April 30, 2025 • 45 mins
This week on the Daly Dose, we are joined by Canadian sports broadcaster, journalist and writer Bruce Dowbiggin to discuss his amazing career and to discuss the Stanley Cup Playoffs!
Bruce reflects on how he began his career in sports media, some of the incredible players and coaches that he has been able to cover, and some of the impactful stories that he was able to break!
We remember one of the most brutal hockey rivalries in NHL history and get Bruce’s thoughts on what he remembers from those passionate Colorado Avalanche vs. Detroit Red Wings games.
Finally, we discuss how the Stanley Cup Playoffs could play out this season and which teams could make a deep run toward the Stanley Cup!
Bruce reflects on how he began his career in sports media, some of the incredible players and coaches that he has been able to cover, and some of the impactful stories that he was able to break!
We remember one of the most brutal hockey rivalries in NHL history and get Bruce’s thoughts on what he remembers from those passionate Colorado Avalanche vs. Detroit Red Wings games.
Finally, we discuss how the Stanley Cup Playoffs could play out this season and which teams could make a deep run toward the Stanley Cup!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Wednesday, April thirty eight, twenty twenty five, you are listening
to the Daily Dose Sports podcast and I am your host,
Clinton Daily, coming to you from my high seating here
in Denver, Colorado, and we are back for another week
of talking sports with a dose of common sense. Hey,
Happy Wednesday to you. I hope your week is going well.
I hope you, your family, your friends, everyone in your
(00:27):
world is staying strong and healthy right now. And I
hope you're doing better than Shador Sanders. Now. No, no,
we're not going to talk about Shouldure slipping in the
NFL draft.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I mean if I.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Did, what in the world would ESPN do for the
next three months. I don't want to put poor missus
Deon Sanders out of work. Oh sorry, I mean mel
Chiper Jr. Hey, we have the NBA playoffs going right now,
and yes, we have those Stanley Cup playoffs going in
the NHL, and I'm telling you right now out that
(01:01):
has been fascinating to watch. You know, every single series
in the Western Conference was tied at two to two.
It is going to be a wild run to the
Stanley Cup. Well, today we are going to be joined
by a guy that really knows the game, and in fact,
we have so much to get to we need to
jump in right now. Joining us this week on the
(01:23):
Daily Dose, we have got a very special guest that,
honestly I can't wait to talk to you because Bruce
Doe Bigan is a Canadian sports broadcaster, journalist and writer.
He is a two time winner of the Gemini Award
as Canada's top television sports broadcaster. His latest book is
called Deal with It, The Trays that Stunned the NHL
(01:44):
and Changed Hockey. You can get that on Amazon. He
has in Exact Science, the sixth most compelling draft yars
in NHL history. That was his previous book with his
son Evan, that was voted by the Way the seventh
best professional hockey book of all time book authority. His
two thousand and five book Money Players, was a finalist
for the Canadian Business Book of the Year.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
He has now written like a dozen books.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You can find them pretty much anywhere, or you can
go to Bruce Dobigganbooks dot c A find them wherever
books are sold. This guy knows hockey backward, forward, sideways.
I can't wait to talk to him about hockey and
the Stanley Cup. Playoffs and everything else. Bruce, Welcome to
the Daily Does. We are happy to have you here
with us.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Buy, It's great to be here. Nice to meet you, Lam.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Thank you, Hey, Bruce. I've got a question, where did
you grow up? What is your background? Where did you
grow up at?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Well, I grew up in Montreal, in the province of Quebec,
and I, strangely enough, I was not a Canadians fan.
I was a Redwings fan. I grew up in the
sixties and seventies as a Redwings fan because of Gordy Howe.
As a side story, my brother I have four brothers,
too older and too younger, and in those days we
used to play the tabletop hockey games. My father bought
(02:57):
one for Christmas one year and he said, well, he
can't all have this team. So my eldest brother took
the Canadians, my next brother took the Leafs, and I
was left to choose somebody, and so it was the
Red Wings. And so I spent a long time growing
up in Quebec getting in fights at recess with guys
over hockey games. And the Red Rings in those days
were very good with Gordy half, but they just never
won the big game, and so my life was a
(03:19):
little miserable there. But yes, I was there for about
twenty years and then moved to Toronto for about twenty
five years, where I did a lot of my broadcasting
and stuff. And I've been in Calgary now for twenty
five years. So yeah, well that's seventy five. Yeah, okay,
I'm seventy So yeah, that the math works out.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The math is pretty good. Bruce. Were you an athlete
growing up? Did you play yourself?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I played all the sports, like most guys in those days.
The sport I played the most at the highest level
was football. But I played hockey in all those sports
until I was probably sixteen or seventeen, and then I
concentrated on football from then on. But I mean, you
live hockey, and in those days in particular, you lived
hockey all the time. But it wasn't something you could have void.
(04:01):
You know, you might be a baseball fan or a
football fan, but you also had to know hockey to
get along with people.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Absolutely, so the Red Wings were your team though. That
was the team you were following. Gordy, how is the guy?
Is that who you were emulating? Is that who you
were going out on the ice yourself and kind of emulating.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, certainly Gordy with the elbows getting the elbows up,
it's acting himself. Yeah, No, Gordy was the guy. And
he was a very sort of humble guy. Really. He
was tough on the ice, very productive guy, but a
very modest guy. And I was much, very fortunate later
on in life to get to know him and meet
him a number of times, and he was a wonderful guy. Sometimes,
(04:39):
you know, in our business, and you may have experienced
this too, you'll have a hero or some guy that
you really like, or some woman that you really like,
and then you'll meet them and you go, ooh, maybe
I shouldn't have met them. But with Gordy how he
was the real deal. And that was the original six
hockey I'm I was born in nineteen fifty four, so
the sixties and seventies were really the of me watching hockey.
(05:01):
And as I say, unfortunately the Red Wings took a
long time to get good again. They didn't get good
again until, of course the nineteen nineties. After that, and
then that's some great series with the Avalanche.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Of course, yes they did. You know.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Gordi Howe was an interesting guy because he was ahead
of his time. We're now seeing guys come in and
they can do a little bit of everything. Hey, they
can fight a little bit, they can play some defense,
they can be offensive threats.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You look at a guy like mccar he's not the
fighter maybe, but hey, that was Gordy. That's Gordy.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
How now I know that in this generation I think
every generation does that. We like to look at, well,
this guy today is better than that guy, Ben.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I don't like. I don't like to do that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I like to look at it and say, this guy
is who that guy would be if he had grown up.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
In this system.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I think that's so much more. It's such a
more fun way to look at it. A guy like
maybe I'm maybe I'm speaking out of turn. A guy
like a cal mccarr that can be such a great
defenseman can also just be an obsolete sniper. Kind of
this generation is Gordy, How isn't he?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, to a certain extent, Macarr by the way, good Calgary.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Boy, which should yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Throw that in there. Each each of the greatest players
and in the book deal with it. When we talk
about the trades, they almost all involve guys who are
the defining people of their generations, people like Wayne Gretzky,
people like Patrick Gwat, et cetera. And they kind of
defined what it took to be a great player, and
to be a great player in the original six with
Gordy how you had to do what they called the
(06:27):
Gordy hal Patrick a goal and assist in a fight.
You had to be prepared to do that. That was
the price of staying in the NHL at that time.
By the time Gretzky comes around, he doesn't have to
do the fighting part. There's people who are protecting him,
and so he redefines the game because he doesn't have
to look over his shoulder, he doesn't have to worry
who's coming the other way. He's being protected. So each
(06:48):
guy in his time to find things Patrick and again
we get into it in the chapter in the book
that we spent on the on the Patrick Garwat trade.
Patrick kind of defined goaltenders, the style of goaltenders. He
changed the way he had to do it. And that's
what's fun about each generation. And mccarr and a couple well,
I guess Ovi is a guy who's somewhat defined the generation,
(07:08):
but mccarr certainly is on his way to doing that,
and it tells you what kind of player he is,
but also tells you what kind of hockey they played
at that era. If you come back like one hundred
years to me, I say, well, how did they play
hockey in the twenty twenties, and you can point to
a guy like mccarr and say that was the style?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. First, how did you get into
the sports media world. You were an athlete, you were,
you know, a school kid as all of us were.
How did you go into that sports media world?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Well, you know, I'd grown up loving sports, but I
kind of went sideways. I was working for a little
while in the theater and in the movies and doing
things like that because I wanted to write, and I
had just gotten married in Montreal, and I needed a
job really and because I you know, I had to
support helped support my wife. She was working too, but
(07:54):
anyhow I had I had to support myself, and I
took it what I thought was a part time job
as the sports editor for the Canadian version of TV
Guide magazine. Remember the little thing that you had, the
book they used to sit on the TV we had
all the TV Guide version in Canada, and just as
a sort of a side thing, I took a job
there as the sports editor for them, and that one
(08:15):
thing led to another and I would get onto panels
and one day I was on a morning sports radio
panel and I came in the door and a friend
of mine worked at the place, and he said, they
just fired the sportscaster. Tell him you can do it.
And I said, well, I've never done live right. Oh no,
you can figure it out. You can figure out. And
so I volunteered to do the job because it was
(08:36):
the nineteen eighty four Olympics and most of the other
sports casters were out of town, so I said I'll
fill in. And that's how I got started in radio.
And then two years later I had the same thing happen.
I got a phone call out of the blue from
a TV producer who was producing the six o'clock Sports
six o'clock news in Toronto, which was the biggest newscast
in the country, and he said, I want you to
(08:57):
be my sportscaster. And again I said, I haven't done
tea before, and he said, we'll teach you. Don't worry.
What I've heard of you on the radio, you're going
to work out, and that's that's you know, that's how
it got started. And the next thing I knew, I
was winning the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy Award and all. So, yeah,
it was I and all these guys I knew who
were trying to get into the business and I kind
(09:19):
of fell into its sideways accidentally, and so I was
kind of feel badly that these guys work so hard
small places like moose Jaw and Winnipeg, these Canadian cities,
and you know, I got right into the number one market.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That is outstanding.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And hey, you know, one of the biggest lessons I
take from that, if you get a chance, you know,
go with it and run with it. And you never
you never know. When you look back at those days
of the sports media world compared to now, what are
the biggest differences you see in how sports are covered?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I mean totally different news and oh yeah, both. Well,
you're right at eleven o'clock when the eleven o'clock newscasts,
the local newscasts, which you would have had in Denver,
you'd have had Toronto, you'd have had Montreal, whatever. When
that was over at eleven thirty. That was it. There
was no more show on those TV channels, a news
channel until six o'clock the next night. There was no
four thirty or five early news or any of that stuff.
