Bruce Dowbiggin
Connor, Johnny, Auston: You’ve Got To Have Hart

Among the slimmest volumes of the past 30 years is Great Canadian NHL Champions. As most suffering fans of the seven Canadian-based NHL teams know, no Canadian club has won a Stanley Cup since 1993.
Just five teams have even gotten to the Final: Vancouver (1994/ 2011), Calgary (2004), Ottawa (2006), Edmonton (2007) and Montreal (2021). They all lost. (You can make a point that the transplanted Quebec Nordiques won the Cup in Colorado in 1996 and 2001, but it’s a lame argument.)
As the 2022 postseason begins, however, there are two bonafide contenders— Toronto/ Calgary— to win the Cup and a third— Edmonton— with a puncher’s chance. Of course. these dreams can collapse for any number of reasons. In 2004 and 2011, the Flames and Canucks simply ran out of healthy bodies. As we wrote in an earlier column, goaltending can also trip up a team.
What’s just as interesting as the Canadian Cup chase will be the contest for the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player to his team. In the years since Patrick Roy led the Habs to the 1993 championship, going 10-0 in OT games, there has not been a year with a trio of Canadian-based players like this.
Toronto’s Auston Matthews. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid. Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau.. (Ironically two of three are Americans on Canadian teams.) They’re key reasons why their teams have a chance at the Cup.
The Toronto media has— surprise— already anointed Maple Leafs captain Matthews as the putative winner. And Lord knows what the Toronto media decides instantly becomes gospel. Matthews has no doubt had a remarkable year, and deserves a lot of credit. Bookies love him too at an inflated -345.
Besides being the star of the team in the largest Canadian market, Matthews’ claim rests largely on being the top goal scorer in the NHL. His 58 goals in 71 games (all totals through 25/04) are just three more than his nearest competitor (Leon Draisaitl). He did manage a historic 51 of his goals in a 50-game span. But pure goal scoring is the only significant stat in which Matthews leads: his nine game-winning goals trail Draisaitl by two. And his 15 power-play goals trail Draisaitl by nine.
Matthews also trails McDavid, the NHL’s leading scorer, by 14 points, albeit with six fewer games played. Gaudreau leads him overall by 11 points. Gaudreau, meanwhile, currently sits third in league scoring behind McDavid and Florida’s Jonathan Huberdeau; he stakes his claim to the Hart based on some extraordinary plus/ minus statistics. With three games to play Gaudreau is a stunning plus-61; only his linemate Matthew Tkachuk is even remotely close at plus-55. McDavid is plus-27. Matthews an ordinary plus-18.
He not only scored but his line kept opponents from scoring. Okay, generic plus/ minus can be overrated. But there is real value in Gaudreau’s leading his challengers with 86 even-strength points. (This from a player Flames fans wanted traded a year ago). McDavid and Matthews are tied at 76.
While Matthews’ has 15 PPG, McDavid’s has 9 PPG followed by Gaudreau has a modest 6 PPG. Gaudreau has managed these numbers while playing less than his rivals. His ice time is just 18:28. Matthews logs 20:33. McDavid plays a whopping 22:08 per game.
McDavid may have been the best player in the NHL the past half-decade (he’s won two Harts already), but his team has held him back come playoff time. This year he and Draisaitl have grabbed the underachieving Oilers by the scruff and made a late surge to a playoff spot.
All three could end up watching Huberdeau, a Canadian playing on an American team, carry off the Hart— especially if Canadian voters split the vote. The Florida Panthers star is second in scoring and leads the league in assists and may be the best playmaker on the runaway Eastern Conference leaders.
Who to bet on? Matthews is the favourite at -345 to win his first Hart Trophy. At +400, two-time winner Connor McDavid is the second favourite. Gaudreau is closing the gap, now at +1600. Remember that voting is due before the playoffs, so a bad postseason cannot hurt a Hart contender nor can it help a dark horse. Our vote in a narrow contest goes to Gaudreau.
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The sad passing of Guy Lafleur this week brought forth many memories of his greatness as a player. But as we noted in Inexact Science (brucedowbigginbooks.com) The Flower was considered something of a bust in his first few NHL seasons. After scoring “just” 27 goals in his rookie year, he was overshadowed by No.2 selection Marcel Dionne and No. 5 pick Rick Martin.
(He) may have had one more tally and just seven fewer points than Dionne, but it was the perception that mattered also. And the perception was that Lafleur didn’t match up to his draft “adversary.” Making matters worse was that Buffalo’s number five overall pick, Rick Martin, achieved the heights Lafleur supposedly should have reached in 1971–72 by amassing an NHL rookie record 44 goals—still tied today as the seventh-highest such total in league history… Even though he was the odds-on favourite for Rookie of the Year when training camp had rolled around, Lafleur wasn’t even a finalist for the award. The dashing of these rather lofty expectations naturally begat skepticism of Lafleur’s greatness.
To the exasperation of Habs fans, Lafleur’s closest peers continued to outdo him in every way but in championship rings. Dionne avoided any sophomore jinx by posting 90 and 78 points in the next two campaigns, compared to Lafleur’s 56 and 55, while Martin reeled off 37- and 52-goal campaigns to show his freshman output had been no beginner’s luck. To add insult, even the number 10 pick of 1971, Steve Vickers—debuting for the Rangers in 1972—reeled off back-to-back 30-goal seasons to start off his career. When Lafleur bottomed out with only 21 goals in his third NHL season, 1973–74, there were whispers that maybe he was just a fluke, a flash-in-the-pan who peaked too early, spoiled by the weaker defences of the junior game and perhaps too mentally fragile to handle the immense pressure of being the next supposed legend in Canadiens lore.
The next year Lafleur ditched his tea-pot helmet and embarked on a brilliant career with three Art Ross scoring titles, three Hart Trophies, three Pearson Awards and one Conn Smythe—but he also shared in team success by winning five Stanley Cups and four Prince of Wales Trophies. Adieu, Guy
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
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.
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