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Bruce Dowbiggin

Can’t Catch This: The Avs Take The Pace Higher And Higher

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After watching this year’s turbo-charged NHL playoffs perhaps it’s time to amend the old cliché to now say “lack of speed kills”. If there’s one takeaway from the Colorado Avalanche’s Top Gun performance en route to a Stanley Cup it’s that you can’t win in today’s NHL without blazing speed.

Led by their superstar burner Nathan MacKinnon and freewheeling defenceman Cale Maker the Avs have blitzed opponents. The Avs quickly shellacked Nashville 4-0, averaging over 5 goals a game. St. Louis proved a tougher nut to crack, pushing Colorado to 6 games, including two OTs before succumbing. The dazed Edmonton Oilers— with generational star Connor McDavid— fell in four, surrendering over 5 goals per game to the Avs’ whirlwind.

And now two-time defending champions Tampa Bay are holding onto the ropes after getting swept in Games 1 & 2, the second a humiliating 7-0 thrashing of the Lightning and their star goalie Andrei Vasilevsky. The Bolts had been 9-2 in the second game of a series dating back to 2020, but it did them no good.

How are they doing it? Blitzing, unrelenting speed and pressure from McKinnon, Makar, captain Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rahntenen, Arturi Lekhonen, Andre Burakovsky, Valeri Nichushkin  and Devon Toews. So confident are the Avs that they’ve been able to hide their very average goaltending duo of Darcy Kuemper and backup Pavel Francouz. Their puck possession in Gm. 2 was daunting, keeping the Lightning to just 16 SOG.

Also impressive is the Avs’ use of the 180-foot game to escape their own zone carrying speed into the opponent’s end. This stretch passing is a revelation seen more and more— Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto employed it this season— but Colorado’s use— keyed by MacKinnon— has been devastating to opponents.

We postulated in February that goaltending might sink the Oilers and Maple Leafs And while Mike Smith tried his damndest to torpedo the Oilers it was Edmonton’s inability to keep up with Colorado’s blitz that doomed them. Toronto’s Jack Campbell held on gamely against the Lightning, but Toronto’s offensive firepower was blunted by Tampa’s grit and experience.

It is clearly a new day in the NHL when grizzled coaches like Darryl Sutter, a longtime proponent of clutch-and-grab, concede to speed. The Flames thrived on breakout passing and using the 180-foot game. Unfortunately Sutter couldn’t replicate the regular-season firepower of Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk against McDavid’s brilliance.

So if track-meet hockey is the future what does it say for the Canadian NHL franchises who went a 29th season without a Stanley Cup? Are any of them prepared to unleash the whirlwind next fall? You can probably eliminate Montreal , Ottawa and Winnipeg from the equation. Their time is a ways off.

Toronto: The Leafs were the biggest failure of the season, failing to win their conference or division despite a star-studded lineup. As such they drew Tampa in Rd.1 and it was Peggy Lee time. “Is that all there is?” The Leafs have elite players, but they also have a fanatical fan base that wants to win yesterday.

But the Avs should serve as an example of the patience you need. McKinnon was drafted in 2013, Makar in 2017. Other parts— including coach Jared Bednar— came slowly. There were painstaking losses in early rounds of the playoffs. But now, nine years after MacKinnon, they seem ready.

Yes, moves need to be made in Toronto. The question is can coach Sheldon Keefe assemble the elements, convince his team he’s got the plan and use his weapons to blitz slew-footed opponents?

Edmonton: No doubt the Oilers have impressive parts. MacDavid was transcendent against L.A. and Calgary. Zak Hyman bolstered the second line scoring. But with elite sniper Leon Draisaitl hobbled the Oil were boat raced by the Avs. With their top-heavy payroll and wobbly goaltending, can they find speed in the bottom two lines to break through? Can young coach Jay Woodcroft get a system that emphasized the speed we saw on occasion against Calgary?

Calgary: As mentioned, the Flames looked to be disciples of dashing hockey till the Oilers exposed their second and third lines, and Jacob Markstrom fell apart in nets. Worse for the Flames is the free-agent status of their marquee star Johnny Gaudreau, who has yet to announce if he’s gong to stay or go home to the U.S. Northeast.

Gaudreau’s high-speed dexterity pushed players like Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm to great years. It’s hard to see them spreading the rink without the dynamic Gaudreau engineering the offence. The Flames are also not a young team after adding veterans down the stretch who failed to move the needle. They could push for a Cup with Gaudreau or start to re-tool without him.

Vancouver: The Canucks missed the playoffs and it’s hard to see this roster finding a MacKinnon or McDavid gear next year with no premium draft picks available. Quinn Hughes looks poised to be as Makar-style D man in the future, but the forward group is a hot mess beyond Elias Petterson and Bo Horvat. It’s a long way from 2011 fior Vancouver fans and this won’t help the recovery much either.