(10:12):
So if the story wasn't done by a certain period
of time and at night, you just basically put it
to bed and came back at it the next day. Now,
of course it's a twenty four hour cycle. Then the
news goes, you know, twenty four seven, three sixty five,
and you always have to be on top of stuff.
And then of course social media came in, and social
(10:33):
media made everybody no more than they'd ever known before.
When when I started again in doing sports radio and TV,
you really were the one who controlled the story. Your
take on the game last night was the one a
lot of people had because it was all they had
to listen to. Now with in those days again, and
I'm sure it was the same in Denver. You didn't
get every basketball or hockey game. You'd had maybe two
(10:54):
a week or whatever. There would be games were only
on radio, some of that you'd never even heard of.
So anyhow you had a chance. Is that sports after
you define the way the games were seen and heard.
He was a bomber, he was good whatever it was,
and that was that was a very it was It
was a very, very much a privilege to do it.
And then, as I say, social media changed all of that.
Now everybody can see all the same stuff and it's
(11:17):
really hard to be different. I was able to be
different because I had a background in theater and movies
and stuff like that, so I had a little bit
different approach. Today there's a ten million podcasts and newscasts,
et cetera. So it's really hard to stick out and
and it's really hard to have an independent voice. And
(11:37):
I feel for the people who are trying to start
out today.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Bruce is there and I know you just you just
spoke about it a little bit. There was a time
in that era where you didn't get every game.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I remember.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know for me, Monday night football was a big
thing because you only got two or three games all weekend.
So when you got a chance to watch it. Is
there an era that you kind of you kind of miss?
Do you miss that era? I know we're spoiled now
we get every game, you can see it, but there's
part of that I kind of miss.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I did a book about Oh, eight or nine years
ago called Cap in Hand, and it was basically my
rant against salary caps. I'm not one of these people
who thinks that salary caps is the cure all for
everything that's wrong with sports leagues. I really think that
salary caps have done done a lot to hurt sports
leagues and hurt competitiveness. It's produced tanking, It's produced a
(12:28):
lot of things. But one of the big things that
came out of it, what I wrote a lot about
in the book was this idea that you're getting at.
There's so much content today, There is so much product
that they're pushing on you at any one time. It
almost overwhelms you. Even if you're a big hockey fan,
even if you're a big ABS fan or a Calgary
Flames fan, it can get a little mind numbing at
(12:50):
a certain point because it's all there in front of you.
There's never any mystery, Oh, you know what happened last
night again, picking up the paper in the morning to
read what had happened the night before, or hearing the
radio guy in the morning. That doesn't exist anymore. And
I think it's a problem that the leagues have to
come to grips with they're trying to do it a
little bit. You've seen in basketball were they had this
mid season tournament sort of playing thing. The four nations
(13:13):
that they had in the NHL this year, these are
all things that they're using to try to break up
the season because even the most loyal fans go, you know,
it's almost too much. It's almost too much stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is there an era that you look back on and
you're like, that was my favorite era?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It just it wasn't even close.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I know for me, you know, especially with football and basketball,
you know, late seventies, early eighties for me, when you
just it was the biggest thing on It was so
exciting when you got to see those games. And I know,
if I went back and wa wash it, I'd go
this early isn't that good of a product. But I
still romanticize it. I still want to go back to
Is there an era you look back as your favorite era?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Well, up until the time when I started working in
the business, I was a fan. I always operated as
a fan, and you know I had teams that I
rooted for. I rooted for the Montreal Expos that were
that they're really great because I was invested as a fan.
But once I got into the business, and I tell
people who get into the business about lose your fandom
at the door, I said, cheer for a good story.
(14:11):
And so over the years, I've done books that have
involved all sorts of things. I spent six years following
the Vancouver Canucks when a friend of mine became the
general manager of the team, and I got really invested
in that and really interested in everything that was going
on with Vancouver. And of course they came within a
game of the Stanley Cup in twenty eleven. The Calgary
Flames have had a couple of years here where they
went to the finals, and you know, that was a
(14:32):
gripping story. Other sports, I was when I was in Toronto.
The Toronto Blue Jays won back to back World Series
and I was the local sports cast, So those kind
of things that you know, I rooted for those stories
at that time. They were fascinating. They were fascinating people.
And when you can pick and choose, when you're in
a big metropolitan area like that Denver is or like
(14:53):
Toronto was, you've got the four or five teams, So
if there's a couple that aren't doing too well, you
just put them to the side and then concentrate on
who's successful at that point. So I did a little
bit of that. But that's that's what I would saying.
If I could digress just a little bit about the book.
One of the things we did with deal with it
is we chose seven different big trades, and we chose
(15:14):
each of them to represent a certain period of time
in the NHL. How did they speak to the NHL.
The earliest trade is Phil Esposito going to the Bruins
joining Bobby Orr. There was a simple time and you
made trades with one guy for another. And then as
we go through the trades over the years of you
got Gretzky. This is the trade where Edmonton can't afford
(15:35):
him anymore. La becomes a big deal. Hockey in the
South of the United States becomes a big deal. The
Patrick Watt trade is a significant trade again because he's
going to a market that has just started to have
NHL hockey. He legitimizes it and he legitimizes a certain
kind of way of playing sports. And the final two chapters,
(15:56):
one of them is about the is about the Vegas
Golden Knights, who who I think on their draft Day
made fifteen different trades to build their team and were
a Stanley Cup winner right within five years. And the
last trade in the book is the Matthew Kachuck trade
where he was traded from here in Calgary to Florida
and they go on to win the Stanley Cup. And
each of those those trades represented the kind of the
(16:19):
way business was done at that time. And it's certainly
not the same as it was in sixty seven when
Phil Esperzia was traded, and it's certainly not the way
it is today in twenty twenty four to twenty five.
It's a very different way of doing business.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
You have covered some of the greats. You have covered
some of the biggest names on the planet. Is there
one you hold a special place for? Is there is
there one that you're like, No, that guy just impressed
the heck out of me.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Just a good guy.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Well. One of the things I did when I was
doing local TV in Toronto, and one of the things
that got me some of the awards was I did
a lot of work with the retired NHL players when
they were suing the NHL over their pension. This is
nineteen ninety two, ninety three, and the NHL had taken
and some of their pension money for themselves, and the
players went to court in Toronto to get that money back,
(17:07):
and they were they were successful. And as a result
of that, I met all sorts of guys who did
my heroes when I was when I was a boy,
In particular Carl Brewer, who was a defenseman for the
Leafs in the sixties when they went for Stanley Cups.
We became really good friends and and so I would
meet people and and again I met I mentioned Gordi
how I got a promotion while I was at CBC
(17:28):
doing television from local to national, and so they had
a little party for me one night. And we're all
standing around the bar with our friends, just yacking away,
and all of a sudden, the front door of the
bar opens and here comes Carl Brewer and Gordie how
And Carl's brought Gordy to my party, and we did,
and he stood at the bet at the bar with
us for about an hour. He was so it was gracious,
but he was also funny. He teased guys, you know,
(17:51):
guys would talk to him and he'd sort of take
the pee out of him a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
He was. He was just he was everything he really
wanted him him to have been. So that that's a
story I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Absolutely. That's amazing. You've broken a lot of stories. You
were in that business of going in and finding those
kind of stories. I know now it is such a
big thing to break a story. Yeah, you see these
guys battling on social media. So and so broke this,
and I broke this, and he broke this, And did
you ever have a story like that that you broke
(18:22):
that you were especially proud of?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Oh yeah, I mean again. I got involved, first of all,
as I said, with the NHL over the pinch and lawsuit.
But then I got involved with the guy who was
the head of the union of the time, Alan Eagleson,
who was corrupt and there were a lot of players
who had complained to me about him over the years,
and at some point I decided, you know, I'm going
(18:45):
to look into this story, and with another reporter in Boston,
a man named Russ Conway, together we investigated the story
for almost seven or eight years before Alan Eagleson went
to jail, and we worked on that story the whole time,
and we found out the corruption. We found out how well.
For instance, I had mentioned Mike Gillis, who was the
general manager of the Vancouver Canucks. He was a client
(19:07):
of Eagleson's and he had a broken leg that ended
his career and Eagleson took some of his disability insurance money.
That's just the idea of how corrupt a guy he was.
And and from Russ, who was an old time investigative reporter,
I learned how to do those stories. Up until then,
I was just, you know, a desk sports guy. I
had some things to say. I was like a lot
(19:28):
of guys. But I was able through this story to
kind of, you know, get my bona fides as a reporter,
as an investigative reporter. And it was it was scary
sometimes and the biggest, to be honest with, the the
biggest fear I always had was why am I the
only guy who thinks that this is story? I was.
I was breaking stories about we discovered this or we
discovered this money here, whatever, and I thought, why is
(19:51):
nobody else doing this story? At some point, They're going
to come out with a silver bullet and I'm going
to look like an idiot. But it never happened. We
were right the whole time, Our research was right. And
as I say, he ended up going to jail eventually,
And it was Yeah, it was a very gratifying thing.
And it was gratifying to be able to help players
and people because you know, in our business over the years,
(20:12):
you meet lots of people, but how many did you help? Well,
you know, it was a big event you were at
and you reported and they liked your reporting or something.
But to get to the end of my business day
and say, you know what, I helped all of these
players who were my boyhood heroes to get their pension money,
to get rid of a corrupt union official, to reform
their association. That was a very gratifying feeling for somebody
(20:34):
in our business.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Oh, I bet it had to be because of that,
because of getting Was that the favorite story you ever covered?
Did you have something else that you're like, no, there's
another one out there, But I would imagine that one
had to be pretty high in your list.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
That was the biggest. But and I went often in
different directions. As I said, there was a pension aspect
to it, there was the union aspect of there's some
other things that led also to a couple of other
agents who were corrupt who I investigated as a all
of that, but you know, as a story, you know,
I had some human interest stories too, and a couple
of my friends who were in the hockey business who
(21:08):
were announcers. Unfortunately their sons died of drug overdoses and
they thought enough of me to do their stories. This
is when I was doing newspaperwork, so that was gratifying
because I brought a story. There was a human interest story.
It was a little bit different. So but you know,
in terms of you can't beat that, the stuff about
(21:28):
the NHL Players Association and Alan Eagleson and all those people.
I still get people today who come up to me
and and remember me doing those stories and say thank you,
thank you for cleaning up hockey.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's absolutely unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Hey, just quick reminder, make sure you're stoping by Daily
doosports dot com each and every week. We've got new
articles that go up there each week that I contribute.
We've got links to the podcast, we've got links to
the videos, and yes, we have links to Daily Dose gear.
