Bruce Dowbiggin
From Deal With It: A Cruel, Senseless Fate Ends A Brilliant Career
The tragic death of NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew in a car/ bike accident last Thursday in New Jersey was sad beyond words. The pair, riding home from a rehearsal dinner for their sister’s wedding the next day, were killed by a drunk driver who’d passed on the right side of a vehicle ahead. Words fail.
The loss of the brothers reminded us that in our new book Deal With It we dealt with a key moment in Gaudreau’s NHL career when he abandoned Calgary, the only NHL team he’d known since 2014, for Columbus in a controversial decision. Here’s what we said:
“If 2017-18 had been a turning point, 2021-22 was the major breakthrough that saw Gaudreau as a HHoF legend in the making, one who could have his number someday in the rafters in Calgary… should he choose to remain there. As it was, Flames supporters who had seen the team win just one playoff series since 2004, were eager to see how high the new-look Flames could soar and if Gaudreau might finally find his playoff scoring touch. They also looked forward to a possible matchup against the Oilers who’d had to work to even make the postseason.
Against stingy Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger, the Flames had to work just to escape in seven games, with Gaudreau notching just two goals in the series. Both would be game winners as Calgary outlasted the Stars in a nailbiter. His brilliant Game 7 overtime snipe— going short-side top corner near Oetinger’s head— was his highwater mark in a flaming “C,” sending the club into their first postseason clash with the Oilers since 1991. Coach Sutter praised his little winger’s efforts, saying Gaudreau had “taken that step to perform as well in the playoffs” as in the regular season. Gaudreau’s play in the series against Dallas was not helped by indifferent play from Tkachuk, who seemed disinterested in going to the danger areas and only mixing it up physically with the underdog Stars when scrums or opportunities for face washes were provided.
Unfortunately for the Flames, the struggles of their top line against Dallas caught up to them in a passionate showdown with McDavid and the Oilers. In Game 1, Calgary raced to a lopsided 5-1 lead before seeing McDavid bring the Oilers back to tie it at 6-6 in the third frame. Tkachuk got the last laugh on this occasion, burying the third of his three goals that ensured a ridiculous 9-6 series-opening win for Calgary. In Game 2, Calgary once again took an early lead only to watch Edmonton roar back again again. This time, the Oilers made their resurgence hold up and claimed a 5-3 win. After dropping Game 3 in concerningly easy fashion (4-1), then trailing for the bulk of Game 4, the Flames seemed to turn a corner when they came back to tie Game 5 3-3. Looking for a turning point on Edmonton ice, they instead sagged as the Oilers scored twice in the final seven minutes.
Facing elimination in Game 5, Gaudreau’s Flames toyed with fans’ emotions as they possessed the lead twice only to see Edmonton get the equalizer both times. Pushed to the brink, the gut punch of McDavid potting the winner in OT was the final touch on Calgary’s wasted chance at a deep championship run. As it turns out, it was also the early end of an era that once held so much promise. “Missed opportunities,” the Sutter lamented postgame. “It’s not being critical, that’s just true. They’re going to tell you that, too. Missed opportunities go the other way.” The subduing of Calgary’s top line (just six goals including Tkachuk’s Game 1 hatty) was a key to Edmonton’s shockingly decisive triumph, leading to the same old questions about Gaudreau. Those questions also applied to Tkachuk, with doubt cast upon building around them for playoff success. There would be little time for reflection in the offseason talent market.
Instead of Calgary entertaining trades, the options would be in Gaudreau’s hands. As the July 1 trade deadline approached, Gaudreau announced that, despite an enormous eight-year, $80M contract offer from the Flames, he would test free agency. The star winger claimed to many in private that he wanted to go home so his wife could have their baby in the USA. As such, it was believed his preferred venues were the Islanders, Devils or Flyers (closer to home and a childhood favourite team, given he grew up just across the Delaware River from Philly). Still wishing something could be worked out, Calgary management hoped against hope for a reversal of his decision to entertain other cities after the UFA market opened. But Flames fans quietly resigned themselves to losing him for nothing.
