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Bruce Dowbiggin

NHL’s New Woke Agenda Is A Pucking Mess

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“Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.” ―George Carlin

As Justice Minister in the 1960s, Pierre Trudeau articulated the essence of liberal tolerance with his “government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”. Sixty years later, PET’s son Justin would like to amend that to “the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation— unless those people are saying nasty things about me.”

What once was a proud definition of liberty has transformed into a confidence game run for the Woke elite and its friends in the Media Party. Example this week: The Philadelphia Flyers— in keeping with the NHL’s sudden conversion as a ESG colossus— staged a Gay Pride night. As part of the promotion they wore rainbow-coloured jerseys in warmup.

All except Ivan Prokorop, who is Russian Orthodox. His religion is not slack-jawed with Progressive awe at same-sex marriage. So he refused to join the parade. Cue the Church ladies of the sporting press.

Adam Proteau: Ivan Provorov has the right to any opinion he chooses. And we have the right to have any opinion on Ivan Provorov that we choose. Like this: he’s a shameful human being whose homophobia is only going to get more shameful over the years.

NHL Network senior reporter EJ Hradek suggested the Russian-born Flyer should go back to his homeland and join the fight against Ukraine if participating in Pride events is “that problematic for him”.

Citing the checkered history of organized religion, Breakfast TV’s Sid Sixeiro, coming at you from the beating heart of urban Toronto, was on the verge of “throwing up” over Provorov declining to don the gaudy sweater.  “I think you fine the Flyers a million dollars for this, I’m not kidding,” said Sixeiro. “Figure this out and stop offending people on nights where it’s not about that, it’s supposed to be about inclusivity. (Despite Sid’s strenuous calls for action the NHL has yet to sanction Provorov or the Flyers.)

Fine. Then answer this: If an NHL team held a Christian night, and players were forced to wear jerseys with a crucifix, would you defend a player who opted out because of his conscience? Or would you go full Proteau and say he’s a “shameful human being whose religious intolerance is only going to get more shameful over the years”?

No one in the chattering class wants to take that on, of course. They don’t  comprende that rights that work for them also must work for people they consider heretics.

Meanwhile, Flyers coach John Tortorella had no trouble with Provorov: “Just because you don’t agree with his decision, doesn’t mean he did anything wrong”. The unwashed mass, the ones who, unlike Antifa, actually support the NHL, responded with their wallets. Provorov jerseys sold out on the NHL Shop and Fanatic. Prompting this tweet from tweeter Colin Rugg: “America hates wokeness.”

Perhaps the “burn the witch” vibe from the NHL upset something called NFL World. Because they contributed their own drive to censorship of Christians over remarks made by former coach and now NBC analyst Tony Dungy, who is a devoted Christian (and whose eldest son committed suicide). Dungy’s Leftist apostasy was mocking the movement beloved by the AOC crowd— that of allowing grown men to use girls’ washrooms if they identify as women.

When it was suggested feminine hygiene products be available in all men’s washrooms, Dungy suggested they also put kitty litter in the washrooms for those identifying as cats. Okay, not terribly clever. But he made his point. No amount of Davos-inspired lunacy was going to make him change his definition of what constitutes a woman.

That highly offended NFL World and those who collect pronouns the way some collect stamps. There were demands from the predictable corners— okay #MSNBC— for him to be taken off the air by NBC and banned by the NFL from its stadiums. ”Be better”, said people who ten years ago would have thought menstruating men was a Monty Python skit.

The joke in all this is not on the fanatical left and its demands for a brave new world of Green economy and Woke sensibility. It’s not on the conservative right who know what— and who— they are despite the storms of vitriol issuing from Justin Trudeau or Vijay Singh.

The joke is on the stubborn centrist liberals of the media who worshipped PET or JFK. They still believe they control the agenda. They don’t.

Here’s what we wrote on the eve of the Biden election in October of 2020. “Liberalism as practiced today is deader than Tutankhamen. When they’re not planning escapes to Canada, American liberals like Rob Reiner think they’ve achieved a sweet deal, using the radical left to subdue Trump while centrist Joe Biden waltzes to victory. The theory being that once Biden is in the White House it’ll be tools down for the radicals and the Swamp will rise again. [Ed.: How’s that working for you?]

“Canadian liberals might not notice the change quite as dramatically. That’s largely because the Kings of Smug surrendered to the radical left years ago when the Ralph Goodale Libs gave the keys to Prince Justin. Trudeau has surrounded himself with Woke activists and climate zealots bound on creating a progressive socialist nirvana. 

If you’re looking for grownups such as John Turner, Donald MacDonald, Bob Rae or Paul Martin you’re as dated as Facebook. Freed from icky responsibilities such as Canada’s defence, Canada’s liberals are hellbent on a climate dreamworld. To solidify his Green bonafides Trudeau is now incorporating the floundering NDP into his new party, outflanking (for the time being) the Greens.  

“Canadian liberalism is a cadaver, waiting for the embalmer to finish the job. American liberalism is not far behind. The radical left is on the move— and it won’t be pretty.”

