Barn Burner: Boomer & Pinder with Rhett Warrener - Bruce Dowbiggin (FULL INTERVIEW) | FN Barn Burner - August 8th, 2024

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

FlamesNation Barn Burner with Boomer, Pinder & WarrenerTODAY'S GUESTBruce Dowbiggin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_DowbigginDEAL WITH IT | By Evan and Bruce Dowbigginhttps://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-dealwithit.aspxTIMESTAMPShttps://youtube.com/live/7_8koVEbN8s- Becoming An Author (2:00)- Building Connections (5:00)- Deal With It Book (6:00)- Gretzky Trade (10:30)- Move To Calgary (15:00)- BREAK (17:00 - 20:30)- Patrick Roy (20:30)- Doug Gilmore Trade (29:00)- BREAK (40:00 - 43:30)- Tkatchuk Trade (48:00)- Flames Now (53:00)- Life Now (55:00)BARN BURNER BLONDEhttps://originbrewing.myshopify.com/products/barn-burner-473mlFLAMESNATION MERCHhttps://nationgear.ca/collections/flamesnationBARN BURNER CLIPShttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_bcGtvvo-cW2DHEDZ6dEO5ePDmlhZc9SHOUTOUT TO OUR SPONSORS!!👍🏼 Powered by @bet365. Whatever the moment, it’s Never Ordinary at bet365.Download the App today and use promo code: FNBONUS. http://www.bet365.ca/👍🏼 McLEOD LAW https://www.mcleod-law.com👍🏼 VILLAGE HONDA https://www.villagehonda.com👍🏼 OUTDOOR DENTAL https://www.outdoor.dental👍🏼 GRETA BAR https://www.gretabar.com/locations/ca👍🏼 ORIGIN BREWING https://originbrewing.ca👍🏼 BeAroused https://www.bearoused.ca/👍🏼 SPRING FINANCIAL: http://SpringFinancial.ca/barn👍🏼 Pro Skate Service Calgary: https://www.psscalgary.com/💻 Website: https://flamesnation.ca🐦 Follow on twitter: @FlamesNation @BarnburnerFN @960boomer @PinderReport @warrener44📺 Subscribe on Youtube: @Flames_Nation💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.comFollow us on Instagram @flamesnationdotcaFollow us on Twitter @flamesnation @barnburnerfnFollow us on Facebook @FlamesNationReach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I remember the first time that I met you. It was at the dome. It would have been, man, a long time ago. You're so gray now. But I had bought one of my favorite hockey books of Ice and Men, Steve Eiserman and Glenn Sather and Chris Chelyos and Haschick. I just love this book. It was one of the first ones that I'd read where it kind of took you behind the curtain,

some stories and all that sort of thing. And it was Bruce Dobigan that wrote this book. And at that time, I didn't, like I didn't even know how. your name was pronounced or whatever. But then I saw you in the press box as one of the first Flames games I got. And I was starstruck. I'm like, this is the guy that wrote that book that I love. Was I like you?

That was, it was a long, again, that was a long time ago. But you're kind of, what is it, a five-tool player in baseball, writer, author, columnist, radio, television. You've kind of, you've kind of done it all over the years, Brucey boy. What are they on the entertainment shows? Triple threat. Triple threat. There you go. Radio TV print and all totally accidental how I got into them.

And I remember the first time I got asked to write a book. And I said, yeah, and I'll grow a third eye too. I mean, where do I have time? Three kids growing up. I was doing six and 11 on CBC in Toronto. Where am I going to write a book? And now I'm, this is at least 11. And I've got another one that I'm working on right now.

Yeah. I have a lot of respect. for people that do find it's finding the time but then be good at it if you'd like if you want to actually know what you're doing and and make it a compelling read that and truly that uh not to get too far off but of ice and man i i i love that book i've read it numerous times just because there was so much stuff there that you weren't going to get and this is before the internet i've tried to think what what year that came out but it was uh it was very unique at the time and i think that's kind of been your thing over the course of your career. And we'll talk about your latest book

and we'll talk about the flames and all that. But kind of getting your, you know, getting your dirt under your nails, getting in behind and doing some things that maybe some other reporters or other media people might not be comfortable doing. Well, I always try to write books that I'd be interested in reading. And a certain type of book has been written 100 times. There's no point in me attempting to form out again. Like the Gordy Howe, my greatest hits type of thing. As much that I love all those people. I just, you know, I wanted more stuff. And the inspiration for a vice and men, for people who don't know it, it was came out.

Now you're asking, I think it was probably about 1996 around there that came out. I'm guessing. I should know this. I have it is 99. Yeah, it says you're 99, but that could be neither here nor there. No, that's possible. My publisher came to me. We had just done a book about the hockey stick called The Stick.

And he said to me, he said, you know, there's a really good baseball book. George Will did called Men at Work. And Will had decided on a pitcher, a batter, a manager, and I forget what the fourth thing was. And he wanted to know, he wanted to know about neurological things. We wanted to know about sociological things that went into making superstars. And Gary Ross, my editor, said, let's try that in hockey. And by that point, I sort of worked up enough contacts with agents that I could go to them and say, look, you know me, you can trust me with your client.

I'm not here to side-swiping. And so we ended up, Larry Kelly enabled us to do Steve Eisenman. Chris Chelyos was Tom Reich in the United States. Rich Winter, of course, is from Edmonton. That was Dom Nkashik. And I dealt directly, of course, with Glenn Saving. So it all came together, and I just found all sorts of stuff that I thought was interesting. And I hope that other people didn't.