To the shock and surprise of many, Gaudreau would go only as far as Columbus, Ohio, when it came to finding a new home. Accepting less than Calgary’s max offer to go play on a team with few real hopes of playoff contention– a ten-hour drive from the Jersey shore where he supposedly wanted to be– Gaudreau sent a missile into Flame country. The optics were terrible for the 29-year old superstar, after insisting he wanted to be near the family home on the Jersey shore. Eric Duhatschek, shortly after, summed up the stunned reaction in The Athletic, writing “The fact that it took Gaudreau so long to choose effectively sabotaged the Flames’ off-season, because it closed so many possible Plan B options to the organization. Closer to home, but not close — because if close to home was the absolute priority, then he could have picked the New Jersey Devils, who also tabled an offer. Columbus is more easily reached by private jet than Calgary, but it’s not as if he’ll be dropping into his mom’s house for dinner after a game or a practice — or getting emergency babysitting service if they need someone right this minute to help out on the home front.” Calgary’s abandonment was best summed up by CBC broadcaster Andrew Brown’s sign-off that day, “And that’s the news for now, I’ll be back here at 11, unless a news station in Columbus offers me way less money… and I’ll probably go do that.”
Gaudreau himself put a salty punctuation on dumping Calgary at his welcome presser in Columbus. “It didn’t matter where I was signing. Our decision was it was best for us not to go back to Calgary.” From America, the reaction was more sympathetic to Gaudreau. In the New York Post, Larry Brooks sneered, “The hysterical response to Johnny Gaudreau’s decision to leave millions on the table in Calgary and instead sign with Columbus was indeed just that. Players are routinely lambasted across the professional sports landscape for being greedy mercenaries. Now this one is being targeted for taking a road less traveled.”
On Barstool Sports, personality “The Rear Admiral” summed up a scathing putdown with “Hell hath no fury like Canadian media (allegedly) scorned… But when media members wail and stomp their feet because a fellow adult opts to work in a new location, well that’s a special kind of entertainment.” For Flames GM Treliving, whose contract wasn’t renewed at season’s end, there was some resignation over the hand he’d been dealt. “At the end of the day, the players make decisions,” Treliving said. “You always reflect back on how you go through a process. I feel very, very comfortable that the ownership of this organization, the management team here did everything possible to have [Tkachuk and Gaudreau] sign and stay. They chose, they didn’t want to. Not a lot you can do about that so you move forward.”
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.
Breaking: “Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum believes she will have a deal to avoid U.S. tariffs by next Tuesday. Meanwhile Canada’s PM Skippy McDoodles— he of 22 percent approval— is flying around Europe delivering billions to the Ukraine bribery-recycling mechanism and chatting with 18% approval Macron in Paris. God help Canada.”
For a party that consumes language the way Prime Minister Trudeau’s plane consumes jet fuel the ruling Liberals seem willfully— blissfully— ignorant of the meaning of the word Urgent. As in, get something done yesterday.
While Mexico seemingly recognizes the value of time in coming up with a deal by March 4 to avoid tariffs and Trump’s displeasure, viewers of the Xanax Liberal debates on Monday and Tuesday were treated to a government languorously floating down a river of polite debate, staying inside the guardrails of good taste.
The prevailing take was “we f**ed up the past decade, okay? But you know us and can depend on us to keep pandering to your romantic notions that don’t include Chinese money laundering, drug kingpins and cyber crime.” Apparently that should be enough for Canadian Boomers to flock to them like the swallows at Capistrano.
As most know by now the elders of the party disqualified two leadership candidates, Ruby Dhalla and Chandra Araya, from the debates because they couldn’t be relied upon to spare the cadaverous banker Mark Carney who famously has three different passports, a passel of corporate board seats and a halting grasp of French.
