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Bruce Dowbiggin

Testing The Covid Narrative: Stevie Y Says Enough

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HOF member Steve Yzerman has always kept an open mind. As a star player with Detroit, Yzerman was one of the Top 5 scorers in the NHL in the 1980s-90s. Then, after a conversation with coach Scotty Bowman, the Red Wings captain transformed himself into an all-around player. The Red Wings went on to win two straight Stanley Cups under his leadership.

As executive director he led Team Canada to the 2010 Olympic Gold medal. Likewise he took over the mediocre Tampa Bay Lightning as GM. Using his Red Wings’ experience he made the Lightning into perennial contenders. Now he’s trying to rebuild the Red Wings as the club’s general manager.

So when Yzerman speaks about the spike in positive Covid tests the hockey community listens. “I really don’t know what the right thing is,” he said when asked about Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill, assistant coach Alex Tanguay, goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, forwards Givani Smith, Carter Rowney and Filip Zadina— all currently on the COVID-19 list

“At the end of the day, I think — and now I’m getting political — but at the end of the day our players are testing positive with very little symptoms, if any symptoms at all. I don’t see it as a threat to their health at this point. I think you might take it a step further and question why are we even testing, for guys that have no symptoms,” Yzerman said on Saturday.

Is test-and-trace a misplaced priority? Heresy! Yet Yzerman’s thoughts on false positives are being echoed in the NFL where games are being delayed because hundreds of players and staff— many of them asymptomatic— have tested positive using the NFL’s mandatory PCR testing. Tampa Bay Bucs coach Bruce Arians told reporters on Friday, “If you’re asymptomatic, you should be allowed to play.”

Cleveland QB Baker Mayfield was another who complained about the NFL’s current Covid policies (adopted last year). “NFL, Make up your damn mind on protocols,’’ he tweeted shortly after backup QB Case Keenum had tested positive. “Showing up and making only 3 teams test?!? All so you can keep the game as scheduled to make money…Something seems off here.’’

What is the current state of play? So far no pro team athlete has died of or been in critical condition from Covid, the Alpha, Delta or Omicron virus. Ninety-five percent of NFL players are double vaxxed— but since the start of last week, 213 NFL players have tested positive for COVID-19. That’s nearly 10 percent of the league. (51 NFL players landed on the Reserve/COVID-19 list on Monday’s wire.) They all tested positive.Roughly two-thirds of the positives are asymptomatic, while the rest have mild symptoms, per the NFL.

NFL team personnel are 100 percent vaccinated, but there were 50 new “cases” among them in the same time period. Both the Rams and Washington joined the Raiders and other teams in having games delayed till early this week because of so many positive tests.

After the pointed comments from Mayfield and Arians , the NFL loosened its restrictions on testing players who are not sick with symptoms. For now, the NFL and NFLPA have agreed to a procedure that allows vaccinated and asymptomatic players to return faster than before. (This reflects the fact that most of the asymptomatic subjects don’t have enough off the virus to become sick or create a sample that can be transmitted.)

The NHL and NBA have similar dilemmas as teams try to scrape together a game roster from players off the street or in the minors. But neither has gone as far as the NFL in recognizing the difference between serious cases and those who have insufficient virus to transmit.

So what’s happening here? As we have repeatedly said the risks from Covid or its variants to well-conditioned athletes are negligible. (Fewer than 240 people in Canada under the age of 40 have died of covid since March 2020.) The extreme caution might have been warranted this time last year, but even with Omicron looming the threat to the public from athletes is nowhere near the panic of 2020.

So why do we remain in limbo when the public knows that vaccines are not perfect, fatalities are overwhelmingly among the old, the obese and those with underlying morbidity? The answer is fear cultivated by people such as U.S. president Joe Biden who this weekend predicted: “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.”

Panicked middle and upper-class professionals have swallowed this agenda that, for the first time in history, citizens must protect others, not themselves through mandated vaccines, lockdowns and masking. They want someone to blame. So, early treatment is unheard of. Herd immunity is the devil’s brew. This tweet criticizing Alberta premier Jason Kenney sums up the Plague of Peril. “@anniegirl1138 Saying the quiet part out loud again. His plan is we all get sick and hopefully not too many end up in hospital or dead. That’s it. That’s the plan. “

As we wrote Nov. 23, 2020. “The sale has been made by those in authority. They call the shots. No one is allowed to dissent. That was the end game.  And there’s no going back when the Woke media warns you that resistance will invite the cancel culture to ruin your life. This is the new reality. Get used to it. And if you value your freedoms, tough luck.”

The push to liberalize testing for athletes will be seen by the usual suspects as privilege for millionaires. But until the virus has done its business all the doom from bureaucrats and their media mouthpieces will only delay the inevitable: Covid is here to stay. Deal with it.

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

It Gets Late Early These Days: Time To Bounce Biden & Trudeau?

