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Bruce Dowbiggin

Sombre Salming Tribute A Reminder That Global Play Is Being Tarnished

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There are moments that only the world of sports can do justice. Plot lines that would be laughed at in story meetings are acceptable in sports. As they said for decades on Wide World of Sports, “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat…”

Case in point: The two nights this November in which NHL Hall of Fame defenceman Borje Salming returned to his hockey home in Toronto for a sombre farewell to Maple Leafs fans. Stricken with cruel ALS, Salming found the strength to appear publicly on consecutive nights with former team mates in scenes that would make even the hardest heart weep.  [Full disclosure: We lost our brother-in-law to ALS and now our closest friend is battling the disease]

Supported by his former team captain, a weeping Darryl Sittler, Salming did his best to absorb the love from Leafs Nation at the Scotiabank Centre. A touching video of his heroics played as Salming dropped the ceremonial puck before the Toronto/ Vancouver contest.

His afflicted face reflected the cruelty of what is widely known as Lou Gehrig disease. (In a move only a Centre of the Universe fan can make, someone suggested that, because Gehrig played a century ago, the disease should now be known as Borne Salming disease so younger people can get cozy with it. Please.)

For those too young to have seen Salming in his prime, he was the template of the Swedish NHL defenceman to come. Arriving in a league hostile to anyone but Canadian players, he rose to the top at his position despite the chaos behind the scenes with the Harold Ballard’s Leafs. Think a more physical Nicklas Lidstrom, a more stylish Victor Hedman, a shot-blocking Erik Karlsson.

Long and lean, he was courageous in a time when Swedes, in the mocking words of Ballard, were said to go into the corner with eggs in their pocket and not break one. Borje stopped that talk. He put up 787 points during his career and made so many teammates look better playing next to him.

For an organization tortured by Ballard’s antics and continued mismanagement Salming was a beacon of hope for fans who have not seen even a Stanley Cup final series appearance since 1967. With Sittler and Lanny McDonald he offered a chance for respectability. A chance that— through no fault of Salming’s— never arrived.

Testament to how respected he was Salming was never a target of abuse from rival fans. His skill and courage— he once absorbed 200-plus stitches in his face to repair a hideous skate gash and played three days latter— was admired even in super-rival Montreal. When he had personal substance problems, he was never mocked by even the most bitter foes.

Salming arrived just as international hockey became a thing with the 1972 Canada/ USSR series. The trickle of players like Salming soon became a steady flow of Europeans that culminated in the eventual arrival of Russians and other Soviet Bloc players in the 1980s and ‘90s. International games at the Canada Cup, Rendezvous Series and Olympics became the greatest contests many fans ever saw.

TURIN, ITALY – FEBRUARY 24: Nicklas Lidstrom #5 of Sweden shake hands with Ales Kotalik #22 of Czech Republic after they won the semi final of the men’s ice hockey match between Sweden and Czech Republic during Day 14 of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games on February 24, 2006 at the Palasport Olimpico in Turin, Italy. Sweden won 7-3 to reach the final. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

Somehow the NHL has lost the thread on international hockey. Proof positive was the news last week that the league and the NHLPA have discontinued plans for a World Cup of Hockey in 2024. Usually the sticking point in getting a WC and Olympics has been the location of the tournament or interrupting a season.

But this time the problem is, like so much these days, the war in Ukraine and Covid protocols. Put simply, the Czechs and Slovaks will not play in any tournament in which a Putin-led Russia is a participant. Legendary Czech goalie Dominik Hašek said as much recently. His country of Czechia will not participate until Putin’s vicious incursion in Ukraine is ended.

In a tweet salvo, Hasek wrote: “The NHL must immediately suspend contracts for all Russian players! Every athlete represents not only himself and his club, but also his country and its values and actions. That is a fact. If the NHL does not do so, it has indirect co-responsibility for the dead in Ukraine.

“I also want to write, that I am very sorry for those Russian athletes, who condemn V. Putin and his Russian aggression in Ukraine. However, at the moment I also consider their exclusion a necessity.”

For Hasek and others, memories of the Soviet Bloc are still too fresh in large parts of Europe to pretend that it’s business-as-usual when it comes to dealing with megalomaniac Russian leaders. If there were a WC in 2024— and Putin still rules in Moscow— it would be minus either the Russians or their (justifiably) fearful neighbours in eastern Europe.

Additionally, the spectre of bureaucratic overreach on the Covid virus in many Western nations remains an impediment to any large sports gathering. Already this fall we can see the purveyors of masking and lockdowns gearing up for another run at imposing themselves on a public weary of their draconian solutions.