Just how not-pretty can be seen with the Antifa mob that staged a violent riot in Atlanta this past week. Or at Davos where eating insects, indulging climate fantasies and throttling popular dissent movements are all unquestioned articles of the faith for former liberals. When Biden gets the shove in the near future the remaining Hollywood liberals will see it’s too late to grab their movement back.

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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

Snuffed-Out Flames: From Beatdown To Teardown in 18 Months

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“Sic transit gloria” There have been rude collapses in the NHL’s recent past, but few have happened with such alacrity as the Calgary Flames’ descent into hell. Two years ago this April, the Flames were favourites to beat their provincial rivals, the Edmonton Oilers, in the second round of the 2022 playoffs. The Flames had beaten the Dallas Stars with a Game 7 OT snipe from Johnny Gaudreau. Meanwhile, the Oilers had been life-and-death to subdue the L.A. Kings in their own seven-game ordeal.

For two franchises looking to make a statement, this first playoff meeting of the Alberta rivals since 1991 was perfect timing. Led by the incomparable Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers had been knocking on the door to a long playoff run for a few years. The high-scoring Flames, meanwhile, had shocked the NHL by taking the Pacific after just one playoff series win since 2004. All three players on their top line— Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuck, Elias Lindholm—had scored 40 or more goals, while goalie Jacob Markstrom was a Vezina Trophy nominee.

Yes, there were clouds on the Flames’ horizon. Gaudreau was weeks from being an UFA. His cohort Matthew Tkachuck, was likely to be asking for a boatload of money in contract talks. Numerous key veterans would also be up for pay raises within the next two years. But a win over their Edmonton rivals could dampen that downer.

Edmonton had no such contractual distractions, having sewn up their core of McDavid, Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Darnell Nurse. It showed. The series was over quicker than anyone expected. Even Game 1’s 9-6 decision for the favoured Flames saw them blow a 5-1 lead before salvaging the game. They also led Gm. 2 by 2-0 before Edmonton mounted another (successful) comeback. In fact, Calgary’s defence would not hold leads in the remaining four games of Edmonton’s 4-1 series triumph.

As the series dragged on, Calgary’s top line seemingly could not match the speed of McDavid and the Oilers’ deadly attack. Outside his series-opening hat trick, Tkachuk had just a single assist and a -4 rating in the series. Gaudreau had just two points in the final four games while Lindholm was held to a single goal and one assist in Games 2-5. (McDavid, by contrast, ended up with three goals and nine assists against suddenly porous Flames goalie Jacob Markstrom).

For those looking for the moment this Flames’ iteration fell apart, the blown leads in Games 1 & 2 is a good place to start. Coach Darryl Sutter did not gild the lily for his underperforming stars. “It’s not being critical, that’s just true. They’re going to tell you that, too. Missed opportunities go the other way.” For much of the next 18 months, the team would go into free-fall.

In the weeks after elimination, Gaudreau walked away from a max contract offer to sign in… Columbus? That led to Tkachuk forcing the ill-fated Jonathan Huberdeau trade from Florida after refusing to renegotiate a new deal in Calgary. Having signed an eight-year contract Huberdeau then collapsed to just 15 goals and 55 points. His staggering 60-point drop-off represented one of the worst in NHL history among non-injured players between two seasons. At one point Sutter even put enforcer Milan Lucic on Huberdeau’s line.

A dazed Huberdeau fumed. He had company as seemingly the entire team feuded with Sutter. As the Flames dropped to fifth in the Pacific (and out of the postseason) the noises began about which veterans wanted out if Sutter was retained. Sutter was finally dumped, but the damage had been done for new GM Craig Conroy in his first GM job. Unless his team started fast in 2023-24 he’d be conducting a rummage sale.

The Flames did not improve off their dreadful collapse in 2023-24. (Not helped by news that forward Dylan Dubé was arrested in the Team Canada 2018 sexual-assault scandal.) Yes, some youngsters like Conor Zary, denied a shot by Sutter, have shown well. But 14-16-5 in late December wasn’t enough. Having shipped Tyler Toffoli to New Jersey earlier (stealing Ygor Sherangovich) Conroy had to find suitable deals for his departing veterans when everyone in hockey knew he had no leverage. In short order, Chris Tanev, Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev and Noah Hanafin were peddled for Andrei Kuzmenko, prospects Hunter Brzustewicz, Joni Jurmo, Artem Grushnikov, and Daniel Miromanov. The deals also bagged two more first-rounders, another second, four thirds, a fourth and a fifth pick— all spread over the 2024/25/26 drafts.

In a surprise move, Conroy hung onto ace goalie Markstrom to go with remaining veteran forwards Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri, Mikael Backlund, Blake Coleman and defensemen McKenzie Weager and Rasmus Andersson. Maybe Conroy deals him at the Draft? Depending on your outlook, the team is now gamely trying to a) sneak into a playoff spot or b) hurt its draft position by playing spirited, if undermanned, hockey.