It was, you know, for Canada, it was a big success. It sold pretty well. And people keep bringing it up when I, when I, they meet me for books. Would you be able to do that type of a book now with, because the whole landscape has changed. I'm guessing you could do a Haschick book if it were Haschick's book and he was stood to profit. It's not a shot against Haschick, but just for for athletes to give you, to give up juicy stories for a project that isn't theirs, I find hard to believe nowadays. Yeah. Well, that's, and I think you could do it today if you had the relationship with the agent and the agent

would sell you to the to the player and say okay i remember i was in maui uh not in sorry not in maui malibu at chris chelios's place in the beach and then doing the interview there and thinking you know this is not something that you can get out of a dressing room and god bless all of the guys and i was one of the time but god bless all of the guys who stand in dressing rooms trying to get a sentence out of people that's newsworthy it's so hard to get any material it's newsworthy and that everybody else doesn't have so to get behind the scenes to be able to sit down with them you're talking about how much money first Glenn Sather was typical Glenn the whole way he was informative he was funny he was sarcastic it was you know the

whole Glenn thing and then of course at the end he said well how much you're paying me for this yeah you know you don't get paid for these things I told the right from the start they they sort of laughed you know you had to get to get at you so it was fun it was fun to know them and and and that had come after the way I got into books was it was as a result of the Alan Eagle story in the union business. Nobody else was doing it at the time. I somehow was befriended by Carl Brewer and a bunch of the retired players, Gordy Howe, Bobby Hull, befriended me because I took an interest in their lawsuit to get their pension money back. And so I was lucky and they were able to

get me on the inside to do other books and tell me stuff that you wouldn't get other places. So I'm just, boom, I'm so lucky to have had the kind of contacts I've had along the way and have enabled me to do a type of journalism that you're right nobody else was really really doing at the time yeah i want to we'll talk about the eagles and stuff because i think it's if it's it's ancient history there'd be a lot of people that might watch or listen to this would have no idea who that is but it was a a huge huge sports story not just the hockey story but the new book you're at it you continue to get it done deal with it the trades that stunned the NHL and changed hockey and you have to share it's not the first time you've done this but you're sharing uh the

the workload here with Evan Dolbegin, who you're related to, right? That's a relationship. Yeah, that's my son. It's my eldest son. He's been at TSN for about 10, 12 years. He runs their Stats Center website and social media presence. He's a rain man. And on all the other books that I've done since he grew up, he became a teenager even, he was my resource guy because he has all this stuff in his head that I don't. And so I'd say, well, what was the year that Don Cherry was coached of the year? Was it 77? No, no, I was 78. And 77, he came third behind Jock Damarison, but all this stuff's still. So now that he's, now that he's growed up and he's at TSN, we've been doing this ham and egging it.

The last one, of course, was in exact science. It was about the eight biggest drafts in NHL history. He wrote some of the chapters. I wrote some of the chapters. Same thing with this, with this format. And it's fun to do. It's fun to be able to do that with one of your kids. Well, I wondered, there's who the Genesis was not a kid anymore.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I was going to say there's the. genesis of the idea, where does it start, and then who's doing the heavy lifting? Who's doing all the work? So I was going to ask, who, who deserves the most credit on this project? We're probably offloading more of the bulk writing to Evan at the moment. There were a couple of chapters I insisted on insist on having in the book, the last two in particular, the one about how the Golden Knights built their team through trades on the trade on their expansion day.

And also the Kachuk trade. Evan wasn't sure that it would stand up. It was. It was. How does it fit into our theme, et cetera? And as we know now, of course, it's a, I don't say it's a monumental, but it's a significant trade. Florida was won a Stanley Cup. The flames have gone through hell as a result of it. So I thought that those were worthwhile. But he's a Habs fan, so the Patrick Gerva trade is a big deal.

He loved the Frank Mahavillic chapters as a Canadians fan. Again, of course, Frank probably had his greatest success as a Canadian. He's known as a Maple Leaf, but his success was with the Canadians. And yeah, some of the others in between. We just, we'd also, and I've done the Eric Lindros trade in three or four separate books already. It did it money players, which was about the labor history, the NHL. And I thought, it's a really significant trade, but I just cannot write this one more time. And so we decided that we would dovetail it with the Patrick Bruat trade because, of course, Patrick goes to the avalanche.

They were made into a championship team by the Lindros trade, what they got in Quebec. and then moved to Denver. And so we were able to talk about it, but my eyes didn't fall out of my head and having to go to the same material again. And in some respects, you had to do the Gretzky trade. You had to put the Gretzky trade in there.

But again, I've done it time after time. We did a whole chapter in exact science about, of course, how Wayne never was in the draft. I call them the draft doctor, you know. So I got a lot of stuff about it. It's significant. So we had to put it in there. But yeah, between the two of us,

We haven't egged it a little bit. He's prolific, I'll tell you. He churns up for the first book. I probably had to cut about 30 or 40,000 words he produced because we're not doing the Bible, you know. Yeah. That was one of the things I was going to say to you with, because I got the book and it is one of those. If, if, and I think most people are, if you're a hockey fan, I know, I've always been. Since I was a kid, there's a trade and it's just kind of the, you get to say, well, what is it?

Who is it? And then you start to analyze it and that to do, like to talk about the Gretzky trade. It's been done so often to try and find a new way. And just the way, certainly with the Gilmore Calgary trade to, what about Gary Lehman? What exactly did happen? Gilmore went to Toronto. He was great. We all know that.

To find different avenues, the roads surpass less traveled. I thought you guys did a really good job here on these trades. What was the trade growing up for you that was the generational one? For me, you know, the first one we do is Espo to Boston. It makes the big bad Bruins. It makes Bobby Orrin to a great player, a great team, et cetera. It was stunning for me. And it's sort of indicative of when I became a hockey fan.

So I'm kind of curious as to which one was the one that sort of got you that way. It was the Gretzky trade for sure. I was a big Gretzky fan. People like, oh, you're an oiler guy. I just love Gretzky. And then Gretzky left. But I remember because it was in 88. And I was, it would be 13 years old or 14 at the time.

And we were camping. And so there's no internet. And I remember just going to the lake. It's a beautiful summer day. I'm sitting in my parents car on AM radio trying to find anybody talking about Wayne Gretzky getting traded because I just couldn't believe it. It was one of those things. There's no chance they're trading Wayne Gretzky.

It's a silly. And then it happened. So yeah, it rocked my world for sure, as I'm sure it did a lot of people my age. But there's so much in there. And again, you go back and you look. it happened and you guys detail it in the book and I don't want to give too much away, but the Patrick Waugh trade where Wa walks up by Tromblay and Ray Jean Ool and says, I'm done.

But then comes back a couple days later and apologizes. There's a chance for some reconciliation there, but the habs, if of all, like to think that the habs are like, no, we're done with you. Even Wayne, there's a chance that maybe you can mend fences. But the phone call in Bruce McNaul's office on speakerphone, great story, great part of the book, the fact that those two trades may not have happened if it weren't for just a couple of kind of boneheaded moves by the teams ended up sending both of them out of town. Well, one of the things we wanted to do, as I say, is to have generational trades.