Poling this week in Canada by the official pollster of CTV— a recipient of federal funds— suggests that well over 50 percent of the population favours a return to indoor mask mandates. Teachers unions continue to agitate for locking down schools this winter should it prove an aggressive respiratory season again. There are also rumbles of mandatory vaccinations again, despite the evidence of injuries suffered by those who took the vaccines.

While these moves will generate far more backlash than when they were first imposed in 2020-21 the red tape involved in circumventing the diehards’ tactics would also create delays and more.

No one asked Salming his thoughts on the Ukraine conflict or Covid-19. Probably a good thing. But he would no doubt be happy to see the resumption of International play as a by-product of peace in the region.

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 YearsIn 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

Trump Effect: No One Gretz Off Easy Backing The Donald

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It hasn’t been the greatest month for Wayne Gretzky. One one hand he has a Putin pal, Alex Ovechkin, systematically stalking his record for the most regular-season goals in an NHL career. After a slow start The Great Eight is now tracking Wayne like Carey Price tracking a mule deer (more on that later). When this is over he could have only 60 NHL records left!

On the other hand, his secret about supporting Donald Trump got out in the wake of Orange Man Bad re-possessing the White House. Yes, Gretz is a MAGA man, right down to the hat. While his son-in-law, LIV golfer Dustin Johnson, tees it up regularly with The Donald (they’re neighbours in the Palm Beaches)  most of the hockey sweats were unaware that No. 99 votes for Trump. (In Wayne’s defence he votes GOP in the Hollywood congressional district which is like using a hair blower to melt the Columba Ice Field.)

Then, after Trump’s stunning (to some) win on Tuesday, pictures emerged on the Great One with his family at Mar A Lago celebrating the win. Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend . May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”

The secret (to some) was out. Then hero of the Great White North, which has elected Justin Trudeau three times, melted down. Like this. “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.

University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. He was an amazing hockey player.” @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.”

Dave MacIntyre @dave_macattack: “Wayne Gretzky being at Cheeto’s inauguration party is disappointing in ways I can’t properly express in a tweet. And no, I don’t care that hockey culture is conservative. Being fiercely opposed to a fascist dictator should be the absolute floor for anyone with a conscience….He ain’t the GOAT for me anymore.”

“Not sure this guy is the Canadian icon and encapsulation of Canadian values that many think he is. The first red flag was his very partisan support for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives starting in the mid-2000s. No thanks, Wayne!”

Globe & Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, who was on an 0-50 heater during the election weighed in.  @acoyne: “I have no problem with Gretzky being a conservative. I do have a problem with him hanging with Trump. Who, for starters, is not a conservative.”

There were some who defended him. My pal Ted Bird chirped back. @manofbird: “The pissants complaining about Wayne Gretzky attending Trump’s victory party are the same people who would’ve snitched on their own kids for playing road hockey during COVID.”

But it’s safe to say that as Canada prepares to defenestrate Trudeau in the next federal election, Gretz will not be invited to Rideau Hall for beaver tails with Justin. It’s likely he’ll experience the Bobby Orr blackout, becoming 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, especially in liberal New England where he made his bones. “Not that Bobby Orr will care, but his endorsement of Donald Trump is one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever read in my life. I guess all I can say is that he seems to have a weak spot for conmen/future convicted criminals.”

In Canada it was no better for Orr. 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 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.

“I love my family, I love my country, and I care for my neighbour,” Price wrote in a published post. “I am not a criminal or a threat to society. What @justinpjtrudeau is trying to do is unjust… Thank you for listening to my opinion.”

We commiserated with him in our column at the time. “Good luck with that, Carey. Coming in the week when Quebec commemorates the 2014 École Polytechnique massacre, the political message backfired. Quebec’s media exploded against the man who was so recently their hero. Price tried to clarify his stand.

“My views are my own, and I do believe in them,” he tweeted. “The only reason I bring up this issue is because it is what’s being brought up now and not out of disrespect to anyone.” That brought the Habs belatedly to protect him. “Carey was not aware of the unfortunate timing on his statement. The Montreal Canadiens wish to express their sincere apology to any and all who have been offended or upset by the discourse that has arisen over this matter in recent days.”

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.

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

Look Who’s Back & Who Now Controls The Social Media Pulpit

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“A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed,” New York Times headline.

Surprise! The carnival just rolled into DC. On a night after Americans told the Washington elites and Hollywood toffs to get stuffed, the denial squad was back in full force in both America and Canada on Wednesday. Instead of asking what they did wrong they re-doubled efforts to do the Obama finger point at people they see as their lessers.

But it’s falling on deaf ears. It’s now okay to answer questions again about what happened in 2020 and what will happen going forward. Our good friend Toronto Mike asked if we thought the 2020 election— laughingly billed as the “the most secure election in history”— was rigged.  Our answer was that, just as in justice, it’s not good enough stage a fair election. You must be seen to stage a fair election.