You might need a new T shirt, a new sweatshirt,
a new hat. I actually did see someone wearing a
new Daily dos hat recently, kind of like a look
(22:04):
at that. You can order them in the colors that
you want, which is kind of nice. But make sure
you are stopping by Daily dosports dot com each and
every week to check on what is going on over there.
I know you're a Red Wings fan. I know our
history here in Colorado with the Red Wings. What do
you remember from that? Just unbelievable rivalry.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I remember it was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It really was was. It was kind of surreal.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
It had come out of the era of the Flyers
era in the eighties when hockey was very violent. There
was fighting and all that sort of stuff, and Gretzky
had made it more of a skill game and we'd
gotten away from it. There still fighting and all that
type of stuff, but it was like a flashback to
the nineteen seventies the intensity, and then there was all
those other storylines. Because the Red Wings had the Russian five,
(22:53):
they were kind of they had an approach to hockey.
The Avs had their approach. They had had a different
kind of thing. They had all the skill old guys
that they had managed to get. We talk about it
and deal with it, of course, how they accumulated all
the players like Forstburg and guys like that when they
were in Quebec City and then moved them all to Denver,
and we talked about those guys, and just inside, I
(23:14):
saw an interview two or three days ago with Chris Draper,
he's still working for the Red Red Wings, and they
asked him, sitting there in the booth, what was it like?
You know that that check clodl Amir, et cetera. And yes,
I remember that, And I met Cloda l Amir afterwards.
I'd sort of known him from interviewing, but I met
him afterwards because he became a player agent and talked
(23:35):
to him and you know, very smart guy, very cagy guy.
And yeah, I certainly never approved of what he did,
but I understood the context. It was full contact and
everybody's really into it well.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And when they brought him here to Denver. You spoke
about about what Colorado was. Colorado was a skilled team.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
They didn't have a whole lot of nasty to them,
though he kind of had to fill that role. They
didn't have those kind of guys. They had guys that
were great skaters and speedy and powerful and quick, but
not that kind of nasty, will mix it up, will
get it dirty. And Claude did kind of fill that role,
didn't he.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
He sure did. Well. I see him do it with
the Montreal Canadians before, so it didn't surprise me. And
the other really interesting thing and I think that made
a difference to the Apps, and again we deal with
it when we talk about the trade. Patrick's trade from
the Canadians to the Apps was that Patrick he had swag.
He was that swag kind of guy. He was a
(24:31):
guy who got under your skin when you played against him.
He was so good and he lets know he was good.
And I think that was a very important thing for
that team because most of the team leaders were really
good players, but they weren't like guys who intimidated you
with their mouths or anything like that. You had Forrestburg
and Sacking and those guys there were terrific players, but
Patrick coming in gave them some attitude, some swag, and
(24:54):
they would go into a visiting rink and teams would
be just look at him in the net and go like,
what the heck going on with this guy? And you know,
he had all those little idious syncrasies and stuff so
I think that Patrick to a certain extent, took attention
away from those guys, let them do their job. He
was willing to be the guy who was that everybody
hated in the other rink. And he was also, of
(25:14):
course the best goal he probably was of his decade. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, you're right.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
And when you think back to those teams, the biggest
thing I still take away is just the amount of
talent on two teams. Oh my goodness, they were all
star teams. Absolutely unbelievable amount of talent on both sides.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Just a credit.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And that's that's the That's the end of the pre
salary cap era. That's the era when if owners wanted
to spend the money, they could spend the money. Some did,
some didn't. It costs Two of the Canadian cities lost
their teams because the Canadian market couldn't keep up with them.
But you were able to have owners. I believe it
was still the Kronkis, wasn't it that On the abs
(25:58):
of the time. I think it was the Kronkis. Yeah wrong, Yeah,
And the illages in Detroit and both families made commitments
to be the best and go and get the best
players and I can remember the Red Wings of trade
Deadline going out and getting guys like Wendell Clark and
people like that. In those days, you could do that
and assemble them. And again it sort of gets back
(26:19):
to my to the book that I wrote to deal
with it about salary caps. Is the thing I liked
about it was you saw best on best with those teams.
You saw the best teams a lot of the time.
And I think that the NHL would be well advised
to have, you know, sort of like soccer in England,
maybe twenty teams in the top division with all the
best players concentrated there. The idea of going to thirty two,
(26:41):
thirty six, thirty eight teams, I think just waters down
the product. And when we saw those games, and you know,
you made a great point there. When you saw those games,
you knew you were seeing skill, you knew you were
seeing the best guys. It wasn't like, oh, they can
afford two good lines and the other two lines they're
just sort of inventing and you've got two defensemen who
can turn the left and two turn right and nobody else.
(27:02):
You know, I liked the idea of best on best.
I would like to see it come back a little
bit more.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Scotty Bowman, one of the greatest coaches in NHL history.
Did you have interaction with Scotty? What do you remember
about mister Bowman? How was how was he to deal
with the best?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, i'd sort of. I thought I had dealt with
him in the past. You know, I like a lot
of people in scrums or whatever it was. And and
I was doing a book on the skills in hockey.
It's called up Ice and Man, and one of the
chapters was about Steve Eisman, and I went in to
do an interview with Scotty about Steve, and I was
just shocked. He knew all about me. He knew he'd
(27:40):
read my books. The previous book I'd done was about
hockey sticks, and I'd done again a book about the
pension lawsuit and other things, and he knew all that
sort of stuff. And you know, he had a reputation
for being hard as a coach. There were a lot
of people who didn't like him that he again, he
had attitude, But for me, he was always really generous.
If you asked a smart question, he'd give you a
(28:02):
great answer and stuff like that. So I was every
time I saw him, even after he retired, he would
remember me and we would chat a little bit. He
came from the suburb in Montreal just next door to
where my mother grew up, and so that was kind
of a point of reference. We would talk about. My
uncle was the general manager of the junior team in
a place called Lachene, a suburb called Lachene in Montreal,
(28:23):
and Scotty grew up right next door. And we're done.
And those two towns or two cities were kind of
at rivalries, and so I could talk to Scotty about
that kind of thing. Yeah, he was just he was
really interesting. And the great thing about him and Steve
Eisaman was he took over the team and he took
Steve aside and he said, Steve, you can score sixty
goals and get one hundred and fifty points every year
(28:44):
if you want, but we're not going to win the
Stanley Cup. Here's how we're going to win the Stanley
Cup with you as our captain. And Steve made the sacrifice. Sure,
he put his ego in check. He let the Russian guys,
the young guys come in and be the stars offensively,
and he made sure he was the guy who kept
everything together, and I had a lot of respect for him.
Had I just say, was starting too a foracious reader.
(29:07):
He's read everything that I've ever written in terms of
little book, which impressed me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh that's very very cool.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I've got I've got to ask this and I
want to get into you know, the Stanley Cup plaffs
a little bit this year here in Colorado. We know
we we kind of cheated. We got that that first title.
You know, Quebec comes in here. We we get to
take that wonderful team that we just inherited. We hadn't
bled for that team. We hadn't we hadn't paid any
any of the price. Now they'll get me wrong. You know,
(29:35):
the Nuggets and the Rockies keep us humble. The Broncs
even keep us humble at times. Have you forget have
you forgiven us for us getting that easy one?
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Or it has the hockey world gotten over that? Now
now we've had to pay for it a little bit.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Well, it's it was kind of like a bailiff sale.
You know, you got a fabulous house, like a bailiffs sale,
but you didn't pay the full price. No, no, bless
year you were there, and you know you took advantage
and I have I don't have any resentment for it,
but yeah, you know, you hadn't bled that much in there,
and the Quebec team had had a history with Montreal
or rivalry with Montreal, and to see it all sort
(30:10):
of turned around was kind of you know, it was
hard for people, but sure, it's losing that makes you
a sports fan. It's not winning. It's all those years
when you're you know, you're cheering for the Nuggets and
they stink, or you're cheering for the Flames and they
never make the play, whatever it is. Those are the
years that really harden you as a sports fan, and
you become you know, united with the other people who
(30:33):
root for the team because you're all going through this together.
I won't say it's like a bad divorce, but it's
it's traumatic going through a lot. Like the city of
Calgary today is kind of in mourning because last night
their team was eliminated and the season's over, though the
dream of whatever it might be is over. So uh
And and you know, we love to see the Avalanche
come in because they're always a skilled team, they're fun
(30:55):
to watch, they make you play your best to beat them.
And the other I should say this too about the
Abs in those days, was they got everybody's best game. Uh.
They would go somewhere and they would people wouldn't just
all a hole home, here comes Colorado. They would say
this is this is a benchmark game. And they got
everybody's best game and they played up to that level,
which I think is something that's really really commendable.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. You know.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I've always said that it's not the losing, it's the
almost winning that really winning is the one that really boy,
that really builds something in you. You got you got
some character if you almost won and then didn't.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
That's what they call it in betting. What a bad
bad beat?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The bad beats.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's the bad beats that they kill you. Yeah. I know. Well,
again as an Expo fan back in those days before
I got into the media. Uh, the Expost came in
sixty nine to Montreal, and two of the players UH
settled in our neighborhood and I got to know the
first catcher for the Expos, John Bateman and Gary Sutherland
was the second basement and I became a real Expost
(31:57):
fan as the results of knowing them, and they they
were always close, but never a cigar team. Before they
had the wild cards and second place things. They were
always finishing behind somebody. So I had my PhD in
bad beats, that's for sure, Bruce.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
When you look at the Stanley Cup playoffs this year,
and like you spoke to, the league is more watered
down now and as a result, I think we see
so many more upsets. We see top seeds go down
sometimes in the first round because it's so spread out
and it's so thin. Just as a different era. But
is there a team you're looking at right now in
(32:33):
the Stanley Cup plaffs and you're saying, I don't know
that it might be theirs to lose.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah. You know. The big thing that I've learned in
the modern era, let's say the last twenty years of
following the Stanley Cup team, is you need real skill
to get there, but you need luck to win. And
by luck I mean you have to stay healthy. I've
seen so many teams fall apart just because they lost
guys at the end. That's going to be a big
(32:58):
part of it. There's a sentimental thing. Winnipeg was the
best team in the league. This year they won the
President's Trophy. They've never won a Stanley Cup. They lost
their team for a while, the city did. There'd be
a nice sentimental thing. I just don't know about their depth.
