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Bruce Dowbiggin

Recency Bias: Why Kraken, Knights Avoided Expansion Fate

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Like isn’t fair. That’s the triusm. For fans of established NHL teams the sight of the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken still in the playoffs— while their own teams are playing golf— is a little galling. Aren’t expansion teams supposed to lose a lot for a long time before gaining success?

The Washington Capitals in their debut season of 1974-75 posted the worst single-season record ever at 8-67-5. (Imagine how much worse the losing if this occurred before the demise of ties?) The Caps never won two consecutive games; their 21 total points were half that of their expansion brethren, the Kansas City Scouts; their .131 winning percentage is still the worst in NHL history, and they lost 37 straight road games.

Only marginally better were the 1992-93 expansion Ottawa Senators, who brought the NHL back to Canada’s capital after the first Senators team folded in 1934. The team recorded three NHL records that season: longest home losing streak of eleven; longest road losing streak with a total of 39 (nearly the whole season) and fewest road wins in a season, with just one victory.

In the same year of 1992-92, the San Jose Sharks, a hybrid expansion team in its first year after leaving Cleveland, posted a brutal 11-71-2 mark. The Sharks allowed 10 or more goals in a game three times and finished the season 22nd in both scoring (219 goals for) and goaltending (359 goals against).

And so on. The 2000-01 Atlanta Thrashers went 14-57-7. The 1972-73 New York Islanders were a putrid 12-60-6 in their inaugural NHL campaign. (At least the Islanders paid off their fans for the abysmal start, winning the Stanley Cup within eight years and preceding to rip off four straight Cups from 1980-83.) The Caps took till 2018 to get a Cup. Kansas City moved to become the Colorado Rockies and then the New Jersey Devils before becoming a huge success with three Cups in 1995, 2000 and 2003. The Sharks and Senators have no championships at all.

Many had predicted similar failure for the Knights. But it didn’t happen that way. Nor did it go sideways in Seattle, either.  For one, the enormous $500M Vegas/ $650M Seattle expansion fees demanded some competitiveness. Then, cap pressure from Gary Bettman’s salary cap forced established teams into bad decisions, forcing teams to be creative when they could not pay their stars more money. So clubs began handing out no-movement clauses (NMC) and no-trade-clauses (NTC) like Halloween candy in lieu of salary. These alterations would get their revenge in the Vegas Golden Knights expansion fiasco (for teams).

To guarantee a fair expansion draft process for the Golden Knights the league hired former Vancouver assistant GM Laurence Gilman to design a protocol for the selections. What he found did not exactly correspond to the assignment letter: “It was called an expansion draft, but an expansion draft is what occurred in 2001 when Minnesota and Columbus selected players between them. This was an asset-harvest event. Las Vegas wasn’t competing with another franchise and had the ability to map out exactly what they wanted to harvest.”

That they did. In 2016, the Knights had hired former player and ex-Washington Capitals GM George McPhee, who had from 1997 to 2014 orchestrated the building of the Caps from sad sacks to contenders. McPhee then hired personnel specialist Kelly McCrimmon to be his right-hand man in the process. By 2017, McPhee and McCrimmon understood how the expansion game was changed by issues such as NMCs and NTCs. In 2017, there were 66 NHL players who owned a NMC in their contracts, requiring them to be protected by their clubs in the expansion draft— even if those clubs would rather get out from under their contracts.

Columbus had given goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, Brandon Dubinsky, Nick Foligno and Scott Hartnell contracts with no-move-clauses, long before GM Jarmo Kekalainen had contemplated expansion ramifications, and they suffered the consequences as a result.  Enter McPhee who worked a deal where Vegas would select William Karlsson — who had just one goal in his final 43 games in Columbus — while also receiving a first-round pick, a second-round pick and David Clarkson’s expensive contract. Karlsson would score 43 goals and 78 points in the Knights first season. The two draft picks would be turned into a deal for Nick Suzuki and, eventually, Max Pacioretty.

McPhee then targeted Anaheim. The Ducks were forced to protect Kevin Bieksa who didn’t have much hockey time left. The NMC in his contract required protection over younger teammates like Theodore, Josh Manson and Sami Vatanen. So Anaheim traded defenceman Shea Theodore to Vegas so Vegas would draft Clayton Stoner instead of one of their prime prospects. And so on.

The Knights exploitation of NMCs and NTCs turned trading from a trickle into a fire hose, making 10 trades before and after the 2017 draft. That yielded 12 draft picks, while also adding valuable pieces in Marc-Andre Fleury, Shea Theodore, Karlsson, Reilly Smith, Jonathan Marchessault and Alex Tuch as part of those deals.

