed.
For instance, remember the uproar from the 1998 Olympics? Not about the shootout. No, we are talking about face-offs. Fans noted the rapidity of face-offs in international play. Instead of endlessly noodling in the faceoff dot, waiting for the scene to revert to still life, international linesman dropped the puck as soon as the two players entered the same postal code.
To bored fans, this was a revelation. “You mean we don’t need the drawn-out kabuki we’ve seen for ages?” The din grew so loud that the NHL began using the hurry-up face-off. Fans loved it. There was much satisfaction at changing minds in Toronto.
As anyone watching the 2023 playoffs will tell you, we now have reversion to the old on face-offs. Once more, linesmen move with the speed of registry-office workers, tossing out miscreants and generally annoying everyone again. But the NHL’s justice system has had its way.
Ditto for forwards dumping the puck into the opponents’ zone. By the start of the 21st century the sport moved like a mastadon in the LaBrea tar pit. As part of the reforms after Bettman’s insane 2004-05 labour stoppage, it was decided that defensemen could no longe impede a forward who’d advanced the puck past him into the zone.
The game suddenly became more fluid. For months players and coaches were forced to adjust. The sacred right to interfere was negated, And so it was seen to be good.
But lovers of free-flowing hockey did not account for the plugger mentality that infests the NHL head office. As with hurry-up face-offs, defensive obstruction has been allowed to lapse in this year’s playoffs. Defencemen are back to playing me-and-my-shadow with forwards who must avoid bear hugs and arm bars to get to the puck.
Again, no one seems to notice. Ditto for hitting a puck carrier three beats after he’s surrendered the puck. It’s interference. For a while it was called that way. But now, “finishing your check” is a euphemism for take ten strides then pancake on opponent on the boards.
Yes, yes, best intentions. Sure. They are inconveniences to the traditions of NHL refereeing. Actually, blaming the refs is unfair. They are the pawns of the competition bureau that wants as certain type of game, especially at playoff time. Close. Safe. Saleable. Cynical.
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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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
2025 Federal Election
The Last Of Us: Canada’s Chaos Election

Show me good loser and I’ll show you a loser— Leo Durocher
There’s an expression that goes, you’re not allowed to die until all the people in your life have disappointed you. That trenchant observation is particularly relevant to those who woke up on April 29 to discover that their neighbours and friends in Canada have opted to give the federal Liberals (under new leader Mark Carney) another four years to continue Canada’s descent into irrelevance.
These are the same Liberals sans Carney who were polling in the low 20s six months earlier. Their cabinet members were quitting in droves. In the finest Wag The Dog tradition, a sure victory for Canada’s Conservatives was then transformed into a humiliating defeat that saw the Tories leader Pierre Poilievre lose the seat he’d represented for 20 years. The debate in the chattering classes now is how much was Poilievre’s fault?
In a minor vindication the Liberals were seemingly denied a majority by three seats (169-144) . How they balance that equation to advance their pet projects on trade, climate, gender, free speech, native rights and Donald Trump was unknowable Which is why the Grits have turned to dumpster diving MPs like Elizabeth May and keffiyeh-clad NDP to achieve a workable majority..

Suffice to say that neophyte Carney, without any support system within the Liberals, is being highly influenced by the Justin Trudeau faculty lounge left behind after the disgraced three-term PM slunk off into the night.
It’s not all beer and skittles. No sooner had the Liberal pixie dust settled than Carney was hit with Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet announced unequivocally that energy pipelines were still a no-go in electrified Quebec. Alberta premier Danielle Smith lowered the requirement for a separation referendum from 600 K signatures to around 170 K— a very doable mark in pissed-off Alberta.
Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe outlined his demands on Carney if his province is not to join Alberta. And former British PM Tony Blair, who’d worked with Carney in the UK, announced that Carney’s pet project Net Zero was a loser for nations. Finally RBC revealed it was moving beyond diversity toward “inclusion” by removing “unconscious bias” among its upper ranks.
Such is the backwash from April 28. If you listened to the state-supported media on election night you might think that Trump had picked on poor, innocent friend next door Canada. His outrageous 51st state jest did send the Canadian political apparatus into panic. A Liberal party that proclaimed Canada a postmodern state with no real traditions (lowerering flags to half mast for six months to promote their Rez School genocide hustle) suddenly adopted the flag-waving ultra-patriotic visage of expatriate comedian Mike Myers.
Instead the commentariat was spitballing about how to make the House of Commons function more smoothly or if Carney should depart for Europe immediately or in a month to meet his true constituents in the EU commentariat. China? Wassat’? Urban crime? I can’t hear you. Canada as fentanyl capital of the West? Not interested.
Astonishingly, many people who should know better bought it. It was Boomers waking from a long nap to impose their cozy values one final time on the nation they’d created via Trudeau. Comfy ridings like Oakville, Burlington, North Vancouver, Ottawa Centre and Charlottetown mailed it in for another four years. Academic hotbeds like Western (London), Laurier (Kitchener), Waterloo, UNB (Fredericton), U Calgary (Confederation) Alberta (Strathcona) and UBC (Vancouver) also kept the radical dream alive.
Meanwhile shrieks of “Panic!” over Trump decimated the Bloc (22 seats) and the NDP (7 seats) with their support transferred to a banker-led party that had been poison to them only six months earlier. You could not have written a more supportive script for a party who had neglected the essentials in traditional Canada while pursuing radical policies to please the globalists of the West.