I think that the road is going to lead certainly
in the West, is going to lead through Vegas, probably
(33:19):
Dallas as well. Teams that have been hardened over the
last number of years. I think those are teams that
you have to look at in the East. You know,
for Canadians still, we haven't had a Stanley Cup winner
from Canada since nineteen ninety three. The Canadians in ninety
three with guests who Patrick wall or the last the
last Canadian team to win the NHL. So there is
(33:39):
some sentiment that Edmonton mcconough, McDavid or and they got
within a game last year, or else the Leafs with
Matthews and Neilander and those guys. But one of those
two teams might win. But again it'll just come down
to can you keep your guys healthy, do you have
seven or eight defenseman because that's sometimes what you need. Again,
I harken back to twenty eleven with the Canucks. They
(34:02):
literally ran out of guys. They were playing their eighth
to ninth defenseman and their depth chart in the final,
and you can't win that way. And it's it's really
kind of too bad. So we'll wait and see how
it goes. I hope that we have a legitimate champion
a good chance too too.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Is there a team that you look at that maybe
not even one of the one of the top teams,
but you know, I kind of look at Saint Louis
and I go, you know, if Bennington just gets hot,
he might carry him. Is there a team you look
at like that that could just get hot and just
get on a roll.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You look around at the teams that have a goalie
that you think can carry well. And then I say that,
and of course they hear the Vegas won the Cup
one of that they had five different goalies. You're right, yeah,
but typically that would be the thing. And that's that's
one reason why you've got to sort of like Winnipeg's chances,
because they've got they've got the best goalie or one
of the top two or three goalies in the year
(34:53):
that they would be a team. The East is so
there's there's no hard and fast team in the East.
But I always like, you know, as a sort of
unsung team. I always like to talk about Carolina. I
think Carolina is a team to keep their eye on
because if they stay healthy, the East is wide open,
and I think that there's a path for them to
get through. They've already won a Stanley Cup, so it's
(35:15):
not like the city and doesn't know what it's like.
But yeah, it's they'd be a team i'd look at.
And in the West, you know, Dallas is a team
that I you know that they're always they're always a contender.
And yeah, as I say, Edmonton, well we'll just have
to see what happens how healthy. Connor McDavid is right.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, and I look at you know, Colorado's matchup in
that first round with Dallas and it just it just
scares me so much. Well, yeah, they're so deep, they're
so talented. They even they even come back with Moose
and get to bring him back to us.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
It just it couldn't well.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
And if this was the NBA, this would be a
third round matchup. But we got two of the top
five or six teams in the NHL. One of them
is going to be eliminated in the first round, which
is nice in some ways, but in other ways, it's
kind of like geez, you know, you want the best
teams to get to the end, and sometimes we just
see these cinderellas kind of waffling through. They don't get injuries,
and they kind of get nice matchups, and oftentimes with
(36:14):
teams it is it is about head to head matchups.
It's about horses for courses, and there are teams that
sometimes are poisoned for a really good team and they
can trip them up. So that's that's somebody to watch
out for. The La Kings are a team I would
you know, I believe they're supposed to play the Oilers
in the first round. They almost trip them up the
last two years, and I would think that that'd be
(36:35):
a team to watch for an upset.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, you're right, And if Edmonton does come in and
they're not fully healthy, going to be very interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
This year with Colorado, you know that front office just said, hey,
we we don't want the goaltender situation. We're just gonna
shuffle the entire room. We're gonna just keep tweaking and
making moves and keep kind of trying to find a
good fit and a good balance.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Do you give us any chance? Can Colorado do anything well?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And that's one of the things again that I pointed out,
and we talked about it earlier, talking about what Vegas
did and how Vegas got from zero to one hundred
miles an hour than five years and Vegas never stopped
turning over the leaves. Well, we got a guy who's
pretty acceptable there. Now, we can do better. And they
were insatiable with that, and they always kept going. And
(37:24):
so when I look at your team, I don't say, oh, oh,
they can't make up their mind. What are they doing
all these stupid changes. That's the model that Vegas has
made popular, which is you can always do a little
bit better, and if you do, and you've got that chance,
you got to go for it. So I think they
have a chance. You've got, you know, some really skilled guys.
I think as long as you stay healthy with your
(37:45):
frontline guys, you're okay goaltending. Well, we'll have to see
how it goes. I have to see how it goes.
And yeah, Dallas. Dallas is a good team, but they
also you know, they've had some failures in the past
few years themselves, so they have some self doubt as well.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Sure, sure, no, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
And you know, I know here in the States, there
are so many things to watch. There are so many
other things to do that hockey doesn't get the recognition
that it should. But when you're talking about playoff hockey
and you're talking about every single shift is just life
or death, it just does not get better than Stanley
(38:20):
Cup playoff hockey. It is just absolutely amazing. Now we've
talked a little bit, we've looked at the Stanley Cup,
We've looked at some history stuff, Bruce. Is there a
thing that you look at right now and you say,
you know, back when I when I first started, I
don't know if I would have would have gone it
this the same way. Is there any way that you
look at how you've changed now and said, you know,
(38:42):
I think my outlook is kind of has kind of
changed a little bit compared to where it was.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Well, we all learn as we go through. I mean
lots of shows and stories. Yeah, but I just put
my hand over my eyes. How did that happen? But
you know, I like to think that I just tried
to things and do things a slightly different way. Uh
in my career and not be follow the pack and
that had good things, and that had things that didn't
(39:08):
work out. So yeah, you know, again it gets back
to what I what I tell people when they want
to get into our business. I always just tell them,
I think you hinted at it too. When you get
an opportunity, take it and and and don't look around
and say, oh, how is everybody else doing it? I'll
imitate that be you. And if you fail, that's okay,
you failed being you, you know, doing that. So most
(39:29):
of the time I'd have to ask my wife. Maybe
she'll disagree with me. But most of the time, the
the the results of stuff I think was from me
being honest with myself and and and and and being
who I was, and that was being kind of lippy
and impertinent, as I say. When I did all the stuff,
the political stuff or the NHL and the legal stuff,
there were a lot of people who were very you know,
(39:50):
antagonized with me. The Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, they
wanted nothing to do. They wouldn't let me go on
their show because I was I wasn't good for business.
I was rattling the cup and making people uncomfortable, So
you know, I paid a price for that, but I
would do it one hundred times out of one hundred.
I would follow the story where it took me, even
if it cost me. Let's say, you know, sitting on
a panel somewhere.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
If I give you just your wish list, I'm Santa
Claus and I can give you whatever. Is there one
story that you go That's the story I wish I
could have covered. That's the one I would have loved
to been in that.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Room, love to go back and do the Gretzky gambling
story that was considering what's happening with him politically in Canada.
You know, sometimes there's only so much you can do.
And for a while I was a local reporter, so
I didn't have a national canvas to paint on. Then
when I got on the on the national level, I
kind of lost touch with some of the local stuff.
(40:45):
I had to cover national stories. So there were things
that you just saw go by that you would love
to have covered, but you couldn't do it. A lot
of a lot of my friends in the in the
business were guys who would do who were doing the
deadline stuff, writing on deadline et cetera. Ironically, one of
the one of the one of my friends, his daughter,
his son just married my daughter this last summer, so
(41:07):
we're related that af those guys were always those guys
were always there. When I was an electronic guy, I
had to go off and do my stuff with a studio,
et cetera, whereas those guys would do it there's stuff
on deadline and then they go out and have a
beer afterwards and hang out together and talk a lot.
So I never was part of that that scene. And
it was partly because I wasn't doing that type of
a job and it didn't give me the insights into
(41:30):
some things. But as one, you know, one last thing
to tell you about. When I was starting in the business,
especially on TV, I wanted to do big stories. I
wanted to have a story that you know, I could
hang my hat on and say, oh, he's the guy
that did that story or whatever. And and the turning
point for me was I learned that agents were the
best guys to talk to. Agents had no problem with
(41:52):
telling you things that were going on. If you talk
to a player in the dressing room, he'd give you
the old oh yeah, one one leg at a time,
and the management guys, oh yeah, you know, we think
we're doing fine, and it's so boring you get tired
of it. I discovered agents who had lots of interesting
things to tell me, and a lot of the best
stories all came from them, And that was just something
(42:15):
I learned along the side. And I had three or
four really good sources who helped me out, and I
did books with them and about them and about the
things that they introduced me to. So I was very
lucky to figure that out. There's a lot of guys
who are still punching the same clock, doing the same
sort of gig, you know, thirty years later, and frankly,
I feel sorry for them a little bit.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, no, I could understand that completely. Bruce.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I have to thank you so much for coming in.
I have enjoyed our conversation. It has been just so
so interesting to get to get to talk to you.
I would love to get to do this again sometime
and get to talk with you some more.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Bruce.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I just started your book, deal with it. I am engrossed.
I absolutely love it. Where can people find your work?
Where's the best place to find it?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Well, the best place to go on Amazon Books and
you can find it there. It's in kindle and it's
also in book form. We don't have a hardcover for
this one. It's we self published. My son and I
have done the last two books, and we've self published
this time, which is a whole other experience which I'm
really enjoying. And so if you want to help out
us out a little bit you mentioned earlier. My book
(43:16):
website is called Bruce Dobigan Books dot ca A and
all my books are there, including a couple of non
sportsmans that I've done as well. So if you could
go there and pick them up, I'm sure. I'm sure
you'll enjoy them. If you have as much fun reading
them as I did writing them, then it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I've got to ask one one final question. Do you
have something else you're working on right now? Is there
something in the works that we might want to we
want to be aware of.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Well, my son works at the Canadian equivalent of ESPN.
He's a stats guy. He does their social media site
called the Stats Center for them, and so he and
I talk about story ideas all the time. So we're
kicking one around. We were thinking about maybe doing a
book about overtime times, famous overtime games, something along those lines.
(44:03):
So yeah, we'll see, we'll see what happens next. And
I'm not that young anymore, so the writing process can
be a little bit more torturous than it used to be,
but something along those lines, And yeah, I'd be happy
to do it. I've done. I did a couple of
biographies with people that ever got published over the years,
and maybe I'll just revive one of those ones. Once
the guys booed off, I could probably do it without
(44:25):
getting sued.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Well, Bruce, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I was looking forward to this just knowing your background
and knowing some of the things you've done. I couldn't
wait to talk to you. It absolutely lived up to
the hype. You did a phenomenal job. And I just
want to thank you for visiting the Dally just and
I genuinely mean it. I would I would love to
not be strange as I would love to have you
back again sometime for sure.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
And anytime. Clinton, thank you for having me on. I
really appreciate it to talk about the book. And again,
when you're self publishing, you need to, you know, have
to market your book and finding people like yourself who
are really interested in push. I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Hey. Next week on The Dose, we are going to
continue our run of talking to some very interesting people
in the world of sports. Trust me, you will not
want to miss what I have in the store for
you next week. It's going to be very, very interesting.