There is much potential in the draft haul Conroy has engineered (he has two first rounders and two second rounders this June), less so in the actual bodies he obtained. A safe estimate might be that the Flames will not return to the postseason till their long-delayed arena is finally completed by 2027-28. Maybe a phenom will appear— a la Gaudreau—to speed things up.

But it’s a reach to say that Flames fan watching puck drop of the Edmonton series in April of 2022 could have foreseen this teardown happening so fast and so brutally to a team that sped out to a 5-1 lead over the Oilers that night. But it did. The only thing making it worse will be an Oilers Stanley Cup win in 2024.

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

Pronoun Panic: Could J.K. Rowling Be Arrested for Misgendering?

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Collateral Damage: any death, injury, or other damage inflicted that is an incidental result of an activity.

There are few better examples of collateral damage than J.K. Rowling, the feminist creator of the immensely successful Harry Potter books and movies. Normally that would be enough notoriety for one lifetime. But Rowling, a committed Labourite, has endured a second notoriety, that as critic of trans people gaining admission into the lives of women.

Let’s just say this iteration has not been as pleasant for her as her Harry Potter success. The forces of the gender jumble have crucified her for saying things such as: “Telling women and girls they must accept increased risk to themselves to appease male feelings is the very definition of the patriarchy you claim to stand against. Vulnerable women are paying the price for a fashionable fallacy that has serious, real world consequences.”

While most critics of men on women’s swim teams or in women’s washrooms have been bludgeoned into silence, Rowling is not easily dissuaded. “I work really hard at it, but I’m lucky enough to have evil genes, and of course I’d be nowhere without the mentorship of Beelzebub himself. Good luck with your journey, I’m sure you’ll get there!”

While empathizing with trans people (last U.S. Census had them as 0.01 percent of the population) in their search for happiness in their dysphoria, Rowling draws the line at trans people appropriating women’s rights. She is even more appalled by the surrender of fashionable feminists— women aligned with Hollywood, government and academia who think they’re members of the resistance— who mouth platitudes about “equal pay for work of equal value” then head for the door the second the going gets tough on MSNBC or the BBC.

Or by progressive men who see women only as political pawns. Witness rage monkey Keith Olbermann’s dismissal of the three women on SCOTUS who declined to do his political bidding on the Colorado ballot question for Trump. “The Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its (women) members Jackson, Sagan and Sotomayor have proven themselves inept at reading comprehension.”

The answer to “What is a woman?” was self-evident a decade ago. Until the Alynskyists in the political process discovered transgender people in their march to control the Western world. Suddenly the right for biological men to barge into the female world was equated with Rosa Parks sitting where ever she wished on a bus. Appallingly, left-wing media bought the narrative of tampons in men’s washrooms.

Which brought Rowling’s unremitting opposition to reducing the value of being a woman into their cross-hairs. Despite an unbridled mania to destroy her, Rowling continues to punch back. She called trans celebrity India Willoughby “a man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks ‘woman’ means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist”. (Rowling was then lamely criticized for “misgendering” the flamboyant provocateur.)

Some say that this is all simply an intramural skirmish in academia. A tempest in snow globe. But as the United States and then Canada head into elections promising destruction for Woke administrations, the definition of a woman that eludes so many radical political figures is foremost in the minds of voters. As Rowling states, women are united by their gender, but are not a monolith to be banked by a political party.

A recent graph in the Washington Examiner showed American political preferences among married and unmarried women and men. The results are edifying. While pundits define the left/ right schism as racial or economic, the defining gap in these elections is gender-specific. At one end married women support the Republicans by 56-42 percent. At the opposite end, unmarried women support the Democrats by a whopping 68-31 percent.

It’s clear that backstopping of single women by the state is a powerful weapon. Ergo, the DEMs promote demands for unlimited abortion, birth control, DEI, cradle-to-grave healthcare and hate-speech laws. Married women, while interested in these issues, are skewing to the GOP on economic grounds. (Although the Roe v. Wade overturn in SCOTUS has proven a poisoned electoral chalice for some conservatives).

That’s not all. “Pew Research found that liberal women are about 10 times more likely to have been diagnosed with a mental health condition by age 30 than conservative and moderate men have been by age 65, and about 2.5 times more likely than conservative women in their same age cohort.”

Here in Canada, comparable statistics from married/ unmarried women are equally polarized. If anything Canadian unmarried women are more radical in their outlook as they cling to Trudeau’s big-government globalist agenda against the spectre of a “Trump-like Pierre Poilievre” drummed up by media. While polls suggest a massive repudiation of Trudeau’s unholy alliance with the NDP, the purchased media continue to promote stories such as CTV’s report on “queer and trans Black Canadians calling for a national group dedicated to supporting them amid hate and targeting” that ran second on their national newscast lineup on March 3.

While there are indications that corporate Canada is pulling back from the DEI insanity, politicians have doubled down in their devotion to radical concepts such as trans rights. No wonder the late Brian Mulroney described Ottawa in Peter C. Newman’s book “The Secret Mulroney Tapes: as a “sick” city that runs on incest: “They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.”

Which is how liberals end up with collateral damage by attacking their own. Like proud socialist J.K. Rowling.

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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