Bruce Dowbiggin
Connor Gets His Man; Toronto Still Searches For Defence
If you bet the chalk on who would win the Stanley Cup next spring you’re probably a little nervous at the moment. The betting favourites Toronto (+750) and Edmonton (+900) have been shaky at best. In both cities there are already goalie changes and coach firings.
On Sunday the 3-9-1 Edmonton Oilers gassed HC Jay Woodcroft in favour of Connor McDavid’s junior coach Kris Knoblauch. They had already fired their goalie, former Leaf Jack Campbell, while they battle to get McDavid healthy. There is speculation that this is Edmonton’s final chance to get it right with McDavid before he moves elsewhere in frustration.
Meanwhile, Toronto is a mediocre 8-5-2, despite its star scorers Auston Matthews (13-6-19) and William Nylander (10-12-22) at the top of the league in scoring. Their 5-2 win over Vancouver Saturday was their first time allowing fewer than four goals on home ice all season.
Yup, goaltending’s a curse in Toronto, too. Expect to see a move here (Jacob Markstrom?) Of course it’s still early, but at least the decision to sign a four-year-extension with Matthews looks good (till the postseason, at least). Here’s how we saw the impact of finally getting Matthews to sign on the line that is dotted.
“Yet another long national nightmare has passed for Toronto Maple Leafs Nation. After a prolonged summer silence from star forward Auston Matthews about his intentions for Toronto the mustachioed sniper has agreed to a four-year, $13.25 M. per-season extension with the team (beginning in 2025).
This news resonates at a number of levels from the team to the NHL head office. 1) While Matthews has yet to prove he can lead the Leafs anywhere but a golf course come May, he remains their best hope for any assault on the 56-year Stanley Cup drought. It might be a stretch to say the 40-plus-goal scorer in the regular season led them to their first postseason series win in April against Tampa. Patricia Bergeron he ain’t. But he didn’t hold them back, either. Not every Leafs star can say that.
He’s at a point (25) where a number of NHL stars have morphed from stats producers to win producers. Bryan Trottier, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic and Vincent Lecavalier are a sampling of guys who added leadership their tool box in mid-career and went on to multiple Cups. We will see if Auston does likewise.
2) Matthews’ decision to remain in a Canadian city is a huge relief for the league which has recently seen American stars abandon or ignore Canadian cities for the lure of their home country. Indeed, Matthews would likely have gotten all the perks of this deal elsewhere— plus the anonymity of being an NHL player in a city obsessed by the NFL, NBA or MLB. He could’ve maxxed his take-home pay going to one of the NHL teams benefitting from no-state-income-tax. And the NHL would get a huge problem with Canadian fans.
As Canada’s economy wobbles and players have a choice on lifestyle, Matthews’ decision to live in the Toronto fish bowl means that at least one CDN team is relevant. And, let’s be honest, he has a chance of winning the Cup that he wouldn’t in six other CDN teams. If that doesn’t pan out his contract is movable should he desire to move on before 2028.
3) Speaking of relief, getting the deal done is a break for new Toronto GM Brad Treliving. It was he who, as Flames GM, had to negotiate the escape of Americans Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk from Calgary last summer. Had he not been able to retain Matthews in Canada’s largest market it would have not been a job enhancer. Now, he has to find a way to squeeze all Toronto’s glamour boys— hello William Nylander— under the cap and leave room for what they still need. Good luck, Brad.
4) Matthews’ commitment to Toronto means that a number of teams who’ve been delaying bold moves and hoarding trade bait in anticipation of his potential trade or UFA market can now move to Plan B. There were a number of U.S. teams poised to offer the Leafs the moon and stars— NHL version— at the trade deadline or to sign him next summer. This should now signal some activity by teams anxious to deal.
Ironically, the Leafs used to be that team waiting for a Toronto Moses to emerge in the UFA market. Remember Brian Burke’s unseemly longing for Steven Stamkos? Even when they got their local guy in John Tavares, the Islanders star was past his peak and has proved a millstone under the Toronto salary cap. This time they get a star in his peak years.