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“Take out the papers and the trash, or you don’t get no spending cash.”

Whether you’re in the stock market or real estate the question of when to sell is paramount. When to dump a tanking investment or sell a house in a bad market is an art form. Hence the expression, Timing is everything.

For the incumbent governments in Canada and the U.S. the time has come to make that risky decision of when to fish or when to cut bait with their respective leaders.

In Canada the federal Liberals, still shacked up with the NDP in a common-law embrace, have been doing denial for an extended period since they used the Covid-19 lockdown to sneak out a minority government in 2021. As soon as voters awoke to the lockdown hoax they’d lived through— courtesy of Justin Trudeau— they began to abandon him as a marketable product.

With five years to procrastinate, however, they indulged their radical agenda of climate and culture rather than address how they might be re-elected with Trudeau and his Quebec-dominated cabinet. They blew black holes in Canada’s debt load. There was a PR strategy to label Pierre Poilievre as a mini-Trump. And to buy up the floundering legacy media sources before there 2025 vote.

But for the most part the Liberals still saw Happy Ways where the mainstream saw an intellectual lightweight tilting at every Woke windmill. Since 2021 the polls have shown a steady erosion to the point where they see a Conservative majority— maybe even super-majority— if an election were called today.

Now all governments get tired over time. The biggest complaint about Stephen Harper from the talking classes in 2015 was the sense of fatigue he projected to Canadians who want their PM to be a rock star. But the collapse in Trudeau’s support has come via other very serious underpinnings from corruption (Lavalin, ME Charity, Chinese influence) to entitlement (the Carbon Tax, deficit).

However you see these issues they have led to the point where Liberals, more than half of whom will lose in the next election, must decide if they want to go to Davy Jones locker on the HMCS Skippy. Many of them will qualify for federal pensions if they hold on to the bitter end with Trudeau in October of next year. So he has that assurance of support. But if he is punted by the party he resurrected in 2010, who will succeed him? The taint of Trudeau on his most loyal sycophants will disqualify anyone in cabinet from being taken seriously for the top job.

Outside the immediate junta, names like Mark Carney— former Bank of Canada head— and deposed justice minister Jody Wilson Raybould have been put forward. The problem for anyone aspiring to replace Trudeau is they will have to face his fanatical loyalists in the PMO who’ve slapped down any pretenders so far.

The most recent forlorn hope for Trudeau was that the Federal Budget might calm the waters. Running up the deficit to perilous numbers with a menu of profligate policies to slake the restless NDP was going to force Poilievre on the defensive. So were limp attacks such as this from Trudeau cabinet pal Marc Miller.

For a brief fortnight the polling seemed to stabilize. But now more recent polls show that Trudeau’s popularity bottom was not a bottom at all, just a transfer station en route to the Marianas Trench of politics. Leaving the question of who and when as the only measurables in the equation. How much runway does he deserves and how much his successor gets are the operative problems when Liberals spend the summer in their ridings.

Meanwhile Joe Biden’s faint hope of putting his opponent in jail before the November election has done nothing to move his polling. If anything the prosecution of Donald Trump as he runs against Biden in 2024 is seen as a distinctly underhanded tactic by many outside the MSNBC mouth breathers.

While polls are a mugs’ game, the news that Biden trails Trump in all seven of the swing states he needs to be re-elected has sent shock through Team Obama, which runs the Democratic Party at the moment. There are a lot of sinecures and cushy salaries at risk here. The addition of Robert Kennedy Jr. to the presidential ballot in key states like California is further diluting the DEMs base. While RFK Jr. draws from both parties it’s expected he’ll hurt Biden most.

As if that wasn’t enough the recent pro-Palestine occupations by students and paid agitators is seen as a referendum on Biden’s support for Israel among the fanatical left-wing base of the DEMs. And polls indicate the effect has been disastrous.

Unlike the Liberals who have time to effect a palace coup, the DEMs are up against the clock with their convention coming in July. While he still plays to the Hollywood and Wall Street donors, the general public sees Biden getting more decrepit by the day. His persona as a pleasantly dazed crossing guard has worn thin.

While replacement scenarios have dogged Biden since his election (saved only by the utter dislike for his VP Kamala Harris) the party pros are talking about one last pierce of theatre: letting Biden take the nomination in July, replace Harris with a star candidate like Michelle Obama or Tom Hanks and have Biden then take a knee for health reasons.

Let the untainted replacement take on Trump, who produces a puke-in-your-mouth reaction with half the American electorate. A squishy Obama/ Bill Clinton replacement could rout Trump in a debate and bring single white women and blacks/ latinos back home to the DEMs. Seems like a longshot?

This is the party that orchestrated at least four separate legal assaults on Trump, coincidentally in the year of the election. Don’t under-estimate their chicanery. And while they  didn’t pay off the media as Trudeau has done, they don’t need to. They get the love for free.

Give them credit if they do, because doing nothing is a ticket to four years of The Don.

