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Bruce Dowbiggin

Taking Ownership In The NHL Can Be A Thankless Task

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If ever there were a sign of the world turned upside down it would have to be the bidding war currently driving the value of the Ottawa Senators over a billion dollars.

Granted there is an arena involved, but the concept of the market in the Nation’s Capital being worth that much is stunning. A city of 935,000 with little or no industry besides IT and government lucre, no media impact and  lying two hours away from the Montreal Canadiens heartland seems to defy economic reality.

But we are reading about Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, rapper The Weeknd and Snoop Dog heading groups said to be interested in the team. (Reynolds’ recent success in buying English football club Wrexham and seeing it promoted to the next division has been the Ted Lasso story in real life.) Other prominent names are being mentioned daily.

On the surface this is good news for all seven Canadian NHL franchises, although the Maple Leafs, Canadiens and Canucks are well capitalized already. For owners of the other teams in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, however, the notion that their owners could cash out and make substantial profits is tempting. Would they do it if they couldn’t see a championship in their lifetimes?

Contrary to what the public believes, owning an NHL franchise is not a barrel of laughs, hanging out with your hockey heroes and hobnobbing with Gary Bettman at the owners’ meetings. As the expression goes, success has a million fathers but losing is an orphan. So fans should not presume that Canadian NHL owners faced with fans’ scorn and media sarcasm might not look at the billion-dollar Senators deal as a good time to make for the door. Especially those owners who long ago lost the lustre of fandom.

Being a Canadian owner is a worse torture. In my 2014 book Ice Storm we recorded the advice Francesco Aquilini received from a friend with experience of the media when the Aquilini family dove into ownership of the Vancouver Canucks.

To paraphrase, the advice went something like, ‘If you don’t like having your name slurred, your judgment questioned and your intelligence doubted by people in grocery stores, don’t do it’. Alas Aquilini went ahead and bought the Canucks. After almost reaching the Stanley Cup in 2011, it has been a long ride to the bottom for the team.

When things go poorly, owners are never sure who to trust at that point. League sources all have agendas and don’t want to you to improve. Media just want a hot story about despair and disillusionment. So invariably they turn to the community, more specifically some former team hero for advice. In Aqulini’s case it was Vancouver legend Trevor Linden who helped convince the Canucks owner to abandon the established plan developed by president/ GM Mike Gillis and adopt one from a player with experience in the optical and fitness world.

It went as well as you might expect. Monday, the Canucks learned that, despite a truly brutal season, they will not be in line at the draft lottery for Connor Bedard. This is not to pick on the Canucks. Many teams are experiencing the syndrome. If Toronto is swept by Florida MLSE ownership is likely to go looking for a new plan, jettisoning the Kyle Dubas/ Sheldon Keefe regime.

Certainly some of their players may make for the door, heading to warmer climes in tax-free states where no one recognizes them outside the rink. For instance, what happens to pending UFA Auston Matthews if Toronto face-plants this round? Will he stay in Toronto or head closer to his U.S. roots in a tax-free state? As we wrote last month the Calgary Flames saw that happen in the case of UFA Johnny Gaudreau and coming UFA Matthew Tkachuk..

“As the July 1 free-agent deadline approached, Gaudreau announced that, despite an enormous eight-year $80M contract offer from the Flames, he would test free agency. The star winger claimed he wanted to go home so his wife could have their baby in the USA. As such it was believed his preferred venues were Philadelphia or New Jersey or even the New York Islanders. 

Calgary hoped against hope for a reversal of that decision, but Flames fans quietly fans resigned themselves that he wanted to be nearer to family. To their shock and surprise Gaudreau would only travel as far as Columbus, Ohio, to find a new home, taking $15M less than Calgary’s offer to play on the Blue Jackets, a team with few real hopes of playoff contention.

Things were about to get worse for the Flames. Gaudreau’s linemate Matthew Tkachuk told Treliving on July 20, 2022, that he would not sign longterm in Calgary after his contractual options were done in 2023. To buy time to create a deal for Tkachuk the Flames announced they were taking him to salary arbitration. 

It went for naught. Tkachuk phoned GM Treliving and told him he wanted out. “Matthew did not have an appetite and would not sign with the Calgary Flames long term,” Treliving said. “He outlined the reasons for this. … Ultimately (he) made the decision and informed us that being a Calgary Flame long term was not in his plans.” There were real concerns that the hole left in the Flames’ roster by the defections could be irreparable.”

Irreparable they were, despite a blockbuster trade for Jonathan Huberdeau and signing UFA Nazim Kadri. Huberdeau’s production collapsed, Kadri seemed lost, coach Darryl Sutter and GM Brad Treliving were fired and Tkachuk is now leading the Florida Panthers to a shock sweep of the Leafs in the second round off the playoffs.

