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Bruce Dowbiggin

New Sens Owner Discovers Bettman’s Joke Is On Him

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If there’s a Hall of Fame for cringeworthy sports press conferences, Michael Andlauer just put a bust of himself on the wall. The new Ottawa Senators owner had to explain his Gary Bettman “Thanks For Playing Our Game” prize to a waiting media mob. He’d just won a choice of losing a No. 1 draft pick in 2024, 2025, 2026 or what Bill Daly is holding in a box on the stage.

To say he was pissed is an understatement. Actually we know he was pissed, because he used that word while otherwise reading a legally crafted statement from his lawyers on what not to say about how former GM Pierre Dorion had hamstrung a team that lives and dies by the draft. Alternately wringing his hands and rubbing his neck, the man who’d gotten the keys to the building just six weeks ago was… well, pissed.

Dorion had “neglected” to supply proper no-trade documentation in a botched deal to Vegas involving Evgeni Davydov. “It’s not that complicated,” Andlauer fumed. “The no-trade list was not provided.” In case Andlauer quibbled over the details, the NHL handed him a 73-page document outlining Dorion’s ineptitude. “The 73-page report that the NHL shared with me this week showed that the actions were negligent in nature by our hockey club. This set off events that embarrassed the league and pissed off two hockey clubs.”

This came after “Suits” Dorion (in-joke for Montrealers) had mangled the salary cap so badly that Sens property Shane Pinto could not be signed in time for the start of the 2023-24 season. (Ottawa had just 19 actives for Game One.) And that Pinto was later suspended 41 games by the NHL for sports gambling.

You could tell how rattled Andlauer was over the “two phone calls” from NHL HQ that told him he was no longer in Kansas or Kanata any longer. First he said Dorion “has resigned” and then he “has been relieved of his duties as general manager.” Later in the press conference, Andlauer clarified his language and stated it was a “mutual decision” to part ways.

About his only talking point was why he was handling all the garbage from an incident that occurred in March 2022. “Why I inherited this is beyond me. There is no reason for this to last this long,” Andlauer said. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask the NHL, why it took a whole year since the hearing. The commissioner had a lot of time to deliberate.”

Oh, you can be sure he deliberated, Michael, and he will now deliberate over how to revisit your impertinence. (Don’t hold out hope for a fruit basket.) Expect to be told that you’ll speak when the Commish says you’ll speak. Ask prospective Penguins and Coyotes buyer Jim Balsillie how that felt. Not good. Next freewheeling Andlauer presser? The twelfth of never.

As for Andlauer’s legitimate grievance with the league over dumping this mess on him after he shelled out almost a billion dollars for the franchise, maybe Bettman didn’t want to trouble former owner Eugene Melnyk as he dealt with a terminal diagnosis Or perhaps Bettman just wanted Mike to get a taste of how far down the NHL food chain you are when you own a team in a tiny Canadian market that has a very unstable, checkered past when it comes to owners.

What better way to do that than hiding this stink bomb from him as he negotiated the sale. “Maybe because the club was for sale, and they didn’t want to dispute the sale, and making sure the seller got the biggest price possible,” said Andlauer. “I don’t know.” If you weren’t so hot already, Michael I’d say you’re getting warm.

Because a Bettman omertà is absolute, don’t expect Andlauer’s fellow owners to commiserate on him being docked a first-rounder when Chicago, knee deep in its sexual abuse scandal, was simply fined and then allowed to draft uber-prospect Connor Bedard. As long timers know, NHL justice is swift and sure. Except when it serves the Commish to string its out for a decade or so to punish a lippy owner.

The court of Bettman is a lot like Alice In Wonderland’s court of the Queen. “Sentence first. Verdict afterward… off with his head.” Or in this case, off with a needed, lucrative first rounder. Thanks for playing our game, Michael. It’s been swell.

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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

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Running Backs (Pt.2)

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We were watching the NFL on U.S. Thanksgiving Day with a posse of passionate Detroit Lions fans. In between their efforts to convince us to return as Lions fans after our nasty divorce with the team a few years ago, they excitedly talked about the team’s dynamic running backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

Montgomery is Thunder and Gibbs is Lightning as the Lions head toward what might be their first Super Bowl appearance. Ever. As in, not a sniff of a title since they played the NFL championship game in 1957. But we digress. Montgomery, who has 11 TDs, is signed at a comfortable $5.056 M per year on a two-year contract. Gibbs, who has 10 TDs, is on the second year of his rookie deal that averages $4,461,283 a year.

Naturally, the Lions fans want Gibbs signed to a deal so they don’t lose him when he’s a free agent in 2027. But here’s where it gets tricky. In a previous NFL, when RBs were prime attractions, Gibbs would be among the NFL’s top money earners when he’s free to take offers. It doesn’t work that way anymore. The days of Walter Payton and Barry Sanders are over. Even with a slight resurgence in the NFL’s running game in 2024 RBs are still values as penny stocks.