And for a guy your age, that's one of the ones for Evan, who's younger than you are, the Patrick Grawad trade happened at that time in his life. For other people, it's a little closer to this era. So we wanted to do that. We also wanted to choose trades that represented more than. just this guy for that guy. Back in the old days, the 16 league or the 12 team league or whatever, general managers, these knife guys in the back, they'd trade them.

They didn't care. I mean, you know, I remember talking to Bob Nevin, and he'd come up through the Toronto Maple Leaf system. He was a Maple Leaf. He was part of their championship teams in the 60s. They were going badly in 1964, and he gets a call from King Clancy during the day, and King says, don't forget to come down to the gardens tonight. And Nevy says, oh, yeah, I'll share, I'll go.

And he says, by the way, you're going to the Rangers dressing them. That's how we found out about the tree. And in those days, they didn't care. Phil Esposito, he'd been told by Harry Sindon, you know, you're my guy. I shake hands. You're staying here in Boston like a month later. See it. You're gone.

So it's those kind of stories in the background. And then, of course, we get to the period. This affects the flames. This affects the Oilers. The significance of the Gretzky trade is it announces small markets are dead in the NHL without some sort of a salary cap. They couldn't hang on to him. Peter Paxton couldn't hang on to him.

When we get later to Doug Gilmore, same thing with the flames. They're not going to be able to make that deal with Gilmore and it goes sideways, et cetera. So we wanted to talk about how that was different. And then finally, when you get up to the Vegas Golden Knights on their draft day, they're trading for favors. They're saying, okay, you send us this guy and we won't choose somebody. So the nature of trading changed all through these years. And it's not a guy for a guy anymore.

As you know, boom, you guys talk about all the time. Are you taking back money in the deal? Who's holding over the money? Can we afford this guy? What's the proper term for this guy, et cetera? So we're trying to have a little of each one so that you can see the evolution of trading. Just I want to jump all over the place. But I guess because you're in Montreal, you're born in Montreal.

You always kind of were you a Habs guy? No. No. I was a kid at lunch at recess. who always was fighting. I was a Gordiala fan in Montreal. Everybody I knew was a Habs fan, and it was a misery because the Habs always won. You know, I kept thinking one of these days, one of these days, 1960s, the wings win the first two game of the final in Montreal. And you know how rare it is, boom, to lose the first two on home ice and still win a cup. And I thought,

this is it. This is the big day. And of course, the Canadians went four in a row, suspicious goal for Orrory Richard. But anyhow, then back to the recess, back to the school yard, fighting again with all the kids. So, yeah, I was in Montreal often. I lived through three years in Edmonton in the 50s, but other than that, I lived in Quebec, and then I moved up when the politics got crazy. My dad moved this up to Hamilton, Burlington. At that point, you know, one of the advantages I had was as a Montreal guy, I was an Expo fan and an Alouettes fan, but one of the things, the advantages I had when I was in Toronto was not only did I not like any of the Toronto teams, I hated the Toronto teams growing up. So I could be really cold-blooded about what I said

about. And I wasn't emotionally invested in the winning or losing. So yeah, it was an interesting transition. And not to belabor the point, but I always feel like if you're going to be a journalist, it's different from being a host or something. If you're going to be a journalist and understand this country, you've got to live in the parts of the country. And one of the reasons I moved to Calgary, was because I wanted to understand the West. I'd been in the East for a long time, and I wanted to know what was going on in the West. A friend of mine said, you know, Calgary's a place where it's happening. Why don't you get it to try?

And so it's given me the opportunity to know people like you who are Western guys. The references that I never knew growing up, all the Saski humor, all the Manitoba humor, all that type of thing. So I've learned about it since coming here. I think it's an advantage to have that when I try to write stuff. Hello, friend. I didn't see you there. I was just enjoying a... Barnburner Blonde here on this beautiful summer day. We wait all year for summer. It is nice to

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It's coincidence that we're all here at the same time. Have a great summer, everybody. Hmm. Origin brewing. Hey guys, it's Pinder. Let's take a look at some futures on Bet365, our new partner on Barnburner. NHL futures are a ton of fun, and no one's got. more than Bet 365. Let's take a peek.

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A reminder, if you're selling your vehicle, Village Honda, your dealership for life wants to pay you. 24 hours cash in your hand. You don't even have to buy a new one here, although I think you probably should. Village Honda, your dealership for life, online at VillageHonda.com and in the Northwest Automall. Let's get back to another summer edition of Barnburner. Yeah, I was just curious because you would have a unique perspective, maybe more more intel on things with that trade, the Patrick Waugh trade, because it fell from the outside, Saturday night, Detroit, Habs are getting lit up, Patrick Waugh stays in for nine goals,

tells the, you know, tells the GM and the coach, I'm done. But it was, and I admit, I've covered and been a fan of hockey a long time. There's things in here. I guess I just didn't realize it felt. like they win the cup in 86, Patrick Waugh arrives and it's red carpet. It was not exactly that. It was there was a bit of a fight for him to remain or to become the number one. Brian Hayward continued to take up ice time.

And then him being pulled time and time again, that wasn't, it just, it wasn't a one night. I'm pissed off tonight because I was in for too many goals. Now I'm out. There was a lot that led up to that pivotal moment. Oh, yeah. He's a complete prima don't. He's always been a prima don't even from the days when he was forced. on the depth chart he was playing in the a hl he was always a prima don't know very

very conscious of of how good he was and for people who don't know he played on a really crappy team in grandby he'd be he'd be lit up for 60 70 shots on a night he'd be playing against mario lemur and if lemur's team the loval team got less fewer than seven or eight goals was considered an accomplishment and any event he you know always had the chip on his shoulder uh he was still to this day we can see him in management that he's a firefighter kind of guy. It was, it's two things that are happening, of course, is that he's the continuation, supposedly of the Canadian tradition of great players, great goaltenders. They're going to win 25, they're going to win 26, they're going to win 27 cups. But all of a sudden things happen.