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

In Toronto The Leafs Always Fall In Spring: 2024 Edition

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Who knew when we tuned in Saturday night to Hockey Night In Canada that we would be witnessing playoff history. Nay, not just playoff history but hockey history. According to what we saw and heard on HNIC just ONE TEAM played on Saturday. And they lost. It goes without saying that the team was HNIC’s beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.

Those of us who’d stuck with the telecast all evening could’ve sworn there was another team on the ice in black and gold. Rumour has it they were the Boston Bruins, but don’t quote us on that. Also, take it as a rumour that Boston’s 3-1 win gave them a 3-1 lead in games over Toronto heading back to Boston for what most expect will be the  coup de grace for the blue and white. Again.

But when time came to discuss the game afterward the Toronto-based panel told us that the Leafs had beaten themselves. Yes, in some hockey version of metaphysics Toronto had transcended the third dimension. The Bruins were like The Fugitive, lurking far out of sight. Brad Marchand had had nothing to do with breaking up Toronto’s neutral-zone speed nor Charlie McAvoy clearing the front of their net. Jeremy Swayman, who he?

Instead the talking heads dissected the loss in shades of blue.

For those who were washing their hair or another vital task on Saturday, the Leafs had more story lines than a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (insert your joke here), They finally got their migraine-afflicted star William Nylander back in the fold before a delirious Scotiabank crowd who’d probably paid about a $1000 a ticket to attend. But their star sniper Auston Matthews (allegedly) had food poisoning or a gall stone or a tee time next week back home in Scottsdale. Hard to say.

There was also a goaltending controversy, a Mitch Marner controversy and a Keith Pelley controversy (more on MLSE’s new CEO in a moment). And the, you know, 1967 thing. Despite the hysteria of their long-suffering fans at puck drop, postgame analysts hinted the Leafs seemed to be disinterested. Or, to those who actually watched the game, they were schooled by a better Boston team.

By the middle of the second period, despond and a 3-0 deficit had settled on the Leafs. Despite being the ONLY TEAM on the ice their well-compensated stars were bitching at each other on the bench. While Matthews looked glumly at his pals, Marner had a hissy fit throwing his gloves to the floor. Nylander lip-synched a rebuke to Marner along the lines of Grow up, this ain’t junior hockey. Did we say the crowd booed them off the ice after the second period? Yeah, that too.

Which led mild-mannered Kelly Hrudey to scold Marner for a bush-league behaviour in the break. Remember, Hrudey’s the nice guy on the HNIC panel. Where others see an alligator chomping on their leg Kelly sees a chance to get up-close with nature. So the rebuke for Marner was incendiary. By the time they dropped the pick for the third period you’d have thought Bob Cole wasn’t the only person to pass away this week. Gloom.

Making matters worse, Matthews was nowhere to be found. (According coach Keefe, the doctors had pulled him from the game. Whatever.) When the contest ended with a Toronto loss, the postgame chatter was once more obsessed with Toronto’s failings, as if another team were not having its way on the ice. Where was the effort? Where was the intensity promised when Leafs management spread dollars like Easter candy among its Core Four?

Kevin Bieksa, typically the most salty one on the panel, reminded everyone there was a Game 5 Monday and that 3-1 leads have been overcome. But with Toronto’s success in comebacks being nil he sounded like a guy trying to sell you a penny mining stock.

The dressing-room afterward was mint. “You know what, that’s just the way we are,” Nylander said. “I mean we expect a lot from each other, and we love each other.”

“I don’t think there’s any (frustration),” Marner added unconvincingly. “We’re grown men. We were talking about plays out there that we just want to make sure we’re all 100 percent on and know what we’re doing… We’re not yelling at each other because we hate each other.”

Chris Johnston of The Athletic called it the end of the Maple Leafs as we know them. “They’re making more mistakes at five-on-five, they’re soundly losing the special-teams battle, and they’ve transformed from being one of the NHL’s best offensive teams in the regular season to one that can’t score more than two goals per night in the playoffs. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

Coach Sheldon Keefe, whose shelf life has about 60 minutes left, was enigmatic in the face of cruel destiny. “You can question a lot of things; you can’t question the effort,” he said.

He’s right about one thing. When this first-round ends in ignominy there will be plenty of questions from Pelley, newly installed at the top of the MLSE pyramid. Such as, why should I keep this management team that teases Waygu beef in-season but delivers ground chuck in the playoffs? It’s long been said that the league the Leafs have been built for doesn’t exist in the postseason. So why keep pretending it does?

For those not in the know, Pelley has spent the last few years dealing with the Saudi’s LIV golf enterprise in his role as CEO of what used to be known as the European Tour. (Insert your barbarism reference) So he’s used to dealing with nasty situations.

Maybe his first act on the Leafs file is reminding everyone that two teams play each other in the playoffs, and it might be a good idea to learn from what the winners are doing.

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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