5) Matthews’ league-leading benchmark of $13.25 M. over just four years allows the NHL salary grid to fall in place behind him as the salary cap takes a bump in 2024-25. His deal will be the comparison for the next superstar contract that enters the unlimited FA portal in the future— although his max salary may chafe some stars who match Matthews’ production but have taken their teams deep into playoffs or winning a Cup. Don’t they deserve more? The expected rise in the league cap over the four years of the Matthews deal may help assuage that.
6) Finally— and most amusing— has been the response from hockey sweats to Matthews getting $13.25 M. For four years? To this crew who talk lovingly about The Game, this seems an awful lot to pay a guy for playing a boy’s game. That much? This just in, Matthews is criminally underpaid as one of the Top 10 players in a modern sports league.
The dizzying $13.25 as NHL No. 1 would make him the 113th highest-paid player in the NBA, the 103rd highest-paid player in the MLB and the 88th highest-paid player in the NFL. As one perspective, Toronto-born Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of OKC Thunder— now starring for Canada’s national team— pays about $13.25M per year in income tax.
Sure, there are differences among the revenues of the Big Four pro Leagues But, as we’ve written extensively, the @NHLPA sold out its stars in the 2004-05 CBA negotiations to protect average players and grinders. (Actually, it was a small group of stars pushed by their agents to stab Bob Goodenow’s strategy in the back.) They like to mock the product in CBA talks.
Limiting the maximum contracts to 20 percent of the cap allows the league to have higher minimum and median salaries than NFL and MLB. (Hands up those people who buy tickets or digital packages to see the third line and fifth defenceman?) And pay lip service that it’s still Don Cherry’s Original Six league. With its cozy business plan there’s been little incentive to push the NHL’s business model beyond more expansion.
Also of note, if NHL doesn’t make its revenue target under this #CBA Matthews and the other players will have money clawed back in escrow. Great deal, huh? None of the other leagues has escrow, a device thought up by an NYC law firm and foisted on gullible NHL stars in secret meetings to break the 2004-05 lockout. Everything since then has been pantomime labour negotiations.
So good luck, Leafs fans. Enjoy Matthews and the star-spangled Toronto lineup. Things could change with the same guys making more money. But don’t hold your breath.
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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
Why Canada’s Elites Are Captives To The Kamala Narrative
“As he closes the election with rank racism, relentless unreality and authoritarian threats, Trump’s popularity among Canadian Conservatives is higher than ever. This seems like it could be a problem”.— Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star
A problem for whom, Bruce? It’s telling that while 50 percent of Americans see through Kamala Harris and the DEMs coup narrative as complete bushwah, probably 90 percent of Canadians– led by Arthur and the corporate media– lap up this condescending narrative. Their biggest fear remains that the populist revolt against authority in the U.S. might threaten Canada’s elite class. Like Toronto Star squishy columnists.
In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”
The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.
The northern pecksniffs have loads of insanity to work with as Trump seemingly edges ahead in polls. There’s the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the shrieking disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.
Then there’s Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Forget that Trump did nothing of the sort when he was president from 2016-2020. It’s every hysteric for himself as Nov. 5 looms. Their biggest fear? Those who vilified Trump the past decade will be out of the power loop for at least four years— or longer if VP candidate J.D. Vance extends the Trump revolution. It’s panic time.
Picked up on by those fearing their place in the Canadian power grid might fall next. The disdainful cheers from Arthur and Andrew Coyne and the CBC bien pensants at each thrust of Trump-as-Nazi echo through a press corps which now fawns over Mark Carney, the bespoke banker/ heir apparent to Trudeau. They grasp at each anti-Trump narrative like starving men in the desert.
It’s 1990s redux in Ottawa as think-tank Aristotles work to reinforce their status quo. While a public that has CPC ahead by 20 points in the polls demands change, the Liberal/ NDP cabal want that old-time political religion of insider baseball Ottawa-style. Here’s NDP attack bot Kathleen Monk insisting that PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievre get security clearance on the Chinese election interference case so that he might better be skewered for not telling Canadians the truth included in them about how their elections are being subverted by the Chinese.