Sam Pollack leaves. They put Irvin Grunman in. That's a big mistake. They don't find the guys who can succeed it. And the thing that's interesting about Roa is that, again, I grew up in Montreal, my uncle was a general manager of a junior A team in Montreal. So he knew the Canadians. And the Canadians' culture, the thing about a family and about there's a way to act, that's very real in Montreal. It always was, even in the Gila Fleur years. You know, you had to respect the Canadians. You couldn't say bad things about them. And towards the end, the problem was that Patrick was saying things about the organization that were true, that Ron Corey was a beer salesman. He had no right to be there as the president. That Mario Trombly had been his roommate

when they were juniors and they hated each other. All this sort of background. And Patrick brought it all out. And in the past, the Canadians had great players, but they didn't get rid of them until, you know, they were finished. So Doug Harvey, Jacques Plont, guys like that, Chris Chelyos, they dumped them off once they started to go downhill a little bit. In the case of Patrick Grawal, they had two or three more great years that they could have had out of them, but they had a hissy fit. Nobody treats the Canadians that way. Nobody does that and survives. And as you said, Patrick said, I apologize.

I was a bit hot. You know, I'm willing to mend fences. And at that point, the Canadians still think that they're the great Canadians of Sam Pollock when, in fact, they're just one, just another team in the NHL, and they let them go. And as we know with the Avalanche, we know how good they were. We see them come through Calgary all the time. And you forget and you detail it in the book. There was also that Eric Lindross thing that helped contribute to those powers.

powerhouse, you think two trades and how that completely changed that entire franchise. It helps when you get Hall of Famers, I suppose. But Forsberg and Patrick Waugh and you name it. It was amazing. Amazing work. And the guy, they were able to flip some guys to get more people in. But I just can't imagine the trade that had, well, I guess the Esposito trade had that much value going to Boston. Phil Esposito became, and again, people forget now because of the Gretzkyers.

But Phil Esposito was the scoring what Gretzky was to scoring before. The Bruins filled the net. Kenny Hodge came over. He was scoring 40 goals a year. Fred Stanfield was the point guy on their power play, a good third center. And Boston got one guy, Pitt Martin, who was a decent player. The other guys were a washup. But, you know, for real value, that whole situation with Lindrosse in Quebec, who would they get? For people who don't remember, of course, the Nordiques were such a, you know, they were so messed up. They traded him twice. They traded them to the Rangers and Philadelphia. They had to bring in Todd Bertuzzi's uncle to be the arbitrator to decide where he was going. That's right. Yeah. There's so many, there's so many stories about that. And again, the avalanche were, the Nordique were a sort of haunted franchise. Nobody wanted to go there and then to go to Denver and have that happen. Terry, I don't know if you know Terry Fry or not, but he was, he was the beat guy in Denver for the ablanc. And he contributed some stuff to this book and talked a little bit about what it was like to get Patrick.

there as a result of the trading. And all of the chapters, by the way, whatever, whichever trade it is, whether it's the Gretzky one or the Esposito one, we start with, and I'll use the example of the Gilmore trade. We start the Gilmore trade with Cliff Lecture in Atlanta building a franchise. And we show how Cliff built it and how they failed and they failed. And then finally, Gilmore's there. They have the 89 year. It looks like it's all going to be perfect. And then it all dissipates. And we follow killer to the end of his career. We follow Gary Lehman to the end of his career. So each one is a story fully contained from when this trade had its origins through to the outcome. Yeah, it was one of the things when I got the, I know it's about trades. It's not 30 trades.

You've taken a handful, nine big deals and have really gone, you know, taken a deep dive on all of them. And, you know, we can, I guess just, we'll talk about the Messier one here for a moment. So Messier goes to New York. I guess one of the things that struck me was you kind of went into detail about what Mark Messier was even before becoming an oiler. Like this was a guy who liked to party. He got into trouble. He was a handful.

And I was wondering if Mark Messier were 17, 18, 19 today, would teams have the patience to stick with this guy? The cops are calling. He's missing the flight to the team playing, the team bus and all of this. I just wonder if it would have been different. You would have a Hall of Fame or first ballot Hall of Fame player, but maybe a team would be like, oh, this kid's a bad apple. We've got to get them out of here.

Yeah, the difference between today and then is that the kids today know that if they want to be stars in the NHL, that they got to put on the hair shirt pretty young. You can't afford to be doing the stuff that Ness was doing. You can't afford to be doing what Grant Fuhr and those guys were doing with the Orilers in those days. You can't do that as being an elite player and make the big money anymore. It's like going into a conflict or something. Here's the rules, and they're going to do this for the next number of years. So, Matt would have had to make a choice earlier in life about, okay, am I going to be a hockey player

or are I just going to be a crazy guy around town? He's a product at the time. I, you know, we had an argument. I was doing an interview with a guy from Toronto the other day. I had an argument about why, in some respects, I think the Messier trade is in our hockey sense more significant than the Gretsky trade. The Gretsky trade is about a whole bunch of stuff. But the Messier trade is really important because he goes to New York, gets away from Edmonton, wins the cup, wins another cup. Gretz isn't winning any more cups. He wins the cup. He wins it in New York,

the center of the media universe. I think it's really significant. And of course, the fact that the oilers couldn't afford to keep him. It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal. Yeah. And there was no $15 million cash in that deal either, right? No, no. No. No. You were probably starting to cover the Oilers in the NHL and you remember what Saylor had to do. He had to do fire sales, one right after the other and figure out how he could make it work and not completely fall into the basement as they eventually did. And the Messier deal was the last of it. That was the end of the era. So I think for that reason, I think it's significant to talk about his deal. In some respects, more than great.

Again, Gretzky's deal, everyone told us, number one dude. Gretz didn't win a cup in L.A. They got sort of close. They had the one final. He never won in the other places he went to. Ness went to New York and said, hey, I'm taking the magic with me. I'm showing it was me. So you have to say, well, maybe Messier was underrated in Edmonton.

As much as we love Gretz, maybe Messier was the secret sauce behind it all. The Doug Gilmore train, it's a hard read for Flames fans, if you're a Flames fan, but they've all been through it. I like the part. It was, you had the direct quote from Eric DeHatchek, because we can sit here now and look back and say, it was a terrible trade. Well, of course,

we have the benefit of looking at how everyone's career panned out. But to go back and even at the time to see someone like George Johnson or yourself or Eric DeHatchik, so that day, what did you think of the trade? And even then, it was like, this is a really bad trade. This was never, you couldn't spin this as a good trade as bad as Doug Reisbeau tried at the time.

