Bruce Dowbiggin
LIV It Up: Why The NHL Has To Aim Higher

Stanley Cup Final Pop Quiz: How many of the players on the Final teams from Florida and Vegas are rock-solid choices make the Hockey Hall of Fame? As it stands today, with the Golden Knights prepared to close out the Panthers for their first Stanley Cup, the answer to that question could be… none?
Certainly if Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk and Vegas’ Jack Eichel put up another ten years at their current play they’d be HHoF candidates. But that’s a big if. Panthers goalie Oleg Bobrovsky’s trajectory has looked like the Leviathan roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland. Way up. Way down. Who knows? Alex Pietrangelo will have won a Cup in St, Louis, but he’s a marginal Norris Trophy candidate.
Florida’s Eric Staal has won a Cup and is the seventh active NHL scorer, but his political problems over LGBTQ this year might hurt him. For the rest, only time will tell. Injuries and inconstancies have derailed many a player like Jonathan Marchessault or William Karlsson of the Knights in the past. Look at Mark Stone if you want to see what injuries can do to an impact player.
In fact, of the NHL’s top tier of elite players in today’s game— the sure HHoF candidates— Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Nathan MacKinnon have lifted the Cup. But a long list of HHoF slam dunks starting with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Joe Pavelski, Claudia Giroux and more are still waiting for their first Cup.

Florida Panthers defenseman Radko Gudas (7) and Vegas Golden Knights center Ivan Barbashev (49) throw punches during the third period of Game 3 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals, Thursday, June 8, 2023, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
The point being that the NHL showcase series is being decided by two teams with little legendary HHoF power. The games are tight, cramped, physical. That’s the NHL’s covenant in its expansion business plan. Keep expanding to new markets (latest estimates are two more clubs by 2025). Thin out the talent. Exaggerate the importance of fourth liners. Give goalies all the advantages. Lower the common denominator.
As HHoF Ken Dryden wrote in 2022, “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?”
NHL sweats will tell you that’s how it must be played. With 80 percent of the action occurring within three feet of the boards you need grinders and pluggers to win. Fair enough. There is certainly a market for it. But that style is also a restrictor on your reach. Does dumbing down the Final serve to restrict the growth of the sport at a higher level?
What if the NHL were to open up the game as Dryden suggests, letting its superstars roam? “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.” Look at how the NBA, NFL and soccer market their stars globally. Now compare that to the NHL.
In the NBA’s Steph Curry era the game has been freed up from big guys clogging the middle. MVP Nikola Jokic can shoot from inside and a way outside. “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… This NBA game, played on a much smaller surface than a hockey rink, is now far more open, much less congested,” writes Dryden.
Would taking Dryden’s prescription for opening up— larger nets, smaller goalie equipment— be the step toward greater creativity, making a global business model for hockey instead of more of Gary Bettman’s cash-grab expansion plans?
The question struck us last week as we saw the Saudi LIV Golf owners in effect buy out the PGA Tour after a short, nasty fight. After 18 months of sniping at the Saudi-backed scheme for debasing the product— and letting top stars like Rory McIlroy get caught up in the rhetoric— the PGA Tour suddenly folded like a cheap suit last week.
The men who’d led the PGA Tour into this rout suddenly realized they’d brought a pitching wedge to a long-drive contest. Their boosting of paydays for players who didn’t defect and the costs of legal cases was going to put the Tour into the poorhouse. If settling meant betraying all the people who’d taken their side in the dispute, not giving them fair warning of what was to come, so be it. So long as Tour commissioner Jay Monaghan got to keep his job.
As it had done with F1, the top soccer leagues and clubs in the world and even the WWE, the Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund (PIF) was telling the Tour “You can’t win. We have more money to grow the sport. Be our partners or rot in the field.” The Saudis understand global outreach in many areas, not least of which is sport, in trying to whitewash a 14th century theocracy’s brutalities. The spread of PIF-funded sport across Asia and Africa can be the first stepping that process. The returns are enormous.
The NHL, which has abandoned the Olympics and World Cup models for more pointless regular-season games, could be primed for a similar takeover. Undercapitalized and stagnant after three decades of Bettman’s cautious franchise model, the entire NHL could be bought with the PIF’s pin money. If team loyalties and histories are preserved will fans care who owns the team? Ask fans in Newcastle who’ve seen their Saudi-owned team in the Premiership vault to Top three in the table and a place in the 2024 Champions League.
From the Saudis to the collapse of cable TV, the sports model is changing everywhere. The only question is, will the NHL stick with its traditional values till the bitter end or will it embrace a creative product to restore international and Olympic hockey as the top tier?
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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
Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.
Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. “We’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?” (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)
Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says “Hold my kombucha”. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is “Fought against people like you”. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.
For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. “We used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!” This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.
Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.
We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)
No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.
Canada, Trump pointed out, was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.
We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians in “U.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheese” We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in “Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?” We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in
In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.
The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and “nonviolent” activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.
The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be like George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too. America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.
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 . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell
Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.
“Comments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’
She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles and gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.
Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..” When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.
But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.
Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. “Prominent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.
“Due to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)”
Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.
It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?
We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. “In 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….
“Then something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.”
The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.
Orwell called it doublethink “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.
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, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is 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. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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