So be sure you tune into The Dose and be
sure you let a friend know to do the same. Hey,
I want to say thank you so much to author
and announcer Bruce Doe big And for spending some time
(45:23):
with us today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope
you'll stay in touch. And I want to say thank
you to each and every one of you for listening
to The Daily Dose every week. Thank you for the emails,
thank you for the text thank you for the tweets.
Thank you for going over to Dailydoor Sports dot com
and checking out the new things going up there every week.
But more than anything, thank you for sharing the show,
for sharing the videos, for sharing the articles with something
that you know we absolutely love.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
It when you do that.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I say thank you to jessp could not do any
of this without you. I will see you on next Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Have a great week. Everybody
Wednesday, April thirty eight, twenty twenty five, you are listening
to the Daily Dose Sports podcast and I am your host,
Clinton Daily, coming to you from my high seating here
in Denver, Colorado, and we are back for another week
of talking sports with a dose of common sense. Hey,
Happy Wednesday to you. I hope your week is going well.
I hope you, your family, your friends, everyone in your
(00:27):
world is staying strong and healthy right now. And I
hope you're doing better than Shador Sanders. Now. No, no,
we're not going to talk about Shouldure slipping in the
NFL draft.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I mean if I.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Did, what in the world would ESPN do for the
next three months. I don't want to put poor missus
Deon Sanders out of work. Oh sorry, I mean mel
Chiper Jr. Hey, we have the NBA playoffs going right now,
and yes, we have those Stanley Cup playoffs going in
the NHL, and I'm telling you right now out that
(01:01):
has been fascinating to watch. You know, every single series
in the Western Conference was tied at two to two.
It is going to be a wild run to the
Stanley Cup. Well, today we are going to be joined
by a guy that really knows the game, and in fact,
we have so much to get to we need to
jump in right now. Joining us this week on the
(01:23):
Daily Dose, we have got a very special guest that,
honestly I can't wait to talk to you because Bruce
Doe Bigan is a Canadian sports broadcaster, journalist and writer.
He is a two time winner of the Gemini Award
as Canada's top television sports broadcaster. His latest book is
called Deal with It, The Trays that Stunned the NHL
(01:44):
and Changed Hockey. You can get that on Amazon. He
has in Exact Science, the sixth most compelling draft yars
in NHL history. That was his previous book with his
son Evan, that was voted by the Way the seventh
best professional hockey book of all time book authority. His
two thousand and five book Money Players, was a finalist
for the Canadian Business Book of the Year.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
He has now written like a dozen books.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You can find them pretty much anywhere, or you can
go to Bruce Dobigganbooks dot c A find them wherever
books are sold. This guy knows hockey backward, forward, sideways.
I can't wait to talk to him about hockey and
the Stanley Cup. Playoffs and everything else. Bruce, Welcome to
the Daily Does. We are happy to have you here
with us.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Buy, It's great to be here. Nice to meet you, Lam.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Thank you, Hey, Bruce. I've got a question, where did
you grow up? What is your background? Where did you
grow up at?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Well, I grew up in Montreal, in the province of Quebec,
and I, strangely enough, I was not a Canadians fan.
I was a Redwings fan. I grew up in the
sixties and seventies as a Redwings fan because of Gordy Howe.
As a side story, my brother I have four brothers,
too older and too younger, and in those days we
used to play the tabletop hockey games. My father bought
(02:57):
one for Christmas one year and he said, well, he
can't all have this team. So my eldest brother took
the Canadians, my next brother took the Leafs, and I
was left to choose somebody, and so it was the
Red Wings. And so I spent a long time growing
up in Quebec getting in fights at recess with guys
over hockey games. And the Red Rings in those days
were very good with Gordy half, but they just never
won the big game, and so my life was a
(03:19):
little miserable there. But yes, I was there for about
twenty years and then moved to Toronto for about twenty
five years, where I did a lot of my broadcasting
and stuff. And I've been in Calgary now for twenty
five years. So yeah, well that's seventy five. Yeah, okay,
I'm seventy So yeah, that the math works out.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The math is pretty good. Bruce. Were you an athlete
growing up? Did you play yourself?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I played all the sports, like most guys in those days.
The sport I played the most at the highest level
was football. But I played hockey in all those sports
until I was probably sixteen or seventeen, and then I
concentrated on football from then on. But I mean, you
live hockey, and in those days in particular, you lived
hockey all the time. But it wasn't something you could have void.
(04:01):
You know, you might be a baseball fan or a
football fan, but you also had to know hockey to
get along with people.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Absolutely, so the Red Wings were your team though. That
was the team you were following. Gordy, how is the guy?
Is that who you were emulating? Is that who you
were going out on the ice yourself and kind of emulating.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, certainly Gordy with the elbows getting the elbows up,
it's acting himself. Yeah, No, Gordy was the guy. And
he was a very sort of humble guy. Really. He
was tough on the ice, very productive guy, but a
very modest guy. And I was much, very fortunate later
on in life to get to know him and meet
him a number of times, and he was a wonderful guy. Sometimes,
(04:39):
you know, in our business, and you may have experienced
this too, you'll have a hero or some guy that
you really like, or some woman that you really like,
and then you'll meet them and you go, ooh, maybe
I shouldn't have met them. But with Gordy how he
was the real deal. And that was the original six
hockey I'm I was born in nineteen fifty four, so
the sixties and seventies were really the of me watching hockey.
(05:01):
And as I say, unfortunately the Red Wings took a
long time to get good again. They didn't get good
again until, of course the nineteen nineties. After that, and
then that's some great series with the Avalanche.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Of course, yes they did. You know.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Gordi Howe was an interesting guy because he was ahead
of his time. We're now seeing guys come in and
they can do a little bit of everything. Hey, they
can fight a little bit, they can play some defense,
they can be offensive threats.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You look at a guy like mccar he's not the
fighter maybe, but hey, that was Gordy. That's Gordy.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
How now I know that in this generation I think
every generation does that. We like to look at, well,
this guy today is better than that guy, Ben.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I don't like. I don't like to do that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I like to look at it and say, this guy
is who that guy would be if he had grown up.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
In this system.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I think that's so much more. It's such a
more fun way to look at it. A guy like
maybe I'm maybe I'm speaking out of turn. A guy
like a cal mccarr that can be such a great
defenseman can also just be an obsolete sniper. Kind of
this generation is Gordy, How isn't he?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, to a certain extent, Macarr by the way, good Calgary.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Boy, which should yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Throw that in there. Each each of the greatest players
and in the book deal with it. When we talk
about the trades, they almost all involve guys who are
the defining people of their generations, people like Wayne Gretzky,
people like Patrick Gwat, et cetera. And they kind of
defined what it took to be a great player, and
to be a great player in the original six with
Gordy how you had to do what they called the
(06:27):
Gordy hal Patrick a goal and assist in a fight.
You had to be prepared to do that. That was
the price of staying in the NHL at that time.
By the time Gretzky comes around, he doesn't have to
do the fighting part. There's people who are protecting him,
and so he redefines the game because he doesn't have
to look over his shoulder, he doesn't have to worry
who's coming the other way. He's being protected. So each
(06:48):
guy in his time to find things Patrick and again
we get into it in the chapter in the book
that we spent on the on the Patrick Garwat trade.
Patrick kind of defined goaltenders, the style of goaltenders. He
changed the way he had to do it. And that's
what's fun about each generation. And mccarr and a couple well,
I guess Ovi is a guy who's somewhat defined the generation,
(07:08):
but mccarr certainly is on his way to doing that,
and it tells you what kind of player he is,
but also tells you what kind of hockey they played
at that era. If you come back like one hundred
years to me, I say, well, how did they play
hockey in the twenty twenties, and you can point to
a guy like mccarr and say that was the style?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. First, how did you get into
the sports media world. You were an athlete, you were,
you know, a school kid as all of us were.
How did you go into that sports media world?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Well, you know, I'd grown up loving sports, but I
kind of went sideways. I was working for a little
while in the theater and in the movies and doing
things like that because I wanted to write, and I
had just gotten married in Montreal, and I needed a
job really and because I you know, I had to
support helped support my wife. She was working too, but
(07:54):
anyhow I had I had to support myself, and I
took it what I thought was a part time job
as the sports editor for the Canadian version of TV
Guide magazine. Remember the little thing that you had, the
book they used to sit on the TV we had
all the TV Guide version in Canada, and just as
a sort of a side thing, I took a job
there as the sports editor for them, and that one
(08:15):
thing led to another and I would get onto panels
and one day I was on a morning sports radio
panel and I came in the door and a friend
of mine worked at the place, and he said, they
just fired the sportscaster. Tell him you can do it.
And I said, well, I've never done live right. Oh no,
you can figure it out. You can figure out. And
so I volunteered to do the job because it was
(08:36):
the nineteen eighty four Olympics and most of the other
sports casters were out of town, so I said I'll
fill in. And that's how I got started in radio.
And then two years later I had the same thing happen.
I got a phone call out of the blue from
a TV producer who was producing the six o'clock Sports
six o'clock news in Toronto, which was the biggest newscast
in the country, and he said, I want you to
(08:57):
be my sportscaster. And again I said, I haven't done
tea before, and he said, we'll teach you. Don't worry.
What I've heard of you on the radio, you're going
to work out, and that's that's you know, that's how
it got started. And the next thing I knew, I
was winning the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy Award and all. So, yeah,
it was I and all these guys I knew who
were trying to get into the business and I kind
(09:19):
of fell into its sideways accidentally, and so I was
kind of feel badly that these guys work so hard
small places like moose Jaw and Winnipeg, these Canadian cities,
and you know, I got right into the number one market.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That is outstanding.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And hey, you know, one of the biggest lessons I
take from that, if you get a chance, you know,
go with it and run with it. And you never
you never know. When you look back at those days
of the sports media world compared to now, what are
the biggest differences you see in how sports are covered?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I mean totally different news and oh yeah, both. Well,
you're right at eleven o'clock when the eleven o'clock newscasts,
the local newscasts, which you would have had in Denver,
you'd have had Toronto, you'd have had Montreal, whatever. When
that was over at eleven thirty. That was it. There
was no more show on those TV channels, a news
channel until six o'clock the next night. There was no
four thirty or five early news or any of that stuff.
(10:12):
So if the story wasn't done by a certain period
of time and at night, you just basically put it
to bed and came back at it the next day. Now,
of course it's a twenty four hour cycle. Then the
news goes, you know, twenty four seven, three sixty five,
and you always have to be on top of stuff.
And then of course social media came in, and social
(10:33):
media made everybody no more than they'd ever known before.
When when I started again in doing sports radio and TV,
you really were the one who controlled the story. Your
take on the game last night was the one a
lot of people had because it was all they had
to listen to. Now with in those days again, and
I'm sure it was the same in Denver. You didn't
get every basketball or hockey game. You'd had maybe two
(10:54):
a week or whatever. There would be games were only
on radio, some of that you'd never even heard of.