Vegas became the best expansion team in any major pro sport ever. The newest team in the NHL has missed the postseason just once since its arrival in 2017-18, in 2022. This while Buffalo, Detroit and Ottawa have missed every postseason in that span, while Anaheim and New Jersey have just one playoff appearance since the Knights’ first season. Naturally this success did not go over well with those clubs and others who felt Vegas needed to pay some dues before becoming a regular in the playoffs.

So when it came time for Seattle Kraken to build their first roster the sentiment around there NHL was “let’s not do that again”. For example, the Kraken wouldn’t get a crack at the Knights’ roster— they were exempted from the expansion draft process.  One other specific change was in the number of NMC and NTC players. After 68 in 2017, there would be just 52 players in that position when the Kraken made their selections in 2021. In short, there were fewer opportunities to pluck cap-strapped teams for players like Karlsson and Marchessault.

The lack of depth on the Kraken showed initially. Seattle wound up 15th in the Western Conference with just 60 points and a minus-69 goal differential. Comparisons to the Knights proved premature. It took another offseason for the Kraken to be competitive. But Matty Beniers is a leading Calder Trophy candidate; it looks like he will be a foundational piece for this fledgling franchise. Vegas and Seattle duelled for the leadership of the Pacific Division all season before Vegas prevailed.

Now they’re in the postseason with the Knights, playing on equal footing with the best. Few players remain from that first Knights team, and few more with the Kraken. But the results remain the same.

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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

Be Careful What You Wish For In 2026: Mark Carney With A Majority

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“The unifying theme that enables the Liberal party to maintain its hold over Canada is persistent anti-Americanism…I hope Canadians finally mature, acknowledge that we are neither superior nor inferior to the United States, and abandon our collective national inferiority complex.” Conrad Black quotes a friend. 

Canadian media have almost always been reflexively anti-American. Fair enough. Abandoned by Britain they needed to push back. But the real fear of being consumed by the rebel colonies to the south has morphed into a fear of Donald Trump reminding Canada that it has been riding first class while paying economy.

Bashing noisy, bumptious America has always been good business if you owned a Canadian newspaper or television/radio network. The performative worship of Canadian leaders who cocked a snook at the Yankees led, in recent times, to the open-mouthed support for the fatuous Trudeaupian line of monarchs. As Ray Davies sang, “each one a dedicated follower of fashion.”

Since Pierre “The Bold” Trudeau succeeded Lester Pearson and ascended to the throne of the Family Compact in 1968, Canadian policy from Viet Nam to Trump has become “What are the Americans doing? Then let’s do the opposite”. Sample of spite: CBS TV pulled a controversial 60 Minutes news story —but it aired in Canada after being leaked by pissed-off CBS employees.

Yes, there was the brief Harper interregnum when Canada actually fought a military campaign alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan. But mostly it was Jean “Golf Balls” Chretien sitting out the Iraq War.

Alas, all good things must end. Or at least pause. People were starting to notice that Justy was a Chinese trusty, his Montreal riding campaign funded by hundreds of Chinese “businessman” from far away. The tragi-comic Trudeuapian succession hit a speed bump with Mark Carney being brought in to domesticate Canada in manner satisfactory to Brookfield and the EU.

But no one is betting the Libs won’t turn to a third generation of Quebec fashionistas— in the form of another Trudeau progeny— when all else fails.

As usual caustic Conrad Black sums up Canada best. With Quebec and Alberta talking separation he quotes a friend on the state of the nation. “What exists instead is a Liberal Party that manages — often quite poorly — the finances of a collection of provinces and territories, while relying on its media apparatus to shape and safeguard its narrative. It resembles a hedge fund supported by an image consulting firm.” (Insert your convict felon/ anglo wannabe reference here.)

There is no doubt that, as 2025 skulks out, the “image-consulting firm” painting rosy pictures of the Laurentian Elite is in for a a challenge. Justin thought using Trump as his pretext could achieve peace by buying up the lads and lasses of the fourth estate. It worked with Covid and the Truckers Convoy as the column writers/ panel hosts dutifully wrote it like he called it (even as the international press chided Trudeau.).

But even those good times didn’t last, forcing the Libs to do a presto-chango before Justin could lead them to a catastrophic defeat in the spring election. Once more, faced with Trump’s aggressive posture toward trade with Canada, the press closed ranks over Elbows Up, portraying CPC leader Pierre Poilievre as Dick Dastardly.

But new polling shows that the burst of enthusiasm for more Liberal pantomime is wearing thin. The new “new” trade deal promised with Trump has dissipated. The threat to private home ownership in B.C. by government’s indigenous land concessions has sent a chill through the middle class. The NDP fainting goats who bought Elbows Up are headed back to Crazytown, likely under Avi Lewis.

Now, at last, the reckoning promised by the Conservatives’ 20-point lead in polling this time last year may be at hand. While the diehards will go their graves mumbling land acknowledgements and 32 pronouns, there is hope that the under 60s— who emphatically support the Tories— will force change.