Yeah, I think it was, I think the quote is Frank Orr, who was one of the deans of the Toronto Press Corps, very, very droll, kind of quiet kind of guy. And I guess the coach comes out, I forgot much Leaf Coach comes out. He basically... Tom Watt, I think, wasn't it?

Yeah. Tom Watt, he reads the result, who's going where, et cetera. And there's this pause, and Frank Orr says, that's the deal? That's all the deal. That's it. Surely you're missing, yeah.

There's something missing here. And nope, that's it. That's what we got. That's what happened. And it's a combination of things. The flame's missing. handled Gilmore and that type of thing. And it's also, to a certain extent, it's considered a wipeout trade that the Leafs made out great. But you know what? They got three years,

maybe four years of killer in Toronto. They didn't win the Cup. And then he went off to other places. The two guys that win cups are, of course, is Gary Lehman wins one as a spare guy in Montreal years later. And of course, Cooner, Joe and Jamie McCown, who was straight at two, He wins with the Redwoods. So it never had in hockey terms, it never had the impact we thought. For Toronto, it's like New York City. It's the center of the hockey English-speaking hockey universe in Canada. And for him to go, I was there at the time when he was there. The Blue Jays are winning World Series. The city is becoming a baseball city. The Leafs are got, we got to do something here. And Cliff Letcher came in and he knew exactly what to do. And he knew who was there.

and he knew what the background was with killer in Calgary. And he made a great deal for them. And it completely revived the fortunes of the Leafs. And I think if I remember correctly, Harold Ballard had just died too. That also made the daily deal possible. Harold would have screwed it up some way if he'd still been alive. And there's the forgotten Gilmore trade, how he becomes a flame in the first place because he's a St. Louis blue.

So as bad as the one trade was, it was a hell of a move to get him to Calgary in the first place. Well, as I say, we just start with Climbled. and how the initial teams he built in Atlanta and the early ones in Calgary, and how they just had this habit of not being able to deliver. Obviously, the Oilers are there. They're an impediment, but the flames lose all sorts of playoff series that they shouldn't have lost along the way. You know, they should have won more than one couple.

Certainly had been playing a few more finals than they did, but they seem to just not have the right equation. And Cliff understands that when Gilmore becomes available in St. Louis, I think everybody knows there was the controversy there. There was an allegation of sexual misconduct. It was later made to go away. But they also understood that Gilmore couldn't stay in St. Louis. And Cliff knew that there was an opportunity here

and that he could probably bring him in and give them some structure with the flames. And he was a secret sauce kind of guy. I used that expression. When he came in, he gave them things that they hadn't had before. And they won the cup in 89. And it just, again, they should have won, if not, Cups, but at least a few more series along the way. But then it all falls apart for financial reasons. And, you know, the famous episode.

And I remember people reporting on this, of course, was that the flames went out to the airport to pick up the arbitrator when he was doing salary arbitration. And they had him in the box watching the game. Killer, I don't know if he saw him there, but Killer was told that the guy was there. And Larry Kelly, who is his agent, who I've known for a one time, Larry just said, that's it. You know, this is outrageous. You've got an arbitrator who's supposed to be giving us a good deal. And he's sitting there having a canopays with the flames owners. Yeah.

And there's a part, you know, I don't think that I've ever heard the, and I don't want to blow it. But in the hotel, Doug Gilmore, on his hands and knees, listening to a conversation in the next hotel room. I hadn't heard that story before. Yeah. Once it was obvious that they had to get rid of Doug, that there was this sort of phony war. And he and Rize Brow basically went to the mattresses with each other and it wasn't going to work. And the story that Gilmore told, I think it might be in his book. As I say, he's in a hotel room.

I can't remember who he was sharing with it. And then he gets up to go to the bog in the middle of the night and he hears somebody talking in the next room and talking about Gilmore's name. And so killer goes and he's literally on his hands and he's listening at the base of the door. And of course, he's hearing Rizbrow talking to somebody about I'm getting Gilmore out of him. on trade. And he knew that the die was cast, but it still took a little while, a few more weeks, I think maybe a couple of months before it really happened. And it was over the Christmas holidays. And for people who were here in Calgary at the time, it was, you know, people were preoccupied with family and all that sort of stuff. And the NHL didn't play a few games. So it kind of was going

on under the radar. The reporters weren't going down to the rink every second like they do in a regular season session. And so it kind of fell under the, you know, under people's attention until, of course, the news broke and then everybody had to basically uh-oh there goes my christmas holidays back to the dome let's find out what's going on how to have been hard it because we live here now and it's i think people are still hurting over the kachuk deal and that is also in the book um and what happened with goddrow and then you think back this is a team that won the cup and then in the years that would follow it's mackinus vernon suitor mccowan gilmore everybody leaves that had to have been painful to watch because they'd reach the top of the mountain,

whereas here you weren't close to getting there yet. Well, and again, I know you guys are really good. You follow salary caps and you talk about all this stuff at all the time. You know, I've been really on the inside of talking about salary caps before there were salary caps because I love baseball. They're having walkouts. I understood what they meant and I understood why Gary Bettenen wanted to have one. I understood when it looked like it was going to come in,

what was going to be the implication for small markets. I can remember when I was here first moved here, 2002 or one or two, I think it wasn't. Harley Hodgis basically saying, look, we've got a 62 cent dollar. We can't afford to run a business at this rate. So we're going to have to get rid of some players. The new endic trade is an example where they were lucky in that case that they got Jerome coming back. But yeah, all of these guys, they didn't necessarily want to leave. And they also thought it was a good team that could win here.

But once you realized that they had salary disclosure, here's what I'm. I could make. And here's what the owners and the management people haven't been telling me all these years. There's so much bitterness. And this is, again, the Allen Eagleston thing, there's so much bitterness that their union had done nothing to help them along the way. The Bob Goodnell comes in in early 1990s and says, hey, here's the deal, guys. So I don't blame any of the players for being bitter and saying, hey, I'm a businessman. You guys have screwed me up until now. I'm going to go where I'm going to go. And I feel badly for a city like Calgary because I know it's in people's blood and it's bone for this for this city.