So anyhow you had a chance. Is that sports after
you define the way the games were seen and heard.
He was a bomber, he was good whatever it was,
and that was that was a very it was It
was a very, very much a privilege to do it.
And then, as I say, social media changed all of that.
Now everybody can see all the same stuff and it's
(11:17):
really hard to be different. I was able to be
different because I had a background in theater and movies
and stuff like that, so I had a little bit
different approach. Today there's a ten million podcasts and newscasts,
et cetera. So it's really hard to stick out and
and it's really hard to have an independent voice. And
(11:37):
I feel for the people who are trying to start
out today.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Bruce is there and I know you just you just
spoke about it a little bit. There was a time
in that era where you didn't get every game.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I remember.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I know for me, Monday night football was a big
thing because you only got two or three games all weekend.
So when you got a chance to watch it. Is
there an era that you kind of you kind of miss?
Do you miss that era? I know we're spoiled now
we get every game, you can see it, but there's
part of that I kind of miss.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I did a book about Oh, eight or nine years
ago called Cap in Hand, and it was basically my
rant against salary caps. I'm not one of these people
who thinks that salary caps is the cure all for
everything that's wrong with sports leagues. I really think that
salary caps have done done a lot to hurt sports
leagues and hurt competitiveness. It's produced tanking, It's produced a
(12:28):
lot of things. But one of the big things that
came out of it, what I wrote a lot about
in the book was this idea that you're getting at.
There's so much content today, There is so much product
that they're pushing on you at any one time. It
almost overwhelms you. Even if you're a big hockey fan,
even if you're a big ABS fan or a Calgary
Flames fan, it can get a little mind numbing at
(12:50):
a certain point because it's all there in front of you.
There's never any mystery, Oh, you know what happened last
night again, picking up the paper in the morning to
read what had happened the night before, or hearing the
radio guy in the morning. That doesn't exist anymore. And
I think it's a problem that the leagues have to
come to grips with they're trying to do it a
little bit. You've seen in basketball were they had this
mid season tournament sort of playing thing. The four nations
(13:13):
that they had in the NHL this year, these are
all things that they're using to try to break up
the season because even the most loyal fans go, you know,
it's almost too much. It's almost too much stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is there an era that you look back on and
you're like, that was my favorite era?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It just it wasn't even close.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I know for me, you know, especially with football and basketball,
you know, late seventies, early eighties for me, when you
just it was the biggest thing on It was so
exciting when you got to see those games. And I know,
if I went back and wa wash it, I'd go
this early isn't that good of a product. But I
still romanticize it. I still want to go back to
Is there an era you look back as your favorite era?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Well, up until the time when I started working in
the business, I was a fan. I always operated as
a fan, and you know I had teams that I
rooted for. I rooted for the Montreal Expos that were
that they're really great because I was invested as a fan.
But once I got into the business, and I tell
people who get into the business about lose your fandom
at the door, I said, cheer for a good story.
(14:11):
And so over the years, I've done books that have
involved all sorts of things. I spent six years following
the Vancouver Canucks when a friend of mine became the
general manager of the team, and I got really invested
in that and really interested in everything that was going
on with Vancouver. And of course they came within a
game of the Stanley Cup in twenty eleven. The Calgary
Flames have had a couple of years here where they
went to the finals, and you know, that was a
(14:32):
gripping story. Other sports, I was when I was in Toronto.
The Toronto Blue Jays won back to back World Series
and I was the local sports cast, So those kind
of things that you know, I rooted for those stories
at that time. They were fascinating. They were fascinating people.
And when you can pick and choose, when you're in
a big metropolitan area like that Denver is or like
(14:53):
Toronto was, you've got the four or five teams, So
if there's a couple that aren't doing too well, you
just put them to the side and then concentrate on
who's successful at that point. So I did a little
bit of that. But that's that's what I would saying.
If I could digress just a little bit about the book.
One of the things we did with deal with it
is we chose seven different big trades, and we chose
(15:14):
each of them to represent a certain period of time
in the NHL. How did they speak to the NHL.
The earliest trade is Phil Esposito going to the Bruins
joining Bobby Orr. There was a simple time and you
made trades with one guy for another. And then as
we go through the trades over the years of you
got Gretzky. This is the trade where Edmonton can't afford
(15:35):
him anymore. La becomes a big deal. Hockey in the
South of the United States becomes a big deal. The
Patrick Watt trade is a significant trade again because he's
going to a market that has just started to have
NHL hockey. He legitimizes it and he legitimizes a certain
kind of way of playing sports. And the final two chapters,
(15:56):
one of them is about the is about the Vegas
Golden Knights, who who I think on their draft Day
made fifteen different trades to build their team and were
a Stanley Cup winner right within five years. And the
last trade in the book is the Matthew Kachuck trade
where he was traded from here in Calgary to Florida
and they go on to win the Stanley Cup. And
each of those those trades represented the kind of the
(16:19):
way business was done at that time. And it's certainly
not the same as it was in sixty seven when
Phil Esperzia was traded, and it's certainly not the way
it is today in twenty twenty four to twenty five.
It's a very different way of doing business.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
You have covered some of the greats. You have covered
some of the biggest names on the planet. Is there
one you hold a special place for? Is there is
there one that you're like, No, that guy just impressed
the heck out of me.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Just a good guy.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Well. One of the things I did when I was
doing local TV in Toronto, and one of the things
that got me some of the awards was I did
a lot of work with the retired NHL players when
they were suing the NHL over their pension. This is
nineteen ninety two, ninety three, and the NHL had taken
and some of their pension money for themselves, and the
players went to court in Toronto to get that money back,
(17:07):
and they were they were successful. And as a result
of that, I met all sorts of guys who did
my heroes when I was when I was a boy,
In particular Carl Brewer, who was a defenseman for the
Leafs in the sixties when they went for Stanley Cups.
We became really good friends and and so I would
meet people and and again I met I mentioned Gordi
how I got a promotion while I was at CBC
(17:28):
doing television from local to national, and so they had
a little party for me one night. And we're all
standing around the bar with our friends, just yacking away,
and all of a sudden, the front door of the
bar opens and here comes Carl Brewer and Gordie how
And Carl's brought Gordy to my party, and we did,
and he stood at the bet at the bar with
us for about an hour. He was so it was gracious,
but he was also funny. He teased guys, you know,
(17:51):
guys would talk to him and he'd sort of take
the pee out of him a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
He was. He was just he was everything he really
wanted him him to have been. So that that's a
story I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Absolutely. That's amazing. You've broken a lot of stories. You
were in that business of going in and finding those
kind of stories. I know now it is such a
big thing to break a story. Yeah, you see these
guys battling on social media. So and so broke this,
and I broke this, and he broke this, And did
you ever have a story like that that you broke
(18:22):
that you were especially proud of?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Oh yeah, I mean again. I got involved, first of all,
as I said, with the NHL over the pinch and lawsuit.
But then I got involved with the guy who was
the head of the union of the time, Alan Eagleson,
who was corrupt and there were a lot of players
who had complained to me about him over the years,
and at some point I decided, you know, I'm going
(18:45):
to look into this story, and with another reporter in Boston,
a man named Russ Conway, together we investigated the story
for almost seven or eight years before Alan Eagleson went
to jail, and we worked on that story the whole time,
and we found out the corruption. We found out how well.
For instance, I had mentioned Mike Gillis, who was the
general manager of the Vancouver Canucks. He was a client
(19:07):
of Eagleson's and he had a broken leg that ended
his career and Eagleson took some of his disability insurance money.
That's just the idea of how corrupt a guy he was.
And and from Russ, who was an old time investigative reporter,
I learned how to do those stories. Up until then,
I was just, you know, a desk sports guy. I
had some things to say. I was like a lot
(19:28):
of guys. But I was able through this story to
kind of, you know, get my bona fides as a reporter,
as an investigative reporter. And it was it was scary
sometimes and the biggest, to be honest with, the the
biggest fear I always had was why am I the
only guy who thinks that this is story? I was.
I was breaking stories about we discovered this or we
discovered this money here, whatever, and I thought, why is
(19:51):
nobody else doing this story? At some point, They're going
to come out with a silver bullet and I'm going
to look like an idiot. But it never happened. We
were right the whole time, Our research was right. And
as I say, he ended up going to jail eventually,
And it was Yeah, it was a very gratifying thing.
And it was gratifying to be able to help players
and people because you know, in our business over the years,
(20:12):
you meet lots of people, but how many did you help? Well,
you know, it was a big event you were at
and you reported and they liked your reporting or something.
But to get to the end of my business day
and say, you know what, I helped all of these
players who were my boyhood heroes to get their pension money,
to get rid of a corrupt union official, to reform
their association. That was a very gratifying feeling for somebody
(20:34):
in our business.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Oh, I bet it had to be because of that,
because of getting Was that the favorite story you ever covered?
Did you have something else that you're like, no, there's
another one out there, But I would imagine that one
had to be pretty high in your list.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
That was the biggest. But and I went often in
different directions. As I said, there was a pension aspect
to it, there was the union aspect of there's some
other things that led also to a couple of other
agents who were corrupt who I investigated as a all
of that, but you know, as a story, you know,
I had some human interest stories too, and a couple
of my friends who were in the hockey business who
(21:08):
were announcers. Unfortunately their sons died of drug overdoses and
they thought enough of me to do their stories. This
is when I was doing newspaperwork, so that was gratifying
because I brought a story. There was a human interest story.
It was a little bit different. So but you know,
in terms of you can't beat that, the stuff about
(21:28):
the NHL Players Association and Alan Eagleson and all those people.
I still get people today who come up to me
and and remember me doing those stories and say thank you,
thank you for cleaning up hockey.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's absolutely unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Hey, just quick reminder, make sure you're stoping by Daily
doosports dot com each and every week. We've got new
articles that go up there each week that I contribute.
We've got links to the podcast, we've got links to
the videos, and yes, we have links to Daily Dose gear.
You might need a new T shirt, a new sweatshirt,
a new hat. I actually did see someone wearing a
new Daily dos hat recently, kind of like a look
(22:04):
at that. You can order them in the colors that
you want, which is kind of nice. But make sure
you are stopping by Daily dosports dot com each and
every week to check on what is going on over there.
I know you're a Red Wings fan. I know our
history here in Colorado with the Red Wings. What do
you remember from that? Just unbelievable rivalry.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I remember it was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It really was was. It was kind of surreal.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
It had come out of the era of the Flyers
era in the eighties when hockey was very violent. There
was fighting and all that sort of stuff, and Gretzky
had made it more of a skill game and we'd
gotten away from it. There still fighting and all that
type of stuff, but it was like a flashback to
the nineteen seventies the intensity, and then there was all
those other storylines. Because the Red Wings had the Russian five,
(22:53):
they were kind of they had an approach to hockey.