How that shakes out in Calgary is up in the air. But if the Flames’ aging ownership group gets an offer from The Weeknd it can’t refuse, don’t be surprised if the club winds up under new ownership. And that ownership eventually ends up somewhere else.

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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

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

Getting Real About Justin’s Real Estate Economy. It Won’t Last

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Have you ever been to a concert where a hot new product like Tesla is mentioned and many in the crowd applaud in approval? Have you been at a dinner party when you say you went to a new Thai restaurant, and everyone at the table explodes in rhapsodic glee? Have you ever been to see a comic and he mentions he has the latest iPhone with the nifty camera and people actually cheer?

You see those people cheering a piece of tech or a style of cuisine? Those are the people who believed Justin Trudeau when he told them to sink everything into real estate when interest rates were near zero. They. Will. Believe. Anything. So long as they think it makes them cool kids. Trudeau could say he can control the weather by stopping cows from farting, and they’ll be wearing a bovine flatulence T-shirts pronto.

Now, we can hear you laughing in derision at our skepticism about the real estate-economy that has taken over the nation— the new economy that Justin fed, watered and then bragged about. (To the exclusion of the other cornerstones of our once-dynamic nation state.) The one that will be going to Market one of these days for a meeting with an air compressor.

Again, you laugh. Despite the housing shortage Justin says we can easily accommodate two million new souls a year, no problem. He says Trump was a vile racist for wanting to exclude unhinged radicals from zombie countries back in 2017. The freshly-arrived from Trump’s “shithole countries” with “shithole value systems” and “shithole economies’ will prop up the value of Canada’s two-million dollar cash-cow bungalow in West Van or Etobicoke. And the Happy People believe.

Why? Because Justin and his cabinet are in Control, and they’ll just rein in these types when they get here and start asking that Jews be exterminated or white people surrender the merit system to DEI droogs. That little dustup at the universities where nervous trust-fund virgins claim to be onside with systemic rape? Justin can stop them anytime. Everything is cool. After all, Canada is the model for a postmodern state.

And that stuff about how the Canadian real estate market being 80 percent propped up by drug money, kleptocracy profits and Blackrock? Pshaw. That is just the Far Right Diagolons trying to panic you into hiding your money from the government which just wants to send it to the “shithole” countries in a kickback loop. If nothing else, the banks will save you— if there’s any shareholder value left after this deranged DEI diversion.

Can’t happen here? We know people who were around the EU in 2008 when the U.S. mortgage debacle cratered economies around the world. For years they’d been served by Poles in the service industry, Spaniards in the restaurant kitchens and Bulgarians doing the physical labour. Life was good. Everyone drove a Beemer and owned a condo overlooking the sea.

Then, one day, they noticed that all the airport parking lots were overflowing with Beemers that went unclaimed. No one had paid rent in months. The banks noticed that all these lovely fellow citizens of the EU had drained their savings, reached their cash credit limit on the Mastercard and skedaddled with the dough. Funny, they all must have gone on holidays to once, no?

No. They were gone. Bye bye. Adios. And the credit bubbles in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, France and other EU worthies popped like the champagne they’d been sipping for years on easy credit and idiotic notions of productivity. Nations like Iceland went bankrupt overnight. Counties in England threw their keys on the table. People’s life savings evaporated.

But Justin says that won’t happen here on his co-watch with Jagmeet the Bespoke. Sure, no one under the age of 40 can afford those two-million dollar cash-cow bungalows in West Van or Etobicoke. But those old Boomer geezers will die soon, and after we tax the daylights out of the estate, the kiddos will inherit the house. Probably after we turn it into a four-plex or fine them for having empty bedrooms because they couldn’t afford kids.

One of the ferocious beauties of market economies is their way of periodically turning on themselves when too many people are getting rich too easily. The Canadian RE economy of Justin Trudeau is one of them. It’s about a decade old without any sign of dropping. Life is good. Everyone drives a Tesla and rents a condo overlooking the sea.

Little wonder. Everything he and his faculty lounge of dimwits like Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault have done this decade has been to prop up the value of real estate owned by their real pals in Asia, Europe, the assorted kleptocracies in Africa or the sub-continent. It was like an ad for Chlorox the way these “investors” blithely laundered their dirty money in Canadian condos and low-rises. When news leaked out that mobsters were using casinos in B.C. (where Justin’s maternal side came from) as a laundering station it was covered up very quickly.

But the clock ticks. Even Justin’s former finance minister Bill Morneau is warning that the bubble is going to pop if Justin keeps printing more money to keep the real estate values so unsupportably high. The entire middle class of Canada, which has ridden the real estate train, will see their life savings evaporate like Jody Wilson Raybould’s political career.

No matter. Justin’s been living in government housing since 2015 (some of it with his Mommy). What does a trust-fund nit know about making rent cheques or a mortgage payment? Without Sophie spending like a dervish, he never needs to look at an America Express card again. He’s got 17 more months to build up credits with his future benefactors, and he’s not applying the handbrake now.