In Toronto, you have an NBA team. You got other stuff, other diversions. I understand what it's like for Calgary and to lose all those people. And yeah, it was really hard for them. And, you know, Edmonton had the same thing. Winnipeg lost their franchise for a while. So, and I think honestly, boom, I think we're heading back in that direction about small market, large market.

It's one of the reasons I did the Kachuk trade. And I ask at the end of the chapter, can Canadian teams hang on to America? stars anymore? Do American guys want to play here? Frankly, to Canadian guys who have options want to play here anymore? Because I hear from agents that a lot of Canadian guys have Calgary as a no-go for trades and for movement. So, you know, are the Canadian teams going to be able to hang on to those American guys? The Leafs got Matthews for four years, but they didn't get the eight years for it. And it says to me that these guys, and boom, you know them, you talk to them. Yeah, I can go to Dallas. No state income tax. I leave the rank.

Nobody bugs me. I can make all this money. It's warm. My wife and kids don't have to wear 45 layers in the winter to go outside the house. It's a big challenge for the NHL and the Canadian teams. The cold weather teams anywhere and the teams that are in high tax states because we're starting to hear that too about guys who just, I'm not going there because Quebec's taxes are too high. BC's tax is too high.

Yeah, I mean, it paints a dreary picture. when you start to put all that together because it sure seems like the young player today either has more more sway or believes they have more sway because there's we're seeing it every single year and it's not just Canadian teams cutter gochae i'm not going to philadelphia what do you mean you're not going to phil i'm not going it just seems like there's so much more leverage where i don't know if there is any plus no move and tax free states it's really it's not getting any easier for some of these markets and some of these teams to be able to get players, let alone hang on to them. And what's interesting, because you say the player is this and the players that,

and that is true to a certain extent, but they're educated by their, by their, their agents, and to a certain extent, the Players Association, the Players Association isn't that militant. But certainly the agents know where the rubber hits the road, and they tell these kids, and they tell these kids' families. This is, if you want the money, if you want the money that you're owed, you probably going to have to go to these markets. The ones where you're being drafted to go do your rookie contract and then get the heck out of Dodge because they just can't afford to pay you going down the road. And again, I mentioned it earlier. One of the things that made a difference to me in my career when I started reporting was getting to know agents and getting

on the inside of that sort of stuff. I remember sitting in a room with Rich Winter in 1990, I guess it was, and him explaining to me about salary disclosure and what it had done to the NHL and to the NHL players. Again, when they got their chance, they said, you know, they had an immediate strike in 91. It was only 10 days long, but it was a shot across the balance of the NHL that ain't business like it used to be. And the NHL panics. They go to Gary Bettman and his little salary cap fantasy. They bring him in. And we spend the next decade having strike strikes and lockouts so that Gary can get a salary cap for his owners. Hey, guys, it's Pinder with the brand new location of professional skates, one of the original

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And we're back with more Barnburner. And just to pump the tires on another, because you talk about agents, and Mike Gillis is a guy that you had a relationship with, an agent who then becomes the GM, and that leads to Ice Storm, the book that you had, The Rise and Fall, The Greatest Vancouver Canucks team ever.

It's another one of those books. If you like behind the scenes inside stuff, because I guess just a moment on that book, it takes a bit of a different path, right? Was the thought at the start? Because you couldn't have known what the team was going to do that year or where they were headed. It's a fascinating book and that it serves some different purposes there. Yeah.

I got just a little backman. I got to know Mike pretty well because he was the only guy to sue Alan Eagelson. He was a former client of Eagleson. Eagelson had stolen part of his disability insurance. If you want to know about Alan Eagelson that he diverted some of Mike's disability insurance, I sat in the Toronto courtroom for six weeks with Gillis and his family, got to know him, and Mike doesn't trust a lot of people. As you know, the image, the public image he has is his private image too.

He's very close to the best. And so he finally allowed me to get a little bit on the inside. And the book Money Players, which is about the history of the NHL labor stuff, I sat with him on the day he signed Bobby Holick to the big deal in New York City. That was the one that really broke Gary Bettman's brain. and said, okay, we've got to get a salary cut. But I sat with Mike, and I could hear him negotiating with various general managers and what it was like on the inside.

And so we'd always kind of talked about, you know, what worked and what didn't work. And then all of a sudden, he says to me, I just got a feeler from the Canucks about whether I want to be the general manager. And I knew he'd moved out to Vancouver to be close to Pavel Burry, who was his client at the time, I thought, whoa, this is interesting. You know, one of the most militant agents, one of the most pitiless agents in terms of the dealing with management, going and being management. And short story long, he gets the job.

And he goes in and he wants to have an agent's point of view on what a GM should do. We see lots of GMs now are former agents. But Mike had some ideas, travel, about how to develop guys, etc. Chris Tannov's a perfect example. He's a guy who he found playing junior B hockey. And they brought him in. I was the whole six years was following them, you know, watching. And again, in our business, boom, you can't afford to cheer, have a favorite team.

But you can certainly cheer for great stories, interesting stories. And for me, the six years that Mike was there was a great story. And within one game of the Stanley Cup, the riot, all those kinds of things. Then his owner basically stabbing him in the back and going and getting Trevor Lyndon and disavowing any knowledge of all the progress they've made. And, of course, they went back into the toilet. Those six years, that was a terrific hockey team. And I still say, had they not run out of healthy bodies,

they'd have beaten Boston. But they had too many guys who were hurt. They just couldn't bring their best for the finals. Surprising to you at all that Gillis hasn't taken, maybe he's had his fill or maybe there's just no jobs there. But surprising he didn't end up behind, or at least running another team. Well, actually there's a lot of talking in Vancouver about bringing him back at some point.