No one drawing a Liberal support cheque worries aloud that Trudeau knows the truth contained in this files, that it’s injurious to him and the NDPs, that Canadians need to know the names of MPs and senators taking bribes, why a police request sat on a minister’s desk for 54 days unopened. It’s Poilievre/ Trump who’s untrustworthy. It’s a strategy that the Libs and NDP pray Poilievre will fall for. Pierre’s sin is he doesn’t believe the public should depend on government for everything. That’s heresy in Canada’s Family Compact, and so the Trump comparisons.
The anti-Trump vendetta also means that Canadians have decided that Elon Musk, the pre-eminent genius of the 21st century— is now Josef Goebbels to Trump’s Hitler. As we wrote recently “on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.”
So now the sneering scribes are going after him, too, in spite of his Canadian citizenship. This is no small thing as Canadians reflexively grab at any shred of CanCon elsewhere. Canadian politics under the Liberals has become a vedette exercise since Pierre Trudeau started dating Funny Girl Barbra Streisand. In the U.S. outsiders to the political system are rare. Much of the pearl clutching about Trump results from his not being manipulated by the byzantine American political universe.
In cases such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, the nominees were moulded by the machine to highlight their acceptability. Ronald Reagan excepted, the insider track is the preferred route to a nomination in either party. Biden personified lifelong membership in the insiders club. As did John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, John McCain, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and so on.
But in Canada, the Liberal party in particular now disdains the tried-and-true. After decades of zero-charisma PMs such as Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent and Mike Pearson, the Grits went ga-ga for the international flair of PET. His irreverence and impertinence on the world stage was catnip to Liberals as the 1960s cultural revolution shook up staid Canada. Since then the blue print has listed more toward “star” candidates from outside the party, such as Michael Ignatieff, Stephane Dion, Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney.
Trudeau II is the epitome of the vedette candidate, bathed by the glow of U.S. magazines and slathering leftists in Europe. Liberals felt vital as long as the trust-fund PM got props from outside, such as when WEF honcho Klaus Schwab outed Skippy as one of his lieutenants. Trump, the antithesis of the Dauphin, is a blustery carny riding the wings of populist outrage. His crass, bumptious style personally offends the sensibilities of Toronto Star scribblers and CBC wind therapists.
The clincher for Canadians is the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer has embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump. From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support has been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.
So as we head to next Tuesday’s end to the election marathon in America, the finger-wagging will increase as Canadians try to elevate themselves above a nation that, for all its faults, has actually staged a policy choice. Meanwhile in Canada, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh once again embraces his coalition with a drowning Trudeau for another year.
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. 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
Musk Win: How Elon’s Heel Turn Has Driven The Left Insane
It’s not often that we can watch the workings of our modern world with childlike glee. But glee might be the best word to describe the feelings of most as they watched the stunning safe return of the booster rocket from Starship X. The video showed how the arms of the Starship X tower grabbed the rocket from out of thin air as it slowly descended to earth, gently place it safely back on the launch pad.
In normal times the person who created such a company would be hailed as the pinnacle of human potential. Add in that he has also created revolutionary electric cars and Starlink satellite systems and the PayPal network and you’d probably nominate the South African/ Canadian in question as a permanent Nobel winner. He’s among the world’s richest people as a result.
But on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.
How? He hired prominent independent journalists such as Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberg and Matt Taibbi to show that Twitter, along with Facebook and other prominent social media sites, had been paid to censor opponents at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign during the 2020 election. He started posting about the disturbing contrast of America’s voting system (results up to three weeks after election) compared to Argentina (6.6 hours). He pointed out that America is broke, saying things like “”The reason why I’m involved in politics this time, is because this time it’s a fork in the road. I think we’re doomed if Trump doesn’t win, so he’s gotta win.”.
From worshipful respect, Musk was suddenly met with scorn, derision and, in Europe, plans to censor him permanently. Brazil shut down X completely. British intelligence targeted his association with Trump. The radical Left in the U.S., accustomed to its version of truth, suddenly decided that Musk was in line with Nazis and the Far Right.