Speaking of time capsules, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a more retro scene than the one produced by the legacy TV networks. With their emphasis on the horse-race story the tone, the panels, the hosts could have easily been teleported from 1990s. While many were interested in the micro of government finance, most listeners were expecting maybe a word or two on the collapsed state exposed by Trump’s aggressive negotiating.
As we’ve mentioned often before, Canada’s allies are appalled by the takeover of the country by malign actors, drugs traffickers, money launderers, real-estate manipulators and Chinese subterfuge. Trump’s generic reference to the border was a catch-all for the corruption swallowing the election process and the finance of the country.
That avoidance was echoed by pollsters who spent the night talking about how the final figures reflected their findings. Except for those that didn’t— Conservatives vote tally over 41 percent and Liberals well under 200 seats. What was avoided was the cumulative effect of highly inflated Liberal polling during the campaign, the “why-bother?” narrative they sold to voters appalled by the Liberals manipulation of the process to switch leaders and hold a micro-campaign of 36 days.
While Donald Trump has announced he’ll work with Carney on tariffs, it’s still highly likely that this was the final Canadian election fought by the old rules where the have-nots (Atlantic Canada) the haves-but-outraged (Quebec) and the indolent (Ontario) control the math for making government. The money pump (Alberta, Saskatchewan) will seek to attract eastern BC and southern Manitoba to their crew. In the worst case Carney may be the nation’s final PM of ten provinces plus territories.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Mistrial Declared in Junior Hockey Assault Trial. What Now?

With all the Elbows Up election idiocy you can be forgiven for missing the news this past week that the trial of five former members of the 2018 men’s gold-medal winning Team Canada hockey team was declared a mistrial just a day into the proceedings. The five have all plead not guilty.
On Friday the judge ordered a new jury be empanelled after a half day of evidence in the trial of the players who are accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in 2018 in London, Ont. Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia has not released the reasons she halted the trial. It comes after outrage over a civil settlement between the victim and Hockey Canada in 2020 forced authorities to pursue the criminal charges.
The graphic nature of the evidence so far promises dramatic testimony should the trial go its full length. Thoughts that one of the quintet might accept a plea deal to roll over on his former teammates— a goal of the police and prosecution— have so far been unrealized. It is expected that the victim will testify.

The low-profile start to the trial in the case is a contrast with the front-page treatment it received after excellent reporting from Katie Strang of The Athletic and Rick Westhead of TSN. At the time the charges were announced in 2024, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote were with the New Jersey Devils, Dillon Dubé was with the Calgary Flames and Carter Hart was with the Philadelphia Flyers. Alex Formenton had been signed by the Ottawa Senators but was playing in Switzerland.
The sensation was amplified by the role of Hockey Canada in the civil case, using funds to pay off the victim. Parliamentary hearings and front-page headlines added to the impact.
As we wrote in January of 2024, the hysteria encouraged the usual radicals to denigrate the national sport. “For the same reason that some think guns kill people, the toffs believe that hockey itself causes outbreaks of macho sexual behaviour. These people cheer for Sweden when it plays Canada because… Canadian hockey is just too down-market for them. Sweaty guys. Cold rinks. Meritocracy. Ick!

“We should clarify here that we mean men’s hockey. Womens’ hockey is not included in the loathing. In fact, metrosexuals from PM Justin Trudeau on down worship the wholesome new PWHL. Skippy recently gave a pep talk to the Ottawa players in their dressing room. Surprise. They lost.
“Players are married to rivals on other teams. Can you get more hip than that? Women’s hockey is nominally about winning; the real prize is equal pay for work of equal value. And the love of the Trudeau cabinet.
“But men’s hockey, with its crude meritocracy, must be shunned at all costs. Pediatric “experts” blame its emphasis on winning for causing kids to drop out.. So when the sordid tale of a 2018 multiple-sex allegation at a golf tournament arrived it warranted a hearing in the Commons, tut-tutting editorials by the score about the over-sexed nature of teenaged young hockey stars and multiple attempts to convict someone, anyone, for the act.
“That’s why the principals eventually pursued a civil case, where rules of evidence are less stringent. A civil case that Hockey Canada quickly paid off from a suspicious slush fund to end the ordeal for everyone. How’d that work out?
”Feminists and the non-binary set howled about this, but after the storm of outrage the media cycle disappeared from the public view. The 20 or so players on the 2018 Team Canada gold medal winners graduated into the NHL, and the league, which had no power to compel testimony nor a criminal charges to rely on, let them play.
“But pressure on police over the following months finally forced criminal charges. Butter cloak of secrecy prevailed. This was highly unsatisfactory. Who was under suspicion? Who was innocent? Player agents and lawyers kept their charges from self-incrimination at all costs.
“How will it end? Will there be convictions or will deals be done? In this time where social-media truths are fungible and Woke causes are paramount no one should hazard a guess. But one thing that will get an airing is the charge that hockey created this climate of sexual permissiveness. The sport must be condemned when its participants break the law.
You think that hockey caused this? That it doesn’t happen in the world of millionaire basketball or football or baseball players? Guess again. Cleveland Browns QB DeShaun Watson faced 24 sexual assault accusations. One former NBA player had seven children by six different women. Former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer faced sexual assault charges from an alleged assault at his home.
How about the stories of young women who, like the young women pursuing athletes, went backstage at concerts and shows for a rendezvous with a famous rock star like Steven Tyler or Axl Rose and got more than they bargained for.
Or those who tried to climb the political or corporate ladder by submitting to power figures? Hello, Kamala Harris. This case is about power, stardom, privilege and exploitation. Ugly, yes. Life-wrecking for some. But trying to pigeon-hole hockey as the unique engineer of the tragedy is ignorant and irresponsible. “
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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