But Mike's whole thing was, and I respect this, is he said, look, I'm not going to go in there with an owner who won't spend money and who's going to waffle the way Francesco Aquequilini did on Mike. He said, I'm not going to get stabbed in the back. And he also said that as the president of the team, he feels, and this is for all presidents of NHL clubs, he feels that if he does a great job running the business and the business is successful financially, that the president should also get a little. piece of that action. And the owners want nothing to do with that. You stick to the hockey pucks, right? We'll do all the money. And so he's had a very high standard for what he would like. And nobody wants to pay the price. I'm disappointed because I think there's a lot of teams that could have used him. He has this idea now that he thinks that every team should have two scouting staffs on their payroll because he said there's too much think alike that goes on. And you know,

boom the guys there's people you push for but after a while well you know i want to keep my job and this guy says he likes that prospect maybe i'll just keep quiet about it he said if you can set a system where where the eight where the scouts are you know budding heads once in a while no he's not as good as you think he is you don't get some of that group thing you have people who are going to who are going to come from a different perspective but i'd be interested to see if somebody will try that something the end the last the tail end of the book deals with the matthew Chuck trade and you kind of talked about it earlier. Until a few weeks ago, maybe one team wins a Stanley Cup, goes to two finals, winning one of them,

and the other team goes a spiral. It deserves to be in this book for sure. There's no way of knowing, but still, I think a lot of people wonder, if Johnny Goddrow stays, does Matthew Cichuck stay? Do you have any censor, and again, made just a gut feel, but what's your thought on that? My feel was that if Johnny had stayed and he'd made a commitment to the team, Matthew might have seen it in a different way, but absolutely, once he knew Johnny was out, there's no way I'm staying.

So I would say half of that equation is right. Johnny leaving, that was it for Matthew. Had Johnny stayed, I don't know that he would have necessarily stayed, but it certainly would have given them a chance. And there was a lot of, I don't know, after the series against Edmonton, there was a The Dallas series was exciting and interesting, and then there was a series against Edmonton. I think my own feeling was it didn't seem like Cichuk and Johnny, certainly in the Edmonton series that they were in it the way you need to in the Stanley Cup of finals. I had a feeling like their foot was out the door already.

And the oilist, as you remember, just overwhelmed them. And I said, I thought they were a better team than that. And I just didn't see from the leadership group the pushback. Now, there was all the stuff about Darrell at the time. Darrell was doing his magic behind the scenes. You know, some guys like it, some guys don't. And I think Darrell was coming to the end of his best before date. So there were a whole lot of factors going on there.

You know, the ownership group as well, I think there's some questions too because the original ownership group, as we know, some of them have passed on. Some of them aren't active anymore. It's a new ownership group. Maria Edwards calls a lot of the shots, but he lives most of the time in Switzerland. You know, there was there was a feeling about that as a, as a referendum on the Calgary Flames, those guys staying and being able to keep them. And it was not good news that they left. It certainly wasn't. I really fear for this,

for this team. Now, having said that, I think that Craig, and I've had questions about Craig, but I think that Craig has done some stuff that you need to do, and he's willing to pay the price in the short term to do it. And I think they'll find some players. But how do they get the Connor McDavid player? How do they get the Austin Matthews player in the situation they're in now? They're too high up in the draft. I don't know if anybody trades that guy here. I don't know if that guy wants to come here. Yeah.

I feel bad. I feel really badly. I'm sure it's the same for you. You go out. You and I ran into each other in Costco. Or I go golf course. And people say, hey, what about the flames? What do you think of this trade?

And I think they're doing this and doing that. But it's a symposium on all the time. I want it to work out for them. I don't want there to not be a team or not be a good team in this city. I was going to ask you about that, work that Craig Conroy is doing. And I, I think he has done some good stuff, but I, you, you can take a bunch of good players and you can sell them off. I think that's the easy part. And it's not to say what he's done is easy. And whether you like the trades and the return or

whatever, but I think you can give me some picks and prospects that we don't know what they're going to be and I'll give you a player who's established. That, that's an easier job than putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. I think to, to really judge what his abilities are. We're only now going to start to learn with these picks and now what he does moving forward. Yeah. I mean, this is our tangential to what we're talking about, but I wrote a column the other day on my website, not the public broadcaster, about everybody hates the gambling ads, the betting ads on the hockey.

Everybody hates it, the culture and whatever it does. And I said, you have to understand the NHL's position at the moment. They've expanded the 32 teams. There's a whole bunch of teams like the Calgary Flames who have all this inventory of games and broadcast rights, et cetera, who everybody knows going into the season aren't going to win. And people are sophisticated enough now to say, you know what? I don't need to watch the TV. But you know what will bring me back? If I can bet on the games, then I can follow the games through bedding. There's a whole bunch of people who are disaffected by what's happened to salary

cap hockey. Oh, we're going to tank. Oh, we're going to make a run for it. Nobody in between a lot of games that mean nothing during the season. I think there's a lot of people who would walk away from the sport. But I think there's people now who say, oh, well, you know, maybe if I can bet on, is there a power play goal in the third period? You know, that that'll be another reason for us to say. The NFL has done that boom. Since I was a kid back in the 60s, they understood TV. They understood that there was a lot of betting going on.

They understood fantasy pools when they came in. That's how the NFL got the contracts that they're getting. It's because betting is a big part. I just see the NBA, $78 billion for an 11-year contract. They're not doing that because there's a lot of guys in sneakers jumping up and down that I think the public is interested. to them. There's that whole symbiosis. So to a certain extent, I think that some people will stick with the flames for their fantasy teams, for some betting reasons, et cetera, through the, through the

lean years. But yeah, Craig has got to find a way to get that guy to build around. He needs a number one defenseman stud. And he needs a guy who in the last 30 seconds of the game, when McDavid comes over the boards or a dry saddle comes over the boards, you've got a guy who can match in manna and he doesn't have that yet and uh i i haven't got me advice for him and how you do get that guy but you get a shot at him definitely grab him and they're not close to having him you could argue could chuck goddrow those guys were maybe in that second tier down but not superstars and now it's all due respect to nasm cadre or whoever is left there's there's just not there you got you have to bottom out and hope that maybe in two years the mechanic kid out of

and hat or whoever it's going to be that maybe you get lucky you win a draft lottery and then that guy falls in your lap but yeah it's not an end of fascinated i'm fascinated by the the defenseman that they drafted number one uh i think he'll be a diversion for a while he seems like a real flaky kid he's got lots to say and and i i gather he's very entertaining to watch now he may be you know he may be paul coffee and only playing one end of the rink i don't know but at least that's I think that's an interesting skill guy. And again, why I get back to my time with Gillis, he just, he said, look, you can't teach skill. You've got to, you've got to get those guys and you've got to put up with them.

He was so lucky. He had the two least high-maintenance guys possible in the Sedine Twins. They were an example. You know, you, oh, they're wimps. They're soft. They weren't soft at all, man. They were tough mentally. They were tough physically.

