Bruce Dowbiggin
Hockey’s Image Problem: The Commissioner Who Won’t Leave

We once had a former MLB player/ media type tell us that if he were a manager he’d prefer his players go to their hotels after the game, smoke a little weed, play video games and get proper sleep. Especially now that smoking weed is legal in large parts of the continent. Staying up till 3 A.M. chasing girls in bars was the road to ruination, he said.
Apparently the NBA agrees. It is announcing that it will no longer test for marijuana as part of its drug-testing protocols. In its new collective bargaining agreement the NBA has dragged sports into the 21st century. By that we don’t mean the NHL will follow.
Gary Bettman’s NHL never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity at modernizing its product. Stasis would be the best word to describe the hermetically sealed snow globe that is the NHL. Even when it embraces change it does so in a way that tarnishes the League. See: Non-binary hockey and Pride Nights. So you know that the NHL will only drop testing for weed when it can be used as a weapon in future CBA tong wars against new NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh.
To grasp how sluggish the development of the NHL has become under The Commissioner Who Won’t Go Away, one need only look to the NBA which this weekend announced its new collective bargaining agreement with its players. The NBA CBA was done without even the threat of a work stoppage and is full of innovations and progressive ideas on how a sports league with a salary cap needs to operate.
In the NHL a collective agreement is never reached till Bettman has wiped out large segments of the season, necessitating class warfare with his product, the players. While pissing off the consumers of his sport and the networks who carry the games. [We remain opposed to salary caps in a global sports market, as we documented in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and Why The Free Market Could Save Them.]
What does this deal say? First, the league is responding to the popularity of soccer’s many midseason competitions and the successful recent World Classic Baseball by committing to a midseason “tournament”. To qualify, teams will participate in pool games already on the regular-season schedule. Eight teams will get into the final play-down in “December Madness”, which will receive buckets of media exposure. Winning players and coaches will get extra money, which should help increase their motivation.
The reason behind this is simple, as we stated in Cap In Hand. In a global sports market, fans don’t want to wait for six months to see their favourites play meaningful games. They also want to see best-on-best as often as possible. Witness: Soccer’s Champions or Europa Leagues that play concurrent with the Premiership or La Liga schedule. We had a former NHL executive promote this ideas to us over a decade ago.
Of course, Bettman, the Herman Roth of commissioners, ignored him. He still believes Columbus versus Winnipeg on a January night is enough to keep the fans happy. Under his watch international play— once the crown jewel of the sport— has withered and died. World Cup? That’s a whole lot of bother for owners who like the Bettman formula they bought into. Right now there is one Stanley Cup winner and 31 losers.
There will no doubt be some bumps as NBA fans get the hang of the tournament formula. There are those who will moan about how the NBA CBA does nothing for mid-sized markets. “Players lose again … Middle and Lower spectrum teams don’t spend because they don’t want to,” Golden State’s Draymond Green posted to Twitter. “They want to lose… And this is what we rushed into a deal for?” (Draymond, outside of local markets no one cares about mid-sized teams any more.)
But it says here that the fans will grab onto the December Madness tournament formula. As will the exploding betting industry. But the NHL won’t touch this novel project— or Olympics or World Cups— till Bettman squeezes the NHLPA at the next CBA session.
The NBA CBA, which runs till 2030, also says players will have to play 65 games to qualify for season-ending awards, cutting back on “maintenance days” for superstars. It also will allow players making ga-jillions to now be owners of teams, invest in other sports franchises or lose all their money… er, invest in the cannabis industry. Having players learn the other side of the business can only be a positive. Under Bettman’s rule the top players never make near their worth, so this would be moot in the NHL.
The only threat to Bettman’s status quo is the financial collapse of many regional sports networks in the U.S., the backbone of his U.S. strategy. They are being hammered by the cord-cutting trend in cable TV. As we wrote here in January, for a league like the NHL that has counted heavily on regional revenues the past 30 years cord-cutting is a disaster. “Greg Boris, a sports management professor at Adelphi University summed up the looming disaster: RSNs have ‘been a golden goose. You remove cable TV from the scenario, and franchises are worth a fraction of what they are today, players make a fraction of their salaries today…”
In March, Bally Sports— which operates 14 regional sports networks in the U.S. (covering 12 NHL clubs)— filed for bankruptcy protection to eliminate about $8 B in debt. The hope is that Chapter 11 will give them time to re-organize. But that won’t change the collapsing numbers of subscribers who bail on services for channels they never watch. Already, Bally is looking to reject the contracts of four MLB teams as part of the bankruptcy.
Time Warner Discovery, too, has said they are looking to exit the regional sports network business. While leagues like the NHL might move to streaming services, there is little expectation that it will produce the same revenues. Ergo, financial collapse.
Maybe a ruinous TV contract might finally send Bettman into retirement and the NHL into an enlightened age. Till then everyone probably needs a little weed to get through the process.
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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
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
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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