As blogger Mike Benz notes, the deep state targeted him for not playing along. “CCDH — whose explicit written goal is to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” — not only has its Chairman come from NATO’s Atlantic Council, its former Comms chief was a CIA operative who worked extensively in NATO intelligence ops… CCDH’s former Head of Communications is a self-described “CIA operative” in her own Twitter bio (!!) with an extensive history of NATO operations: ‘Covert operations, intelligence & disinformation’”
While admitting that he’ll likely be in jail within six months of Kamala Harris winning the presidency, Musk is unfazed. Here’s fired CNN talking head Don Lemon challenging— and losing— on Musk’s commitment to free speech. But Musk’s deft debating didn’t discourage the purchased media of the left from trying some more.
Here’s Vanity Fair excoriating Musk for veering from their catechism. Here is reliably lunatic NBC News saying Musk is— gasp— against DEI. For good measure here’s Reuters giving an airing of former Twitter employees grievances against Musk. Topped by president Joe Biden’s demand to “Politically, lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do,” said even as he president’s Justice Department was in fact trying to jail Mr. Trump literally.
When he realized that the Left was using him as a piñata Musk responded to the onslaught by making an alliance with former president Donald Trump, the Beelzebub of Woke folk and the bureaucrat’s nightmare. Because Trump, the braggart, was at least in favour of free speech for other braggarts, Musk agreed to join his team after the election as Efficiency Czar for government.
Musk began saying things like he’d reduce the approximately 340 agencies in the U.S. federal government to just 90. He also questioned the usefulness of most people in the DC bubble. He began asking why the government’s $42 B plan for rural internet, awash in delay and debt, shouldn’t be shelved for his Starlink system which already serves customers at a fraction of Kamala Harris’ white elephant.
While he was at it, Musk also eviscerated the DEMs pet cause of border reform. “If given 4 more years to do it, the big govt machine will legalize vast numbers of illegals, making all swing states permanently deep blue, just like they did with California. Every major Democrat politician has stated that their goal is to legalize all illegals. Believe them.
If you thought January 6, 2021, was a shock to Washington’s privilege, a Musk efficiency regime— combined with RFK Jr taking on the healthcare industry— will be tantamount to setting off a thermo-nuclear device beneath the Senate lunchroom. Democrats and the trained hamsters of the GOP establishment swore a fatwa on a guy whom they’d venerated not long ago.
Here’s the New York Times, party organ of the DNC, on Musk’s Efficiency commission. “That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.” Yahoo calls him a threat to national security because something something something. MSNBC, the TV voice of Woke Washington, declarded that Musk is using his power to sue his critics into silence.
But such is the temperature of the DEI Left as it faces imminent destruction in the 2024 election. Having rationalized two assassination attempts on Trump they now nurse snuff fantasies about eliminating Musk the Menace. As legal scholar Jonathan Hurley writes, “It is all part of Musk mania and the need to break the only executive who has defied the anti-free speech movement.”
You can measure their panic by the employment of DEMs superstars like Barack and Michelle Obama and the odious Clintons. While the obsequious Obama laments division in the body politic, Kamala Harris states: “Trump is literally Hitler and he will use the military to kill US citizens.”
Obama, who institutionalized the Racism® industry upon his winning the presidency, is accusing Trump and Musk of… you guessed it… racism for dividing Americans. From Henry Louis Gates to struggle sessions in the military to embracing race hustlers with ankle bracelets in the White House, Obama guaranteed the George Floyd America as it heads to the polls on November 5. Before Musk bought Twitter, he got away with it all, But a Musk X has exposed the glib Obama as a petty Marxist tyrant.
That a transitional figure such as Musk is being sacrificed to the altar of Woke politics is, regrettably, no surprise in these times. Which makes it no less reprehensible. The Obama motto regarding enemies is “No one gets out alive”. Perhaps Musk should heed A.E. Houseman who observed, “smart lad to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay. For early though the laurel goes, it withers sooner than the rose.”
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. 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.
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