Friday, August 7, 2026

The Contrarian: The Canadiens’ cap situation is bad, and other fake NHL arguments

Welcome back to The Contrarian, the feature where you state the obvious and then I tell you why you’re wrong.

It’s been over a year since we’ve done this, because I forgot I’ve been waiting for you to come up with some worthy challenges. But with Slow News Summer crawling along, this is as good a time as any for me to do what modern sports media is apparently supposed to do best: Argue loudly and aggressively for positions I may or may not actually believe in.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic




Sunday, August 2, 2026

Help me become a better contrarian

Hey folks…

It's been a while since we've done an edition of The Contrarian. A reminder: You send in a statement that you think is obvious or inarguable, and I’ll try to come up with the contrarian view.

We've done a few of these, and the ones that work best find that sweet spot of feeling difficult but not impossible. "Mark Messier was a bad signing for the Canucks" and "Ray Bourque's Cup win was good" worked great. Stuff like "Connor McDavid is good at hockey" or "Ice is cold", not so much. Your job is to set me up, not stump me completely, although a little degree of difficulty should keep me sharp.

Send me your sure-thing statement via email at dgbcontrarian@gmail.com.