And you need those guys to the heart of your franchise. But it's hard to find guys. or that good and that modest at the same time. So, again, you've written a lot of books. You've done, you and I work together on a radio show. You've done just, are you happy where Bruce Dobigan is at in his life? Is there, is there, do you need to wet your whistle somewhere? Is there something you haven't quite done that you would like to or where are you at right now in your career?

I'm 70 years old, so I'm feeling 70 some days. And I've been so lucky, boom. I've just been so lucky, you know, things happened to me sideways. I fell into a radio job in Toronto at CBC, the morning show just by accident. I was there visiting a friend of mine who was a producer on the show and they said, oh, they just fired the sportscatcher, telling me you can do it. I said, I haven't done it before. You can do it.

And somehow, because it was the Olympics in 84, I think, the L.A. Olympics, and all their guys were off in L.A. And so I went and did it for a couple of weeks and three weeks and then four weeks. And next thing you know, I was there for two years. And then I had the same sort of thing happened to me on TV. I got a phone call from the guy who was the producer of the CBC in Toronto. And he said, I want you to be my six o'clock sportscaster in Toronto. And I'm going, like, that's the top job in the whole network.

I said, I've never done that. I will teach you. We'll teach you. And once again, they let me learn on the air. And I was lucky. And then to fall into all of the Allen Eagles and stuff and find people who are willing to trust me to tell their story. Yeah, I've been very lucky.

My family so far, my daughter is the last. of my kids getting married in Labor Day weekend in Toronto. So I've been lucky health once. Well, I almost died a couple of years ago, but that was... I was going to say, yeah, there was that. Yeah, I had a pulmonary embolism. But, anyhow, I came through it okay. And yeah, no, I just want to enjoy my grandkids.

And I want to see some teams where I always lament that my favorite team of all was the Expos. When I was a kid in Montreal and the West Island in Montreal, for people who don't know, the West Island's kind of the Anglo part of the city, And I was 14 years old, and one day I got a door knocking the door at her house, and somebody said, oh, you've seen who just moved in as our neighbor? And I said, no, I don't know. Who moved in?

Oh, John Bateman, the catcher of the Expos. And sure enough, we had the catcher, he moved in. The second baseman, Gary Sutherland was in our development. Steve Rankle was just down the street. And I started babysitting for the Batemans and got to know John. And he turned me into a baseball fan. And I was just an enormous expo fan as a result of that sort of thing. And so I miss every day that, that, you know, turning on the TV to see how your baseball team's doing.

It's not the same with the Blue Jets. And I know that obviously you're still writing and it's kind of one of those things. It's like the muscle that if you don't use it, you lose it kind of thing. I remember talking to George Johnson and I wanted to kind of get just before we wrap things up. He was one of those guys. I always felt in Calgary, we were lucky because if there was a game the night before, you were going to be able to read yourself either with the Globe or with the Herald and George Johnson. and then Dehachuk would have his own take on it.

Just some of the best writers doing it were in Calgary. And then as time moved on, you just didn't have that. But George's thing was always, if you stop doing it, you're not going to be as good at it. You can't do it anymore. And I mean, you haven't really put down the pen or the pencil, so to speak. Well, you know what, boom, and I'm sure you say this to your kids, the thing that you want to keep hearing young people say, you know, I want to be passionate about what I do.

And I always say, find out what you do. well and do that. And you'll be surprised how passionate you are, but it could be plumbing. It could be a carpenter. It could be a, you know, a race car driver. You and I are doing, I think, what we were sort of put on this earth to do. Our talents are inclined towards what we're doing today. That's such a great gift. It's so fantastic for us to be able to do that. Some people are envious. Oh, you do sports and you're out of athletes. Listen, it's a job like any other job. But you and I have that gene. And even at age, it's like, yeah, I've got to keep using. A friend of mine, I did a book last year or two years ago. A friend of mine used to be the CEO of Bimo, and he was doing his memoir, and he said,

can you help me write the book? And so I said, sure, et cetera. And it came out. It was a bestseller, a business bestseller. It was nominated for the Canadian Business Book of the Year. And now I'm doing a project for him. He's involved at the University of Toronto with what's called the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies. And he said, well, I need somebody to write the history of it. So I'm doing that on the side. So anything that makes you interested in finding out about stuff, I'm reading about the Knights and the Crusades and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, I'm lucky. So as I say, that would be my advice to anybody out there, young people out there, find out where you do well because it'll be surprising how much you like it when you're successful at it, because you're good at it.

If anybody, if you're going to be on a beach or at the lake and you've got your lawn chair and your your cold drink and you're looking for a great read right there. If hockey, if you're a hockey fan of any team and the trades and that thing kind of gets you going, this is a good one. You and your son, Evan, with deal with it. I should say we were self-published this time. There's the first time I was self-published, which is a whole other experience. And so I'm doubly thankful to you that you're promoting the book and helping. us out and talking about it. People who want to get it, you can get it either paperback copy, like the one you've got, or Kindle. Go on Amazon and just put deal with it, and it'll come up for

you. If you want, you can go to my website, Bruce Dobigan Books.C.A. And all my books are there with links to how to find them. Actually, right now I'm in the process. I've got a portable scanner and I'm scanning all of my old books now and I'm going to put them out because they never were Kindle in those days. Sure, yeah. You're asking how I'm filling my data? That's not saying. Wow. Yeah. That's a job.

See, that's work, regardless of what people say. Dude, it was great seeing you. We're doing our Costco run, bumped India. Good to see you as always. I'm really happy to see that you're, because there was a health scare. I'm glad you're doing well. And whenever I talk to you, the first thing you bring up are grandkids and your kids and family and all of that.

And it's awesome that you're enjoying. Very kind of say that. And I'm very interested and proud to see you guys. punching away and keeping at it and keeping the thing going. It's fun to watch. As I said to you in the store, interesting, of course, our buddy who's in the Lakes, the Finger Lakes District of New York State, that's the lakes country, the cottage country.

I used to go down there all the time. So I know Skeeney Atlas in Geneva and Jamestown. That's where, there used to be the New York Penn Baseball League through all those small towns in the summer. I wonder if they ran into Rett in the water. and hole occasionally. Yeah, there's a chance. There's a very good chance in that. Bruce Dobigan, you're one of the good ones.

Thanks, buddy. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.