But who needs debate? The Liberals have settled on their enemy and it’s not Pierre Poilievre. It’s Donald Trump. They’re convinced themselves that targeting Beelzebub Trump, not addressing the tariff crisis, is all they need to expunge the Trudeau Follies and win a March election. Instead of engaging in serious talks (see: Danielle Smith) they’ll talk amongst themselves. The recent hockey win over over Tyrannus U.S. has apparently inspired Canadians to reward Liberals with another five years of sitting in first class while paying economy.
Emboldened 1A) candidate Chrystia Freeland, the former Finance minister and Truck Convoy caudillo, blasted Trump on Tuesday, urging Canada to join with… Denmark. “The U.S. is turning predator, and so what Canada needs to do is work closely with our democratic allies, our military allies. I would start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark who is also being threatened.”
Maybe she can do an anti-Trump rally at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen? The problem being— for those who applauded Nazis in the Visitors Gallery— this fatuous nonsense all makes perfect sense. The capacity for denial in the Libs aging Boomer base seems inexhaustible. Currently they’re memory-holing the Rez School buried babies claims that the PM recited before the U.N.
While the social-justice Left was routed in America in 2024, Team Carney is acting as if Canada’s culture cancellation scheme still works. Meanwhile the Libs seem unaware or uncaring about South of 70— the collapse of the CDN dollar— and the hollowing-out of Canada’s GDP (the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period).
Economist @TrevorTombe writes that it’s Code red time. “Real GDP per capita in the U.S. was 43% higher than in Canada in 2023. In 2024, I estimate this gap will widen to nearly 50% … This stunning divergence is unprecedented in modern history.’ But no sweat, Carney will print all the money Canada needs to keep diversity programs functioning.
It all mirrors the last desperate, flailing attempts by the U.S. Democrats to save their grasp on ultimate power in the 2024 election. Having used the Media Party that hid Biden’s bribery schemes to disguise the senility of Joe Biden for four years they discovered they would be wiped out by Trump in the voting. Presto change-o, they tossed the primary results, threw Biden into the dumpster, got friendly pollsters to make its look like Kamala Harris was ahead.
In the American model the DEMs still got smoked—every state voted more for Trump than 2020. Trump easily won the Electoral College. But Canada’s Libs seem assured that they can make an end run on the CPC’s big lead. Already the Media Party pollsters are showing a Lazarus-like ascent from Trudeau’s 22-percent approval to a lead in some polls and a closer call in others.
There are no Rasmussen polls as there were in the U.S., which consistently showed Trump on the road to his win. And Canada has yet to digest the full Carney record. Already his controversial record on climate and printing money has started to trip him up, as in recent revelations that he lied about his role in sending Brookfield’s head office from Canada to the U.S.
If all else fails Canada can still repatriate Wayne Gretzky. Donald Trump has made him a “free agent” again. “He’s the Greatest Canadian of them all, and I am therefore making him a ‘free agent,’ because I don’t want anyone in Canada to say anything bad about him… He supports Canada the way it is, as he should, even though it’s not nearly as good as it could be as part of the Greatest and Most Powerful Country in the World, the Good Ole’ U.S.A.!”
Besides, there are other Canadian fish for Trump to fry: “@Tablesalt13 If Donald Trump really wanted to hurt Canada he could offer (vetted) citizenship to any Canadian with an advanced degree or a sought-after skill. 40-50% of skilled Conservatives would leave… and only the socialists would remain….. This would be extinction level.” Just don’t call it urgent.
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.
Welcome to Canada’s Bedlam 2025. A petition is circulating in Edmonton demanding that Wayne Gretzky’s name be stripped from the eponymous boulevard honouring his status as an Edmonton/ Canadian hero and hockey icon. His crime? Supporting Donald Trump, who’s demanding Canada pay for its own defence, among other outstanding bills.