Last July we looked at the reality of two star backs coming off rookie deals. “Las Vegas Raiders RB Josh Jacobs looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and caught the 6 AM flight out of Vegas. New York Giants RB Saquon Barkley looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and signed a one-year deal for $10.1 million. The incentives in the deal will be very challenging for Barkley. He said he had an “epiphany”. Or maybe a chat with his banker. 

Same situation. Different response. As players coming off their rookie-capped contracts both Jacobs and Barkley found a market that valued running backs just above place kickers on the economic totem pole. Prone to injury and undercut by a steady stream of star running backs emerging from the Draft, veteran running backs across the league now found themselves squeezed on short-term deals for what constitutes pocket change for quarterbacks.”

In the offseason Barkley ditched the Giants for a three-year deal with the Eagles that earns him $13 M with a lowly $3.8 M cap hit. The man who could well be the NFL MVP is 13th on the Eagles salary cap, squeezed between Milton Williams and kicker Jake Elliott. He’s hoping this breakthrough season will recoup the money the Giants declined to pay him coming off is rookie deal.

Jacobs, meanwhile, has become the Green Bay Packers MVOP playing for $ 12 M in the first year of a four-season contract. But the two of them are small fry next to QB Patrick Mahomes’ $450 M contract, Joe Burrows’ and Trevor Lawrence’s $275 M deal or Deshaun Watson’s guaranteed $230 M to stink it up in Cleveland. To say nothing of the $140.6 M going to Tampa Bay’s LT Tristan Wirfs or the $140 M deals for WRs Davante Adams of TB and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson. How come?

It is, of course, all a matter of sports caponomics . (For more on the evolution of salary caps in sports leagues read our book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps are Killing Pro Sports and Why the Free Market Could Save Them. brucedowbigginbooks.ca)

Scarcity drives value, and the most scarce commodity is not excellent running backs. It’s excellent quarterbacks. Scarcity is why left offensive tackles make more than guards and centres. It’s why cornerbacks make more than middle linebackers. It’s why these positions are drafted in the first round while running backs and others slide to the later rounds. Gibbs’ first-round selection by Detroit was widely seen as too early for the position and, thus, a cap mistake.

As we remarked in Cap In Hand, the NFL knew it was a two-tier league back in 1987 when it busted a strike by the NFL Players Association for free agency. “There had been no new CBA since the 1982 agreement expired in 1987. To drain the NFLPA’s bank account, the NFL had previously created a “Quarterback Club” marketing arm separate from other players. While the league’s top QBs and select others were handsomely compensated with bonuses and percentages of sales, the move denied significant marketing revenues to the rest of the players and the union.”

End of strike. You’d think that with agents advising RBs and the market establishing value running backs would put pride aside. Nah. Running back Le’Veon Bell described the process when he turned down guaranteed wealth in Pittsburgh in 2022. “My franchise tag was $14.5M, and I walked away from it,Bell said on the AP Pro Football Podcast. “It’s a respect thing. You told me you were going to do this for me but you didn’t… I could’ve just ignored it, went inside the locker room and had been playing. 

“But that wouldn’t have made me happy, and I’m sure inside the locker room, everybody would’ve felt it, and, as a team, we wouldn’t have been good. I feel that’s the same with Saquon. He’s trying to be the best he can, but obviously deep down, he’s not happy, because he wanted to be compensated. He still wants his teammates to be good, so he showed up.”

Bell’s own gamble didn’t work out, as he’s drifted from the Jets to the Ravens to the Buccaneers. Now he’s training to be a boxer. From leading man to bit player. He’ll never make up the money he’s lost by choosing to be a glamourous-but-unappreciated RB. But ask yourself, at what other position in what other league would the three best players at a single position be allowed to switch team from 2023-24?.

That’s what happened last winter when top candidates for 2024 OPOY— Barkley, Jacobs and Derrick Henry— all departed their former teams for slightly better paydays on the Eagles, Packers and Ravens. Doesn’t seem to make sense. Till you see 49ers star RB Christian McCaffrey injured again Sunday night in Buffalo with a PCL tear. Then you understand why teams are unwilling to take a longterm gamble on the man carrying the rock.

And why we’ll stay fans of the Buffalo Bills and their QB $258 Million QB Josh Allen for the time being.

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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Bruce Dowbiggin

Climate & Covid: How The Certainty of Elites Destroyed A Decade

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It probably wasn’t meant as an epitaph for the years since 2008, but a speech from the recent movie Conclave might serve all the same. In the film, a British Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) must be deacon to the Conclave electing a new pope. He is hesitant to accept the responsibility in times of intolerance. His homily explains why.

“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. .. If there were only certainty and no doubt there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray God will find us a pope who doubts.” (Spoiler alerts forbid further plot developments.)

