Bruce Dowbiggin
Call Me: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

With just seconds left in the third period of a 1-1 Game Six elimination game in Tampa, Brandon Hagel of the hometown Lightning made a move at the Toronto blueline to get by Toronto defenceman T.J. Brodie. Beat on the play, Brodie let his stick get up in Hagel’s face.
The Bolts’ forward’s head snapped back as he’d been clipped in the ear with the stick. Normally, this play is an automatic two-minute penalty. Unless it’s a four-minute penalty. This time? Despite the presence of a referee about ten feet away it was not a penalty, however. Not in the final moments of Game Six.
Instead of the Lightning beginning OT on the power play, it was even, 5-on-5 instead. Toronto scored the series clincher from John Tavares shortly after. Tampa was left with nothing but sour grapes.
Why no penalty? Why do birds sing so gay and lovers await the break of day? It’s all part of the NHL’s fungible notion of justice. Rules are rules. Unless they aren’t. In search of an even playing field we must first consider timing. Like comedy, NHL penalties are all about timing.
Let us explain. In the first period of a tie playoff game, referees can call 1) puck over the glass 2) too many men on the ice 3) slashing a stick out of an opponents’ hands. 4) a stick to the face. Anything more requires special dispensation from Gary Bettman’s barber or the NHL’s head of competition.
If a team manages to get a one-goal lead, only they can be called for rules 1) through 4). Trailing teams must be allowed to even the score at all costs. If the lead stretches to more than one goal in the second period, the trailing team must emulate Vlad the Impaler to visit the sin bin.
By contrast, the team with the lead is also vulnerable to the whole rule book. Slashing, holding, interference, passing bad cheques. The price of success is to be hobbled by the striped men Because of something Brian Burke said 20 years ago, but we forget now.
Should there still be a two- or three-goal lead come the third period the rule book is now the size of a first-class postage stamp. As we saw Saturday, carving your rival with a composite blade renders referees sightless. Refs pray for a puck over the glass so they can call something unimpeachable. Anything.
None of the paid TV panelists are allowed to mention this charade, unless they are Kevin Bieksa. But social media does. And so every spring the cry of Reform! shakes the hockey landscape. After many heated columns and radio diatribes the fuss then dies away when the Stanley Cup is awarded. The reformers, exhausted swimming in the oatmeal of NHL rules, fall away.
Attrition is always the league’s best friend when the product is questioned. Even when public opinion achieves a change in how rules are called the NHL knows time will have its way. These 2023 playoffs provide a few examples of previous reforms gone to seed.
For instance, remember the uproar from the 1998 Olympics? Not about the shootout. No, we are talking about face-offs. Fans noted the rapidity of face-offs in international play. Instead of endlessly noodling in the faceoff dot, waiting for the scene to revert to still life, international linesman dropped the puck as soon as the two players entered the same postal code.
To bored fans, this was a revelation. “You mean we don’t need the drawn-out kabuki we’ve seen for ages?” The din grew so loud that the NHL began using the hurry-up face-off. Fans loved it. There was much satisfaction at changing minds in Toronto.
As anyone watching the 2023 playoffs will tell you, we now have reversion to the old on face-offs. Once more, linesmen move with the speed of registry-office workers, tossing out miscreants and generally annoying everyone again. But the NHL’s justice system has had its way.
Ditto for forwards dumping the puck into the opponents’ zone. By the start of the 21st century the sport moved like a mastadon in the LaBrea tar pit. As part of the reforms after Bettman’s insane 2004-05 labour stoppage, it was decided that defensemen could no longe impede a forward who’d advanced the puck past him into the zone.
The game suddenly became more fluid. For months players and coaches were forced to adjust. The sacred right to interfere was negated, And so it was seen to be good.
But lovers of free-flowing hockey did not account for the plugger mentality that infests the NHL head office. As with hurry-up face-offs, defensive obstruction has been allowed to lapse in this year’s playoffs. Defencemen are back to playing me-and-my-shadow with forwards who must avoid bear hugs and arm bars to get to the puck.
Again, no one seems to notice. Ditto for hitting a puck carrier three beats after he’s surrendered the puck. It’s interference. For a while it was called that way. But now, “finishing your check” is a euphemism for take ten strides then pancake on opponent on the boards.
Yes, yes, best intentions. Sure. They are inconveniences to the traditions of NHL refereeing. Actually, blaming the refs is unfair. They are the pawns of the competition bureau that wants as certain type of game, especially at playoff time. Close. Safe. Saleable. Cynical.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
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
2025 Federal Election
Trump Has Driven Canadians Crazy. This Is How Crazy.

“Liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler than saying something like, ‘Please lower my taxes.’”— Greg Gutfeld
Having lived 25 years in the West after 45+ years in the East we can now generalize on the state of the nation. In the West the attitude is to grasp the future. Not fear it. Accept risk and loss as partners. In the East the default sentiment is to fear the future. Think of every reason why it might fail.
Quebec fears losing its culture. Ontario fears losing its power. The Maritimes fear losing equalization money. Hence Danielle Smith and Doug Ford as contrasting symbols of leadership. But 2025 is something new.
Donald Trump’s unsparing assessments of modern Canada— “We don’t really want Canada to make cars for us, to put it bluntly. We want to make our own cars — and we’re now equipped to do that”— have exposed this fissure in the country. Is it him or is it us? Families and friendships are being destroyed by the response. As Canadians head to the polls it’s obvious that persuasion is not going to apply in this climate. Arguments are falling on deaf ears.
With a large segment of the population doubling down on a failed past it’s time to make an I-told-you list of the implications of letting Donald Trump scare you into voting for a re-run of the Liberal Party. Double this dread if the Liberals get a majority.
To those Boomers living off the equity in their paid-off homes, get ready to be taxed on the appreciation in your homes. While you cherish your stand-alone private residence, get ready for the neighbours to sell out to someone who will erect a six-storey, 36-unit condo on the property right next to you because “sustainable growth”.
Got someone under 50 in your life? The Carney Reflex is bad news. Adding debt and embracing the destructive Trudeau social positions is a killer for those looking to commit to a future in Canada. Should Poilievre lose the election and his seat expect a brain drain away from the failed state. And the prosperity they create to vacate as well.
To those who cherish free expression expect hate-speech laws like those in UK where police will arrest you in your homes for social-media comment hostile to the ruling Party. And even if you shut down your posts watch out for neighbours who will exploit snitch lines to get you out of the hood.

Buttressing the party line, Carney will restore CBC’s funding— and then some— to drown out any social media pointing out the indelicate facts about his Trudeau-sourced cabinet members. He’ll also keep propping up failing private media, preventing them from bankruptcy so long as they spew DEI 24/7/365.
For those who cried fake tears over the Rez school graves scandal, watch Liberals pass legislation that gives unelected leaders of indigenous communities veto power over development of Crown Lands. Expect the Liberals, trying to maintain the NDP vote they assumed this year, to resurrect the “genocide” label against Canadians and fly flags at half mast again.

If you hoped to get to the bottom of innumerable scandals on the Liberals watch— ranging from eco-theft to China infiltration— Carney will put the clamps on any inquiry. The steady stream of Canada’s wealth to third-world kleptocrats will become a flood.
To those who thought Mark Carney had cancelled the consumer carbon tax, prepare yourself to find out that he just reduced it and will come back full-throttle as soon as the Conservatives fire Pierre Poilievre. While Carney plays the Housing Saviour he will also use the Carbon Tax to make concrete and fertilizer way more expensive, thus boosting the cost of the 50,000 homes he will never build and farm land will go fallow.
With CPC out of the way, expect no significant moves to end Canada as the money laundering capital of the world, the global fentanyl hub, international home to organized crime heads and a reported 1 in 7,800 residents as members of organized crime.
Batten down the hatches as Carney’s Liberals use their mandate to maintain the immigration deluge, thereby destroying Canada’s support systems for health, infrastructure and burying western values.

Get set for all your fossil-fuelled vehicles and heating to be taxed into oblivion with the proceeds going to more bike lanes, clogged public transportation on unreliable electric vehicles. Expect listening to obnoxious Quebec politicians brag on their “clean” hydro power.
Speaking of vehicles, the Sheila Copps set mocked Poilievre’s vision of urban hell where cops tell you not to protect your goods in a home smash-and-grab or car-jacking. With police ceding the field to organized gangs it will be open season as courts and the Liberals abandon the middle class to obey DEI imperatives.
And most of all, welcome to a full-fledged constitutional crisis sparked by Alberta and Quebec that will make the 1980s federal/ provincial rumbles look like Sunday school. Both will seek referendums from their voters on sovereignty or some equivalent. As we suggested last month the best case could be the UK model of regional parliaments. Saskatchewan and Alberta could join with indigenous communities to demand a regional say on how their revenues are distributed. Expect purchased media to humble brag for the ruling Liberals.

The worst outcome of Carney as PM is Alberta gaining independence or, gasp, joining America. Because Quebec can never get a better deal outside Canada expect them to use any momentum on sovereignty to extort further concessions from what’s left of Canada.
But why believe us? According to the report released in early 2025 by Policy Horizons Canada — the Government of Canada’s in-house think tank— upward social mobility could become a relic of the past, with wealth and opportunity increasingly inherited rather than earned. Their scenario outlines a country where rising inequality, inaccessible housing, and a broken promise of meritocracy leave younger generations disillusioned, disconnected, and doubtful that effort alone can improve their lives.
So with scant days left in the campaign the problem for Conservatives is not that the Liberal base believes Carney and their heroes. They’ve seen enough to know Mr. Burns is a fraud. But with their #TDS the true believers will never admit to backing a lying, losing hype train. That would be like death to them. So they’re closing their eyes and hoping it will all be over soon and they can go back to Mr. Dressup. Just know their kids will never forgive them.
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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
As PM Poilievre would cancel summer holidays for MP’s so Ottawa can finally get back to work
-
armed forces1 day ago
Yet another struggling soldier says Veteran Affairs Canada offered him euthanasia
-
Opinion13 hours ago
Canadians Must Turn Out in Historic Numbers—Following Taiwan’s Example to Defeat PRC Election Interference
-
International21 hours ago
History in the making? Trump, Zelensky hold meeting about Ukraine war in Vatican ahead of Francis’ funeral
-
C2C Journal16 hours ago
“Freedom of Expression Should Win Every Time”: In Conversation with Freedom Convoy Trial Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon
-
Business21 hours ago
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself
-
conflict1 day ago
Why are the globalists so opposed to Trump’s efforts to make peace in Ukraine?
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s