The Avs had their approach. They had had a different
kind of thing. They had all the skill old guys
that they had managed to get. We talk about it
and deal with it, of course, how they accumulated all
the players like Forstburg and guys like that when they
were in Quebec City and then moved them all to Denver,
and we talked about those guys, and just inside, I
(23:14):
saw an interview two or three days ago with Chris Draper,
he's still working for the Red Red Wings, and they
asked him, sitting there in the booth, what was it like?
You know that that check clodl Amir, et cetera. And yes,
I remember that, And I met Cloda l Amir afterwards.
I'd sort of known him from interviewing, but I met
him afterwards because he became a player agent and talked
(23:35):
to him and you know, very smart guy, very cagy guy.
And yeah, I certainly never approved of what he did,
but I understood the context. It was full contact and
everybody's really into it well.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And when they brought him here to Denver. You spoke
about about what Colorado was. Colorado was a skilled team.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
They didn't have a whole lot of nasty to them,
though he kind of had to fill that role. They
didn't have those kind of guys. They had guys that
were great skaters and speedy and powerful and quick, but
not that kind of nasty, will mix it up, will
get it dirty. And Claude did kind of fill that role,
didn't he.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
He sure did. Well. I see him do it with
the Montreal Canadians before, so it didn't surprise me. And
the other really interesting thing and I think that made
a difference to the Apps, and again we deal with
it when we talk about the trade. Patrick's trade from
the Canadians to the Apps was that Patrick he had swag.
He was that swag kind of guy. He was a
(24:31):
guy who got under your skin when you played against him.
He was so good and he lets know he was good.
And I think that was a very important thing for
that team because most of the team leaders were really
good players, but they weren't like guys who intimidated you
with their mouths or anything like that. You had Forrestburg
and Sacking and those guys there were terrific players, but
Patrick coming in gave them some attitude, some swag, and
(24:54):
they would go into a visiting rink and teams would
be just look at him in the net and go like,
what the heck going on with this guy? And you know,
he had all those little idious syncrasies and stuff so
I think that Patrick to a certain extent, took attention
away from those guys, let them do their job. He
was willing to be the guy who was that everybody
hated in the other rink. And he was also, of
(25:14):
course the best goal he probably was of his decade. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, you're right.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
And when you think back to those teams, the biggest
thing I still take away is just the amount of
talent on two teams. Oh my goodness, they were all
star teams. Absolutely unbelievable amount of talent on both sides.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Just a credit.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And that's that's the That's the end of the pre
salary cap era. That's the era when if owners wanted
to spend the money, they could spend the money. Some did,
some didn't. It costs Two of the Canadian cities lost
their teams because the Canadian market couldn't keep up with them.
But you were able to have owners. I believe it
was still the Kronkis, wasn't it that On the abs
(25:58):
of the time. I think it was the Kronkis. Yeah wrong, Yeah,
And the illages in Detroit and both families made commitments
to be the best and go and get the best
players and I can remember the Red Wings of trade
Deadline going out and getting guys like Wendell Clark and
people like that. In those days, you could do that
and assemble them. And again it sort of gets back
(26:19):
to my to the book that I wrote to deal
with it about salary caps. Is the thing I liked
about it was you saw best on best with those teams.
You saw the best teams a lot of the time.
And I think that the NHL would be well advised
to have, you know, sort of like soccer in England,
maybe twenty teams in the top division with all the
best players concentrated there. The idea of going to thirty two,
(26:41):
thirty six, thirty eight teams, I think just waters down
the product. And when we saw those games, and you know,
you made a great point there. When you saw those games,
you knew you were seeing skill, you knew you were
seeing the best guys. It wasn't like, oh, they can
afford two good lines and the other two lines they're
just sort of inventing and you've got two defensemen who
can turn the left and two turn right and nobody else.
(27:02):
You know, I liked the idea of best on best.
I would like to see it come back a little
bit more.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Scotty Bowman, one of the greatest coaches in NHL history.
Did you have interaction with Scotty? What do you remember
about mister Bowman? How was how was he to deal
with the best?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, i'd sort of. I thought I had dealt with
him in the past. You know, I like a lot
of people in scrums or whatever it was. And and
I was doing a book on the skills in hockey.
It's called up Ice and Man, and one of the
chapters was about Steve Eisman, and I went in to
do an interview with Scotty about Steve, and I was
just shocked. He knew all about me. He knew he'd
(27:40):
read my books. The previous book I'd done was about
hockey sticks, and I'd done again a book about the
pension lawsuit and other things, and he knew all that
sort of stuff. And you know, he had a reputation
for being hard as a coach. There were a lot
of people who didn't like him that he again, he
had attitude, But for me, he was always really generous.
If you asked a smart question, he'd give you a
(28:02):
great answer and stuff like that. So I was every
time I saw him, even after he retired, he would
remember me and we would chat a little bit. He
came from the suburb in Montreal just next door to
where my mother grew up, and so that was kind
of a point of reference. We would talk about. My
uncle was the general manager of the junior team in
a place called Lachene, a suburb called Lachene in Montreal,
(28:23):
and Scotty grew up right next door. And we're done.
And those two towns or two cities were kind of
at rivalries, and so I could talk to Scotty about
that kind of thing. Yeah, he was just he was
really interesting. And the great thing about him and Steve
Eisaman was he took over the team and he took
Steve aside and he said, Steve, you can score sixty
goals and get one hundred and fifty points every year
(28:44):
if you want, but we're not going to win the
Stanley Cup. Here's how we're going to win the Stanley
Cup with you as our captain. And Steve made the sacrifice. Sure,
he put his ego in check. He let the Russian guys,
the young guys come in and be the stars offensively,
and he made sure he was the guy who kept
everything together, and I had a lot of respect for him.
Had I just say, was starting too a foracious reader.
(29:07):
He's read everything that I've ever written in terms of
little book, which impressed me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh that's very very cool.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I've got I've got to ask this and I
want to get into you know, the Stanley Cup plaffs
a little bit this year here in Colorado. We know
we we kind of cheated. We got that that first title.
You know, Quebec comes in here. We we get to
take that wonderful team that we just inherited. We hadn't
bled for that team. We hadn't we hadn't paid any
any of the price. Now they'll get me wrong. You know,
(29:35):
the Nuggets and the Rockies keep us humble. The Broncs
even keep us humble at times. Have you forget have
you forgiven us for us getting that easy one?
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Or it has the hockey world gotten over that? Now
now we've had to pay for it a little bit.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Well, it's it was kind of like a bailiff sale.
You know, you got a fabulous house, like a bailiffs sale,
but you didn't pay the full price. No, no, bless
year you were there, and you know you took advantage
and I have I don't have any resentment for it,
but yeah, you know, you hadn't bled that much in there,
and the Quebec team had had a history with Montreal
or rivalry with Montreal, and to see it all sort
(30:10):
of turned around was kind of you know, it was
hard for people, but sure, it's losing that makes you
a sports fan. It's not winning. It's all those years
when you're you know, you're cheering for the Nuggets and
they stink, or you're cheering for the Flames and they
never make the play, whatever it is. Those are the
years that really harden you as a sports fan, and
you become you know, united with the other people who
(30:33):
root for the team because you're all going through this together.
I won't say it's like a bad divorce, but it's
it's traumatic going through a lot. Like the city of
Calgary today is kind of in mourning because last night
their team was eliminated and the season's over, though the
dream of whatever it might be is over. So uh
And and you know, we love to see the Avalanche
come in because they're always a skilled team, they're fun
(30:55):
to watch, they make you play your best to beat them.
And the other I should say this too about the
Abs in those days, was they got everybody's best game. Uh.
They would go somewhere and they would people wouldn't just
all a hole home, here comes Colorado. They would say
this is this is a benchmark game. And they got
everybody's best game and they played up to that level,
which I think is something that's really really commendable.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. You know.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I've always said that it's not the losing, it's the
almost winning that really winning is the one that really boy,
that really builds something in you. You got you got
some character if you almost won and then didn't.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
That's what they call it in betting. What a bad
bad beat?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The bad beats.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's the bad beats that they kill you. Yeah. I know. Well,
again as an Expo fan back in those days before
I got into the media. Uh, the Expost came in
sixty nine to Montreal, and two of the players UH
settled in our neighborhood and I got to know the
first catcher for the Expos, John Bateman and Gary Sutherland
was the second basement and I became a real Expost
(31:57):
fan as the results of knowing them, and they they
were always close, but never a cigar team. Before they
had the wild cards and second place things. They were
always finishing behind somebody. So I had my PhD in
bad beats, that's for sure, Bruce.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
When you look at the Stanley Cup playoffs this year,
and like you spoke to, the league is more watered
down now and as a result, I think we see
so many more upsets. We see top seeds go down
sometimes in the first round because it's so spread out
and it's so thin. Just as a different era. But
is there a team you're looking at right now in
(32:33):
the Stanley Cup plaffs and you're saying, I don't know
that it might be theirs to lose.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah. You know. The big thing that I've learned in
the modern era, let's say the last twenty years of
following the Stanley Cup team, is you need real skill
to get there, but you need luck to win. And
by luck I mean you have to stay healthy. I've
seen so many teams fall apart just because they lost
guys at the end. That's going to be a big
(32:58):
part of it. There's a sentimental thing. Winnipeg was the
best team in the league. This year they won the
President's Trophy. They've never won a Stanley Cup. They lost
their team for a while, the city did. There'd be
a nice sentimental thing. I just don't know about their depth.
I think that the road is going to lead certainly
in the West, is going to lead through Vegas, probably
(33:19):
Dallas as well. Teams that have been hardened over the
last number of years. I think those are teams that
you have to look at in the East. You know,
for Canadians still, we haven't had a Stanley Cup winner
from Canada since nineteen ninety three. The Canadians in ninety
three with guests who Patrick wall or the last the
last Canadian team to win the NHL. So there is
(33:39):
some sentiment that Edmonton mcconough, McDavid or and they got
within a game last year, or else the Leafs with
Matthews and Neilander and those guys. But one of those
two teams might win. But again it'll just come down
to can you keep your guys healthy, do you have
seven or eight defenseman because that's sometimes what you need. Again,
I harken back to twenty eleven with the Canucks. They
(34:02):
literally ran out of guys. They were playing their eighth
to ninth defenseman and their depth chart in the final,
and you can't win that way. And it's it's really
kind of too bad. So we'll wait and see how
it goes. I hope that we have a legitimate champion
a good chance too too.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Is there a team that you look at that maybe
not even one of the one of the top teams,
but you know, I kind of look at Saint Louis
and I go, you know, if Bennington just gets hot,
he might carry him. Is there a team you look
at like that that could just get hot and just
get on a roll.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You look around at the teams that have a goalie
that you think can carry well. And then I say that,
and of course they hear the Vegas won the Cup
one of that they had five different goalies. You're right, yeah,
but typically that would be the thing. And that's that's
one reason why you've got to sort of like Winnipeg's chances,
because they've got they've got the best goalie or one
of the top two or three goalies in the year
(34:53):
that they would be a team. The East is so
there's there's no hard and fast team in the East.