What change? Tristan Hopper in the National Post suggests that one place to start reforming the jalopy of Canadian government is in the oceans of money lavished on cause-related political leeches. Seeing the Bondi Beach slaughter by ISIS radicals many now question how long before Toronto or Montreal experiences a similar tragedy at the hands of jihadis who are lavishly supported by tax money.

Yes, not all Muslims in the West are terrorists. But almost all terrorists in the West are Muslim. Hate-spewing Hamas groupies from college faculty are regularly allowed major intersections with police protection as they promise to wipe out infidels. Till now it’s been poor form to even mention, let alone criticize, this pantomime.

Withdrawing financial aid to these groups and their academic fellow travellers would immediately rob these brigands of their impact. The cries of despair from cutting the cord would also expose those in the Commons who have coddled these vipers with grants and ministries.

Similar hacking at the slush money aimed at every other form of leftist posing— from trans to indigenous to illegal immigrants— would also mark the end of free money. Of course there will be caterwauling from the Elizabeth May Free Lunch crew. But with the threat of Canada coming apart with Quebec and Alberta/ Saskatchewan headed for the door those usual dissenting voices will be muted.

Only one thing stands in the way of this culling. That is PM Mark Carney coercing one more MP to cross the floor to his party, cementing its majority status for up to four more years. While the At Issue panels slap their flippers in glee at Poilievre’s demise, the rest of the nation will be less enthralled with the new realities of censorship, trade and housing.

As Stephen Punwasi states. “People in Canada can’t afford homes & prices can’t fall because debt was securitized with widespread fraud—so taxpayers will subsidize foreign speculation. It’s like they hired the mayor of Vancouver to run housing. Oh—they did, eh? Kids, run.”

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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hunting Poilievre Covers For Upcoming Demographic Collapse After Boomers

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For those not familiar with hunting seasons in Canada it may come as a surprise that the nation has a year-round hunting season. That would be the targeting of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by the massed army of Liberals, their bots and the richly endowed media pack. Forget he’s never held power. He’s to blame for the ills in Canadian society.

It has been a good hunt. After floor-crossing by dissident CPC, the Liberals are one seat from the majority that Canadian voters denied them in the spring. (They’ll likely get the majority soon.) MPs who a day earlier were at Conservative Xmas parties suddenly sang the praises of Carney. MPs in ridings targeted by the Chinese suddenly joined Team Elbow Up.

All the while the media corps landed blows from their perch. Robert Benzie: “I know that Premier [Danielle] Smith is very unhappy privately with Pierre Poilievre because she thinks that [MOU motion] is undermining this [pipeline] project.” The nadir of the media dog pile was formerly eminent scribe Robert Fife who sniped, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country. That’s rich.

From his lips to Liberal brains, however. “.@CBCNews and @AlJazeeraWorld viewers consider themselves uniquely informed, says @ElectionsCan_E report. The two TV networks were named by self-described “informed” voters when asked where they got their news.

It is, seemingly, a great time to be a Liberal. Or not. While Operation Poilievre was gathering steam for Xmas polling revealed that Liberals and Conservatives remain locked in a tie, and Canadians continue to express ambivalence about the country’s direction, mixed feelings about their leaders, and sharp divides by generation, region, and policy concern. These generational discrepancies continue to be buried.

As was the case in the spring, the Liberals are supported only by the Boomer generation that swallowed Elbows Up nostalgia like a fat man on a donut. The under 60s demo at every level shows the current Carney agenda is a loser for them. In the segment of house-rich Boomers the Libs lead 50-31 over CPC. But in every other category it’s “how can I get out of here faster?”

The 45-59 demo it’s 46-36 Conservatives; 30-44 it’s a whopping 48-31 CPC; 18-29 it’s 40-39 CPC. A healthy chunk of Liberal supporting from the collapse of NDP vote. Where they used to poll in the 20s, the highest demo shows 11 percent support. Otherwise Poilievere would be PM.

Meanwhile, research now finds that 54 percent of Canadians say the growing number of newcomers to the country threatens our traditional customs and values— an increase of sixteen points since 2020. Over the same period, the share of Canadians who say immigration strengthens our society fell thirteen points to 35%

In short, the Carney Circus of marrying Canada to China and the EU is a card trick that will be exposed shortly. But where do we see the Ottawa press corps attention to this impending demographic snow plow? As we wrote in March  “It’s not hard to see the (under 60s)  looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. 

Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, (switched to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt.) The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.

“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.

I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.” 

At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane  began in his speech.  “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”

You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?

In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point. 

“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.

“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”

The tsunami over immigration has caused severe dislocations— as PM Steven Harper predicted in the 2015 election debate. He was shouted down by the dopey dauphin Justin Trudeau who opened the sluice gates to every kind of progressive nonsense. Which is now evident.

Like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?” We’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.

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 2025 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 new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books

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