The 2020 vote failed that test. Tuesday night the best argument that 2020 was a stinking potage was the mystery of the missing voters, Specifically, it appears that Kamala Harris will win about 12 million fewer votes than did Biden. They didn’t go to Trump, who’s just barely ahead of his 2020 number. Where did they go? Did they sit out the election? We thought there were millions more Americans set to vote in 2024?

Or did they, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon suggests, never exist in the first place? It’s a telling point as the new Covid voting rules left gaps in the supervision and conduct of mail-in voting, drop boxes, vote harvesting and chain of custody.  Because they were so greedy for power the DEMs engineered the @Biden win in 2020, using Covid restrictions to gin up a fanciful 81 million votes for Biden, who they knew was senile. In their exuberance to stomp out Trump using illegal ballots did they produce too high a bar for votes? Oops.

They got their comeuppance Tuesday night as Biden World collapsed onto a shellshocked Kamala Harris. Perhaps the biggest losers outside of Harris/ Biden were the legions of celebrities who took it as their appointed duty to lecture what Sunny Hostin of The View called “uneducated” voters. The sense of entitlement by everyone from Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen to Cardi B was shattered by the referendum on privilege Tuesday.

All you needed to know about their heavy foot in this election was George Clooney. The A-list actor decided after the June debate that senile Biden couldn’t win. He cut off his financial support and urged other Hollywood libs to do the same. Then he wrote an OpEd telling Joe to go. On the say-so of Clooney and Hollywood loons like Rob Reiner, Mark Ruffalo and Ed Begley the DNC threw away the legal primary votes for Biden and stuck Kamala in his place— without any vetting on her lecherous husband or radical roots.

They then rounded up the Media party and pollsters to take her from 36 percent approval to 50 approval in a week. And there we were on Tuesday. George Clooney’s election. Hope The View enjoyed it. Now they’re reduced to begging for rapprochement from the GOP after having none when the tables were turned.

The lasting takeaway from 2024 won’t just be Trump but Elon Musk and the replacement of legacy media by social media. By restoring Right voices to his X site he destroyed the social media cabal of Facebook, Google, MSM and more supporting the Blob. By going on the Joe Rogan podcast for two hours or talking to Tucker Carlson’s podcast he emphasized the new prominence of podcasts and social media as an alternative to debates on the Big Four networks or sit-downs with dismissive hosts on 60 Minutes .

Suddenly there was another channel for message sending. Musk’s conversion to Trump (after the Left spurned him) left the grandees of status quo from the Bidens and Barack exposed. Their traditional interlocutors had lost the public trust during Covid. With no alternatives but middle-of-the-night raids and dissembling NYC prosecutors they showed their true colours. .

The Trump hate was endemic— some of it justified. Allusions to Hitler, internment camps, defunding unfriendly media and more. This from the party where Barack Obama said they go high when others go low. Good night and good riddance. Had they simply waited out Trump’s second term in 2020 they’d have likely won last night with a fresh leader and an eight-year runway. Now Trump gets four more years, with J.D. Vance, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Hailey and Tulsi Gabbard ready to tack on another eight years. Kamala Harris disappears ignominiously. Bad move all around in 2020.

In Canada, a volatile Trump re-elected should act as a brake on Justin Trudeau’s wilder instincts. While Canada is not America, the populist unrest that propelled Trump is very alive in Trudeau’s nation. He sits in the 20s for approval. A Kamala win might have been a green light to more globalist pandering. Now, after Tuesday’s bloodbath Trudeau risks the CDN economy by moving further to the trash heap. For the next six to twelve months his Chinese handlers are going to be mad as Trudeau must cleave closely to them.

As we said, some are calling for unity and understanding in the wake of the 2024 election. (Most of them the ones who took the nastiest, most vicious shots at him in the courts and Congress.) There will be time for that soon. But first, for no other reason than to remember how they acted in power, recall how they took a picture of mounted border police apprehending illegal migrants in a Texas river. Biden said they were whipping the people with their reins. His lapdog media piled on. It was a lie they perpetuated for weeks.

Finally, say a prayer for the polling industry such as Disney’s 538 Project whose work was followed religiously by most media and political junkies. In the end almost all pollsters outside Rasmussen and Atlas Intel came grovelling in favour of the candidate from the uniparty. Even when the mistake was revealed several major firms refused to call close races. Meanwhile those who followed the polymarket betting sites saw a consistent preference over 60 percent in favour of Trump all night. In the end they might have been the night’s biggest winner.

Charles De Gaulle famously asked, “How can you govern a nation with 538 different cheeses?” America is about to find out that, in the new news era, governing will involve 538 different media sources producing information. With Elon Musk as the ring leader.

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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