Meanwhile the kaffiyeh-wearing NDP members who support the scum who massacred mothers and babies in an unprovoked attack on Oct. 7, 2023, are still referred to as honourable members. Go figure. (Lest we forget the same Canadian Mensheviks out for Gretzky also want to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship for similarly hanging out with Trump and firing useless bureaucrats.)
There was a time when Gretzky was the holiest of holies. So above criticism that, when he got himself snared in a gambling scandal, the Canadian media and fans bought a story about his wife being the degenerated gambler. That’s an untouchable. In a nation where no one is disciplined for foisting untested vaccines on an unsuspecting public he was a made man.
Or so we thought, till a picture appeared of him and his family celebrating Donald Trump’s re-election in November.
Canada’s reflexive Left (see above) recoiled in disgust that No. 99 would sully his name and record by supporting Trump at the moment he was about to serve Canada with the bill for riding in first class while paying economy. When he did nothing to repent to the kaffiyeh brigade— as is his obligation apparently— they primed their attacks on the No. 1A player to ever don skates in Canada.
The final straw came when Canada and the U.S. engaged in their epic, brawling two-game set for supremacy of… a title the NHL made up a month before. No matter. An unchastened Gretzky was introduced as the honorary captain for Team Canada for the final game. It was the heretical excommunication moment for those orchestrating a coup, replacing PM Justin Trudeau for dour banker Mark Carney.
Forget Winnipeg chantoozie Chantal Krevaziuk massacring O Canada before millions of TV viewers. Gretzky’s failure to bend a knee before the Charlie Angus demographic was the real betrayal. Even though he’s lived as an American citizen since the epic trade of 1988 (all his kids are American) he’s obliged to honour the diktats of the Canadian Liberal cult.
As we wrote last November Gretzky has company in Canada’s penalty box with his only rival for greatness, Bobby Orr who has become a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump. “In Orr’s case it was his published endorsement of Trump’s losing 2020 campaign that led to the shade being drawn over the greatest defenceman (IMO player) ever. “He’s the kind of teammate I want”.
“Much like the Gretzky tsunami of condemnation, Orr took it in the cup… and we don’t mean Stanley… Here was Vancouver columnist Daniel Wagner: “In other words, Orr faces no harm from a Trump administration and is likely insulated from the harm that others have experienced. That doesn’t excuse his endorsement, but goes a long way towards explaining it.” In the Hockey News Ken Campbell tied Orr to the Jan. 6 riots. “Bobby Orr Was Part of the Problem. Now He Can Be Part of the Solution”.
In our column of Nov. 8, 2020, we pointed the wee hypocrisy of the liberal-left press box. “Just weeks after giving LeBron James’ political activism a tongue bath, the Globe & Mail sent in the goons for Orr. “Neither Bobby Orr nor any other athletes should be leading the political conversation” thundered Cathal Kelly.
Sure. Leave it to us. Other Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out. Others swore to sell off their precious Orr memorabilia as if Orr had been accused of throwing a Stanley Cup Final.
A bitter Orr has taken a low profile since as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
Longtime fans in Parry Sound dumped on him. “I just assumed that he was a good guy. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me to learn this about him. It just shattered my impression – I guess it was an illusion – it just shattered it… It kind of now, makes me rethink a lot of my hockey heroes … it’s just disappointing.”
The message is that in progressive Canada, suspended in its 1970s it doesn’t pay for even the greatest hockey heroes to diverge from their Trudeaupian orthodoxy. As Canadiens star goalie Carey Price learned when he dared to disagree with Trudeau’s plans to seize guns.
But the message is clear. Whether you’re Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Carey Price, Canada’s Woke chorus will not abide insubordination to their cause. That includes much of the media. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, they can’t handle the truth. So shut up and pass the puck.”
At this rate Canada may run out of hockey gods who decamp to America. And heaven forbid Canadians ask how it is that their stars who have a chance to look at the True North from a different view come away with a new perspective.
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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