So for Canadians looking at a likely candidate for a Cup in the near future, put your money on the Leafs and hate yourself for doing so.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hyperbole Is Dead. Big Brother Killed Him

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Antietam, Maryland: On Sept 17, 1862, the combined forces of the Union Army (under George McLellan) and the Confederate army (under Robert E. Lee) met on sleepy farmland west of Washington. When the ten hours of vicious fighting was done, there was an appalling 22,717 casualties. It still stands as the most lethal day in American military history.

History records it as a draw, although the Union army stopped an attack by Lee’s 30,000-man army on the U.S. capital. Walking the rolling lands alongside the Potomac River with Matthew Brady’s grisly photographic record in mind a modern visitor would ask how did it come to this slaughter? What issue was so divisive that it led to this?

The issue as seen today was slavery, although the Confederates would say it was states’ rights. From the day the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence the issue of slavery pointed to that day in 1862. Attempts to reconcile the issue of the South’s dependence on slavery produced failed compromises (The Great Compromise of 1787) and the creation of the Republican Party.

It all failed. The reason? For 75 years, the two sides divorced themselves from one another, demonizing and distancing in escalating rhetoric and political corruption. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, an abolition-sympathetic Republican, war was on. Before it ended in 1865 there were 828,000 Union casualties while the South experienced 864,000 casualties. There were almost a million civilians and free slaves left dead as well.

This ominous historical note is relevant today as the two sides in the American and Canadian debate slide inexorably toward a schism. With a presidential election this November and a Canadian federal election likely next year, the sides have given up on policy. Oh, they still make a show of plans for the economy. Or housing. Or the military.

But the real battlefield is the war on information. Who will be censored? Who will write history? As a picture of intolerance it has reached DefCon 4. No better example exists than the hissy-fit from employees of the NBC News department at the attempt to hire Rona McDaniel, former RNC chairwoman as an employee. The sanctimonious stars of NBC and MSNBC news— several of them Obama-era employees or Democratic fundraisers— launched a collective insurrection against the hire, saying McDaniel was a purveyor of lies and disinformation in the service of Beelzebub aka Donald Trump.

Never mind that Racial Maddow and Joyless Reid and Chuckles Todd spent the past eight years carrying water for Hillary Clinton’s demented RussiaGate and Hunter Biden’s laptop hoax. Former Republican Joe Scarborough spoke of the “sacred trust” with viewers as grounds for forcing NBC to fire McDaniel after about 48 hours.

No one is now allowed to pollute the minds of Morning Joe viewers. A narrative is a narrative, and no niece of Mitt Romney is getting in the way of that carefully crafted line as we head to November. Trump World is a cesspool of Nazis and enemies of democracy, and they’re going to play that card.

Viewers of last Sunday’s 60 Minutes saw a more subtle version of demonizing the other. In the fusty Tiffany Network style they introduced  Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of a “misinformation research group” created ahead of the 2020 election. Who gave her that title is left to the listeners’ imagination.

Naturally Ms. Starbird did a hit job on Jim Jordan and the GOP. Naturally, 60 Minutes neglected to mention Starboard is a longtime Democrat donor and foot soldier in the 2024 Biden Army. Naturally, the divide was widened further. The effect was achieved. Anyone voting Trump is a dedicated Nazi.

It will only ramp up from here because, with no successes to brag about and Biden’s polls plunging, fear is king. (Adding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to siphon left-wing votes is another threat.) They know Biden is a millstone in efforts to eradicate Trump. And 40 percent of the U.S. population thinks this is reality, much the way the opposing sides at Antietam saw the devil across the Bloody Ditch and Antietam Bridge.

The federal Liberals in Canada have been paying attention. With polls that even Biden would faint over, Justin Trudeau is ramping up the disinformation dodge with the same fervour as the MSNBC fainting goats. Skippy has added a little Russian sauce to his equation, claiming that Putin has Conservative leader Pierre Polievre in his control, manipulating the public to abandon Ukraine.

How Ukraine figures in Canada’s national interest isn’t explained, but if Canadians elect the Tories next year Western society will collapse, pace Trudeau. The PM’s lightweight posse is jumping in, too. Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, who applauds Nazis in Parliament, is predicting a bleak future for the country unless the evil-thinkers to the Right are brought under control.

Hence Bill-63, the Liberal/ NDP diktat to criminalize WrongThink on the internet and what’s left on the traditional media. Not only in the run-up to what may be the Waterloo for Trudeau and NDP fashion model Jagmeet Singh. Freeland’s bill gives faceless bureaucrats the right to criminalize future behaviour as well. Holy Karnak!