Cardinal Lawrence might well have been describing the deadening effects of certainty since the election of Barack Obama (2008) and Justin Trudeau (2015). Under the guise of enlightenment Obama and then Trudeau have employed certainty as a battering ram. Those who expressed doubt were eliminated. Those bending a knee were spared— for now. Those at the top got great Taylor Swift tickets.

While artfully claiming disinformation/ misinformation as dire threats to humanity they used censorship to eliminate opposing views to their radical progressive agendas. The two most prominent of those agendas were, of course, the toxic twins of Climate and Covid.

While the global warming… oops, climate-change hustle had been around for some time it was only under the auspices of Obama and then Trudeau that it gained its ability to punish dissent. Who can forget Obama’s sneering admonition to doubters that 97 percent of scientists were onside with Al Gore and Greta Thunberg because The Science Was Settled? This was certainty on steroids.

In short order, newspapers banned letters to the editor disputing the manipulative programs of the UN and the IPCC (among the many drawing hundreds of millions in public funds). Opposing climate voices disappeared from CBC television panels. To dispute controversial claims was an invitation to disastrous law fare, as Canadian journalist Mark Steyn discovered. Our piece The Right To Criticize Climate Change Has Cost Mark Steyn Almost Everything highlights the decade-plus ordeal he suffered in D.C. courts for pointing out the fraudulence of Michael Mann’s hockey-stick oeuvre.

All for disputing the certainty of the science behind a global scheme to move billions from the first world to developing nations. (Which is then reportedly laundered back to the U.S.) Were Steyn’s case an exception we might grant his oppressors leeway. But the certainty principal of Obama and Trudeau on climate cost thousands of scientists their livelihoods, bankrupted others and blackened their life’s work. To no effect on climate itself.

In Canada, Trudeau named a convicted criminal and ruthless zealot as his climate minister. Steven Guilbeault took certainty to its illogical end, dragging the faculty lounge of idiots in Trudeau’s cabinet along with him. Again, career scientists and researchers were crushed by his onslaught of a useless carbon tax, EV mandates and ridiculous bans on workable solutions such as nuclear. Dispute was fruitless. They were that certain of their holiness.

But climate certainty was simply the appetizer for the banquet of Covid. Here both Trudeau and Obama (and his successors in the the U.S. health industry) wielded certainty into a script that not even Hollywood would have considered plausible in 2000.

Most now recall the Rod Serling scenario of an engineered Chinese virus somehow wiping out civilization. This plot was employed to suspend everyday activity and lock the population in their homes across much of the West and Asia. (Surprisingly Africa declined the invitation to insanity and survived nicely, thank you.)

Lock downs, masks, distancing, surface wiping, police raids, government bans— all were the poisoned fruit employed by bureaucrats and fanatics in service of their certainty. Everyone has their pained memory of overreach, from arresting surfers on the beach to locking arriving Canadian travellers into hotels to seniors dying alone in quarantined wards.

Citing the worthlessness of masks was always accompanied with the admonition that defying the new normal was a fatal threat to someone’s grandmother. It is a truism that people cannot remember the pain of dental extraction or childbirth. But the dystopian effects of Covid are likely to be carried to the grave by young people isolated from schools and grieving citizens denied a final farewell to parents.

While authorities sought to keep their grip, certainty finally began to erode. It was revealed that six-foot distancing was an invented standard, masks were useless in stopping the spread of the virus and the avalanche of positive tests were largely false positives and unlikely to make anyone sick. Soon Covid humour became accepted. Compliance was mocked. Citizens chucked the mask and re-started life.

Those certain in their power recoiled at the insubordination. Armin Rosen noted their stunned disbelief in Tablet, “Perhaps the higher levels of the American media complex, masquerading in the clothing of a different century, should embrace their essentially patrician urges and accept their permanent bafflement at the inscrutable, inexplicable passions of the American polity, thus exempting themselves from any deep concern about what the rest of us are up to.”

Donald Trump’s call to reject those who’d prospered in Covid found willing ears in the United States. His resounding sweep in the 2024 elections— every state in the union moved rightward in voting—  was the final rebuke to those who preached certainty. The same people who sloughed off not one, but two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate as mere distractions.

It remains to be seen whether docile Canadians, always deferring to authority first, will shake off the certainty crowd in the next federal election. The Liberals are still hoping they can fool them with the Pierre Poilievre-as-Trump-as-Hitler narrative, a scare tactic that failed miserably down south. (One recent poll shows the Conservatives winning 240 seats, the Liberals with 19.)

Cardinal Lawrence’s appeal in Conclave to a higher purpose than certainty should be a stake in the heart of those who’ve oppressed their families and neighbours to no perceptible gain. The Trump comeback signals an opportunity with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk for a revival of healthy debate and skepticism. Whether it holds and prospers is still uncertain. But we have learned that uncertainty is a thing to be wished for.

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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