But I always like, you know, as a sort of
unsung team. I always like to talk about Carolina. I
think Carolina is a team to keep their eye on
because if they stay healthy, the East is wide open,
and I think that there's a path for them to
get through. They've already won a Stanley Cup, so it's
(35:15):
not like the city and doesn't know what it's like.
But yeah, it's they'd be a team i'd look at.
And in the West, you know, Dallas is a team
that I you know that they're always they're always a contender.
And yeah, as I say, Edmonton, well we'll just have
to see what happens how healthy. Connor McDavid is right.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, and I look at you know, Colorado's matchup in
that first round with Dallas and it just it just
scares me so much. Well, yeah, they're so deep, they're
so talented. They even they even come back with Moose
and get to bring him back to us.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
It just it couldn't well.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
And if this was the NBA, this would be a
third round matchup. But we got two of the top
five or six teams in the NHL. One of them
is going to be eliminated in the first round, which
is nice in some ways, but in other ways, it's
kind of like geez, you know, you want the best
teams to get to the end, and sometimes we just
see these cinderellas kind of waffling through. They don't get injuries,
and they kind of get nice matchups, and oftentimes with
(36:14):
teams it is it is about head to head matchups.
It's about horses for courses, and there are teams that
sometimes are poisoned for a really good team and they
can trip them up. So that's that's somebody to watch
out for. The La Kings are a team I would
you know, I believe they're supposed to play the Oilers
in the first round. They almost trip them up the
last two years, and I would think that that'd be
(36:35):
a team to watch for an upset.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, you're right, And if Edmonton does come in and
they're not fully healthy, going to be very interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
This year with Colorado, you know that front office just said, hey,
we we don't want the goaltender situation. We're just gonna
shuffle the entire room. We're gonna just keep tweaking and
making moves and keep kind of trying to find a
good fit and a good balance.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Do you give us any chance? Can Colorado do anything well?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And that's one of the things again that I pointed out,
and we talked about it earlier, talking about what Vegas
did and how Vegas got from zero to one hundred
miles an hour than five years and Vegas never stopped
turning over the leaves. Well, we got a guy who's
pretty acceptable there. Now, we can do better. And they
were insatiable with that, and they always kept going. And
(37:24):
so when I look at your team, I don't say, oh, oh,
they can't make up their mind. What are they doing
all these stupid changes. That's the model that Vegas has
made popular, which is you can always do a little
bit better, and if you do, and you've got that chance,
you got to go for it. So I think they
have a chance. You've got, you know, some really skilled guys.
I think as long as you stay healthy with your
(37:45):
frontline guys, you're okay goaltending. Well, we'll have to see
how it goes. I have to see how it goes.
And yeah, Dallas. Dallas is a good team, but they
also you know, they've had some failures in the past
few years themselves, so they have some self doubt as well.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Sure, sure, no, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
And you know, I know here in the States, there
are so many things to watch. There are so many
other things to do that hockey doesn't get the recognition
that it should. But when you're talking about playoff hockey
and you're talking about every single shift is just life
or death, it just does not get better than Stanley
(38:20):
Cup playoff hockey. It is just absolutely amazing. Now we've
talked a little bit, we've looked at the Stanley Cup,
We've looked at some history stuff, Bruce. Is there a
thing that you look at right now and you say,
you know, back when I when I first started, I
don't know if I would have would have gone it
this the same way. Is there any way that you
look at how you've changed now and said, you know,
(38:42):
I think my outlook is kind of has kind of
changed a little bit compared to where it was.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Well, we all learn as we go through. I mean
lots of shows and stories. Yeah, but I just put
my hand over my eyes. How did that happen? But
you know, I like to think that I just tried
to things and do things a slightly different way. Uh
in my career and not be follow the pack and
that had good things, and that had things that didn't
(39:08):
work out. So yeah, you know, again it gets back
to what I what I tell people when they want
to get into our business. I always just tell them,
I think you hinted at it too. When you get
an opportunity, take it and and and don't look around
and say, oh, how is everybody else doing it? I'll
imitate that be you. And if you fail, that's okay,
you failed being you, you know, doing that. So most
(39:29):
of the time I'd have to ask my wife. Maybe
she'll disagree with me. But most of the time, the
the the results of stuff I think was from me
being honest with myself and and and and and being
who I was, and that was being kind of lippy
and impertinent, as I say. When I did all the stuff,
the political stuff or the NHL and the legal stuff,
there were a lot of people who were very you know,
(39:50):
antagonized with me. The Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, they
wanted nothing to do. They wouldn't let me go on
their show because I was I wasn't good for business.
I was rattling the cup and making people uncomfortable, So
you know, I paid a price for that, but I
would do it one hundred times out of one hundred.
I would follow the story where it took me, even
if it cost me. Let's say, you know, sitting on
a panel somewhere.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
If I give you just your wish list, I'm Santa
Claus and I can give you whatever. Is there one
story that you go That's the story I wish I
could have covered. That's the one I would have loved
to been in that.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Room, love to go back and do the Gretzky gambling
story that was considering what's happening with him politically in Canada.
You know, sometimes there's only so much you can do.
And for a while I was a local reporter, so
I didn't have a national canvas to paint on. Then
when I got on the on the national level, I
kind of lost touch with some of the local stuff.
(40:45):
I had to cover national stories. So there were things
that you just saw go by that you would love
to have covered, but you couldn't do it. A lot
of a lot of my friends in the in the
business were guys who would do who were doing the
deadline stuff, writing on deadline et cetera. Ironically, one of
the one of the one of my friends, his daughter,
his son just married my daughter this last summer, so
(41:07):
we're related that af those guys were always those guys
were always there. When I was an electronic guy, I
had to go off and do my stuff with a studio,
et cetera, whereas those guys would do it there's stuff
on deadline and then they go out and have a
beer afterwards and hang out together and talk a lot.
So I never was part of that that scene. And
it was partly because I wasn't doing that type of
a job and it didn't give me the insights into
(41:30):
some things. But as one, you know, one last thing
to tell you about. When I was starting in the business,
especially on TV, I wanted to do big stories. I
wanted to have a story that you know, I could
hang my hat on and say, oh, he's the guy
that did that story or whatever. And and the turning
point for me was I learned that agents were the
best guys to talk to. Agents had no problem with
(41:52):
telling you things that were going on. If you talk
to a player in the dressing room, he'd give you
the old oh yeah, one one leg at a time,
and the management guys, oh yeah, you know, we think
we're doing fine, and it's so boring you get tired
of it. I discovered agents who had lots of interesting
things to tell me, and a lot of the best
stories all came from them, And that was just something
(42:15):
I learned along the side. And I had three or
four really good sources who helped me out, and I
did books with them and about them and about the
things that they introduced me to. So I was very
lucky to figure that out. There's a lot of guys
who are still punching the same clock, doing the same
sort of gig, you know, thirty years later, and frankly,
I feel sorry for them a little bit.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, no, I could understand that completely. Bruce.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I have to thank you so much for coming in.
I have enjoyed our conversation. It has been just so
so interesting to get to get to talk to you.
I would love to get to do this again sometime
and get to talk with you some more.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Bruce.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I just started your book, deal with it. I am engrossed.
I absolutely love it. Where can people find your work?
Where's the best place to find it?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Well, the best place to go on Amazon Books and
you can find it there. It's in kindle and it's
also in book form. We don't have a hardcover for
this one. It's we self published. My son and I
have done the last two books, and we've self published
this time, which is a whole other experience which I'm
really enjoying. And so if you want to help out
us out a little bit you mentioned earlier. My book
(43:16):
website is called Bruce Dobigan Books dot ca A and
all my books are there, including a couple of non
sportsmans that I've done as well. So if you could
go there and pick them up, I'm sure. I'm sure
you'll enjoy them. If you have as much fun reading
them as I did writing them, then it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I've got to ask one one final question. Do you
have something else you're working on right now? Is there
something in the works that we might want to we
want to be aware of.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Well, my son works at the Canadian equivalent of ESPN.
He's a stats guy. He does their social media site
called the Stats Center for them, and so he and
I talk about story ideas all the time. So we're
kicking one around. We were thinking about maybe doing a
book about overtime times, famous overtime games, something along those lines.
(44:03):
So yeah, we'll see, we'll see what happens next. And
I'm not that young anymore, so the writing process can
be a little bit more torturous than it used to be,
but something along those lines, And yeah, I'd be happy
to do it. I've done. I did a couple of
biographies with people that ever got published over the years,
and maybe I'll just revive one of those ones. Once
the guys booed off, I could probably do it without
(44:25):
getting sued.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Well, Bruce, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I was looking forward to this just knowing your background
and knowing some of the things you've done. I couldn't
wait to talk to you. It absolutely lived up to
the hype. You did a phenomenal job. And I just
want to thank you for visiting the Dally just and
I genuinely mean it. I would I would love to
not be strange as I would love to have you
back again sometime for sure.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
And anytime. Clinton, thank you for having me on. I
really appreciate it to talk about the book. And again,
when you're self publishing, you need to, you know, have
to market your book and finding people like yourself who
are really interested in push. I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Hey. Next week on The Dose, we are going to
continue our run of talking to some very interesting people
in the world of sports. Trust me, you will not
want to miss what I have in the store for
you next week. It's going to be very, very interesting.
So be sure you tune into The Dose and be
sure you let a friend know to do the same. Hey,
I want to say thank you so much to author
and announcer Bruce Doe big And for spending some time
(45:23):
with us today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope
you'll stay in touch. And I want to say thank
you to each and every one of you for listening
to The Daily Dose every week. Thank you for the emails,
thank you for the text thank you for the tweets.
Thank you for going over to Dailydoor Sports dot com
and checking out the new things going up there every week.
But more than anything, thank you for sharing the show,
for sharing the videos, for sharing the articles with something
that you know we absolutely love.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
It when you do that.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I say thank you to jessp could not do any
of this without you. I will see you on next Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Have a great week. Everybody
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