There will be many attempts to pretend that permanently silencing the opponent is not the key issue of 2024-2025. Don’t believe them. People who just a few years ago laughed at the images of Mao’s purges in the Cultural Revolution now have succumbed to a new Little Red Book. They praise their heroes Obama and Clinton and demand jail for Trump. Hyperbole is dead. Big Brother killed him.

circa 1970: Chinese Red Guards reading from the little red book of Thoughts of Chairman Mao before starting their day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

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 brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

From Hall of Fame To Hall of Shame? Shohei Faces Banishment

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Holy Backtrack, Batman. With MLB Opening Day— the North American, not Korean version— days away, the sport’s biggest star is up to the bill of his new L.A. Dodgers cap in gambling controversy. Turns out that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s closest companion since coming to North America in 2018, has committed “massive theft” and stolen a reported sum of at least $4.5 million to pay off debts to an alleged illegal bookmaker.

At least that is one story. There are others. After the Dodgers’ first of two games in Seoul last week, Mizuhara admitted that his buddy Ohtani had “loaned” him $4.5 million to pay off a gambling debt which has a paper trail to California and possibly Japan. Sooner than you can say Cy Young, Ohtani’s lawyers said, nay, nay… he didn’t lend anything to Ippei, and Ohtani is severing his relationship with him.

(Which is just as well, because the Dodgers were firing Mizuhara already.) Then Mizuhara did a complete reversal, telling ESPN that Ohtani had no knowledge of his gambling debts, and that Ohtani had not transferred money to a bookmaking operation in California, where there is no legal gambling. About this time someone got to Mizuhara and told him it might be a good idea if he 黙って (Japanese for damare or STFU).

Friday, reports emerged showing large amounts being bet in Japan on games played by Ohtani and his lousy performance in those games. While no one has been able to say the bets were placed by the pitcher or those around him, there are a few games that look highly suspicious. Monday, Ohtani sought to distance himself from his former buddy.

What is undeniable is that payoff money came from Ohtani’s account. And that for almost five years, a gambling addict had complete access to the inner workings of the California Angels dressing room. What injury insights and insider knowledge might Ippei Mizuhara have traded for gambling debts or favours? MLB and the police say they are investigating, but if it can be shown the Ohtani had any betting interest in his own team or other MLB games he will— based on the Joe Jackson and Pete Rose examples— be banned for life from MLB.

Also, are these stories exposing Ohtani about something else? Some believe the allegations may be revenge for Ohtani signing a friendly contract that backloads most of his compensation till after he retires— thereby depriving tax-hungry California of hundreds of millions in taxes.  Finally, why was MLB, which purports to have a security department, caught flat-footed here, and why are they only “gathering information”? Not a good look on any of these fronts for a business already struggling to re-capture lost audience share.

For those who like comedy we can only hope this mess has the entertainment value of the NHL when its greatest star ever was caught gambling with a shady character outside Philly. Okay, Wayne Gretzky never bet on sports , which was then illegal everywhere in North America outside Las Vegas. Never. Perish the thought.

When the Gretzky story broke in 2006 we were informed by people throughout hockey—including many sniffers in the sports media who still have jobs— that it was Wayne’s wife Janet and his pal Rich Tocchet who had the gambling problem. The walls around No. 99 went up quickly to protect him. There was concern about Gretzky’s eligibility to manage the 2006 Olympic mens hockey team.

VANCOUVER, BC – OCTOBER 20: Head coach Wayne Gretzky and assistant coach Rick Tocchet (R) of the Phoenix Coyotes discuss a play during their game against the Vancouver Canucks at General Motors Place on October 20, 2005 in Vancouver, Canada. The Canucks defeated the Coyotes 3-2. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)

For weeks the police and the NHL did a dance around the Gretzkys, placing most of the blame on Tocchet as the point man who financed and placed bets. Much was made of No. 99’s simon-pure record, even though wiretaps later showed his knowledge of the scheme and of Janet’s “involvement”.

Janet, who was taking the heat for hubby, later whined to Chatelaine Magazine. “It’s unfair that Wayne and I have had a great marriage for 20 years and a nice family, and the people in the media could care less if they are trying to cause friction in your marriage, trouble in your family, and make your kids feel a certain way. That was a little hurtful, because it was like, ‘Why? What have we ever done to you?’”

Um, as the wife of a hockey legend, you were, at the very least, dealing with illegal gambling when any such activity at the time was strictly verboten in the NHL and with the cops. That’s what you did. Your marriage had nothing to do with it.

Just to prove that Gretzky is not the type to get involved with the sleaze of gambling he immediately signed up to advertise sports betting as soon as it became legal in 2022. He’s done commercials with Connor McDavid yukking it up over parlays and teasers. He’s the hockey face of legal gambling. But he’s not a gambler.

This story was never going to be told straight in 2006 with Gretzky’s name involved. He’s just too big in Canada to be taken down for a silly betting scheme with a few goombahs in Tony Soprano’s old Jersey neighbourhood. You could tell by the indignation of Team Gretzky in the day that they were calling in their markers… er, discussing the issue with friendly media on burying the story.

MLB can just hope that it has enough lackeys of its own in the press and friends in the DOJ to keep the Japanese Babe Ruth out of trouble. But the bases are full and the runners will be in motion with the next pitch

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 brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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