Okay, you can applaud now.

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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Do It Once, Shame On You; Do It Twice, Shame On Me

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Now that the annoying Toronto Maple Leafs business (In Toronto The Leafs Always Fall In Spring ) is in the rearview mirror it’s time to turn Canada’s yearning eyes to… the Vancouver Canucks? Okay, the Edmonton Oilers are in the second round, too, playing the Canucks. But it’s the unlikely re-appearance of the Nucks, like some Ogopogo on skates, that commands the curious attention of Canadians.

While Edmonton may even win the Cup this year— should its forward-heavy strategy work better than it did for the Maple Leafs— seeing the team in blue and green re-emerge after eight seasons out of eleven with no playoffs— no postseason since 2020— has some intriguing side stories. It’s been bleak since the owner blew up his team in 2013 for fear of losing a few season-ticket holders.

Vancouver is the only Canadian team to go to Game 7 twice in the Finals since Montreal won the Cup in 1993. In 1994 it was defeat at the hands of Mark Messier and the Rangers. In 2011 it was the bastard, er… Boston Bruins who skated away with the Cup in seven. And, as everyone at HNIC reminds us, Calgary (2004), Edmonton (2006), Ottawa (2007) and Montreal (2021) all fell in the Final, too. But that’s it. Seven spins of the Plinko in 31 years.

With NHL ensuring that only one of the two remaining Canadian clubs will advance after this round, the chances of a Canadian team making it eight Finals in 31 years are slim. So why not the team that plays at 10 PM ET all the time, the team that was predicted to be among the League’s worst this year. Your Vancouver Canucks. After all, it would be so perfect for the team from the home of loony politics to win the Cup.

Primary among them is the symmetry of the Hamas disturbances across the county today that recall the 2011 Canucks riot that followed the Game Seven loss by Alain Vigneault’s team. For those who don’t remember, the bitter loss fused overly refreshed Canucks fans with an element that had nothing to do with hockey on a warm summer night.

As the fans streamed away from the Rogers Centre and the open-air watch parties, the now-familiar masked balaclava-wearing, backpack toting radicals moved among them, whipping up the fans’ monumental disappointment with urges to vandalize and loot. Viewers saw an incongruous picture of these fifth columnists and fans in the team jersey becoming involved in the smashing of windows and setting of fires. Sure, Montreal had seen recent riots after Stanley Cups but there was little element of politics in the drunken behaviour.

Not Vancouver. Not in 2011. Seeing the random anarchists and looters on Granville and Robson Streets the question was, “Why were the cops and elected officials so unprepared?”

It was an unsettling conclusion to a season of so much good feeling in Vancouver, staining the memory of a gifted hockey team that simply ran out of healthy bodies. The most common reaction to the riots was “Who were those non-hockey people in the riot?” There were jokes about the instigators were 257 Daniel Sedins, 319 Henrik Sedins and 195 Roberto Luongos. But they fell flat.

Many were shocked to see so many anarchists, Marxists, radical climate freaks, petty criminals and psychopaths in their midst. Like the reaction to the Palestinian mobs waving Death To Jews and From The River to the Sea, the impact on average Canadians— the kind who watch hockey, not Mao, as a religion— was unsettling. The damages soared into the tens of millions as Vancouver’s looked at a burned-out downtown and asked, “What happened?”

Later investigations revealed a large contingent of the rioters came from as far away as the Pacific Northwest and California. This was an organized event. Again, how did so many people with evil intent get into the country? The answer to most of the questions was very Canadian. People thought it couldn’t happen here.

It’s what most are saying about the Hamas-inspired wave of crime and insubordination now on screens. Canadians have always been so liberal and self effacing. How did they end up branded by homicidal Hamas as supporting the murder of babies? Isn’t there supposed to be some pay-off for being kind and opening the doors to unchecked immigration from countries where terror and instability are the watchwords?

What is just as unnerving about the Palestinian intifada ugliness is the realization that, memories of 2011, the anti-Israel demonstrators represent  only a part of the mobs denying entry to Jewish students at schools or blocking traffic or defacing buildings with messages of hate. It’s clear that anti-capitalist nihilists are in equal numbers in the crowds, whipping up hapless coeds, grad-school nimrods and nutty professors with their messages.

Worse, the uniform tents, signs, chants and more across the continent are the products of donors linked to some of the most famous names in finance— Rockefeller, Gates, Soros.

Citizens are right to wonder how the toxic politics of the Middle East has fused with a bottomless pit of money to upend their capitalist society. And to realize that the liberal tenets of toleration and friendliness espoused by feckless politicians have only brought on this crisis.

And to think that most thought it all behind them after they’d cleaned up the broken glass and burned cars in 2011. As they say, do it once, shame on you. Do it twice, shame on me.

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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/

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