Shutdown Pair

Tag: blogs

  • Thanks, Craig Rivet, and BLOGGER SOLIDARITY

    First off, Craig Rivet is a healthy scratch again tonight, with Weber in his place.  Most interesting is this bit from Lindy Ruff:

    Mike hasn’t been in but we feel that it gives us a physical defenseman, a guy with some edge and we’re going to give him a shot

    Physical defenseman is what Rivet was, when he first got here.  Remember those days?  I thought trading for him was a solid move, despite his age, as he was under a contract that was not too painful, and he came with a rep as being a serious tough guy.  Not bad for scoring, either.  He was a bulldozer in front of the net, voted captain by his peers, and his second game with the team had him deeply involved in the Islanders “Kid’s Day” brawl.  The team rolled right along with him, but it was short-lived.  First a knee injury, then a bum shoulder sidelined Rivet for longer and longer stretches.  A team that started the season without a regulation loss in their first eight games now couldn’t manage to win two in a row.  There were other injuries and struggling players, to be sure, but Rivet’s influence in those early games can’t be overlooked.  Nothing has happened with his roster status or captaincy, but it’s a matter of time.  All I ask is that we remember that there were good times.

    Now, on the fun-time yesterday.  Twitter started to buzz (mildly at that) about Tim Connolly sporting a black eye…and the oddity that maybe Derek Roy was to blame.  It seemed ridiculous, so we started pestering people that were there about it, and checking the pictures.  There wasn’t much to go on at first, so most of us shrugged and waited for more information.  Honestly, most interest in it seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek, with jokes about giving “that’s great, Derek” Roy a medal.  Our ears perked up when Matthew Barnaby tweeted about the Roy/Connolly angle, which he refuted a short time later, with basically the same story Ruff gave Vogl.  There are many opinions out there on this matter, but here’s my take:  Vogl vastly overrates the impact of what we discuss in the boundless wastes of Twitter.  He seemed to see us as plotting mayhem from our underground warrens, boiling out of our lightless tunnels like so many sewer rats to disparage Derek Roy’s and Tim Connolly’s good names.  Most of us seemed to just be having fun with it until the inevitable denial/explanation came.  After that, we denizens of the dark would’ve shrugged, and gotten back to our photoshops and our statistical analyses.  But no, Vogl just HAD to get us all riled up by ripping thousands of sports fans and a fair number of his own colleagues at the same time.  Now, whenever a local blogger or twitter-er needs an example of ‘old media’ that ‘doesn’t get it’, Vogl’s name will be the first one brought up.  All because he took offense (it seems to me) at having to follow up with a rumor that came from Twitter, except for the fact that real people at Catwalk saw the shiner and started asking about it.  But hey, it livened up a few days with no Sabres games.  Maybe we should thank him.  NAHHHH.

  • Hockey Bloggers and Access

    The big discussion point today (thanks to this article over at Puck Daddy amongst other things) is credentials and access for hockey bloggers.  The sticking point raised on the reference conference call is actually valid (why should someone have access to our locker room on the road when they are not welcome at home?), and that I don’t have a problem with.  Where things break down, though, is where the line is drawn now between bloggers and pro sportswriters.  There are bloggers doing fantastic work, both independently and under the umbrella of a larger media network (such as SBNation).  I see no reason why they (if they want it) shouldn’t be accomodated with full access.  Individual teams (such as the Rangers) disagree, though.

    Let’s look at an example, the Buffalo News’s own Mike Harrington.  He works for a newspaper, and writes columns that get published on actual paper along with his twitter account and the paper’s Sabres Edge blog.  But he has no problem blasting Darcy or Lindy when it’s warranted, which apparently would be enough to keep him out of the visiting room at MSG, without the get out of jail free card that is his News byline.

    Let’s face it:  there should be a way to be a blogger and be credentialed with full access in every city.  The NHL itself has all sorts of social media connections, and should be able to assist teams that need it in fostering them as well.  Bloggers that want access (not all of us do) should be able to request it, and then have their site looked over by the team’s communications team.  If the person can deliver coherent thoughts and doesn’t sound like a moron, step two would be a quick phone ‘interview’ to ensure they aren’t intimidated talking to people and wouldn’t be out of place in a media scrum.  I’d also have no problem with teams having a measuring stick of some type (how long your blog has existed+monthly pageviews+Twitter follower count or somesuch) to weed out people just looking for a free seat in the arena and a chance at getting autographs.

    For my part, I’ve never really looked into the possibility here in Buffalo.  I get the feeling it’s not something that would happen, and anyway I don’t have the confidence in a group to speak up and ask questions.  It would be nice to be in the press box and able to listen in directly to the press conferences and locker room interviews, but really it wouldn’t have a huge effect on what I actually do.  Still, access done right would be a benefit to teams, as the media climate continues to shift towards a mix of ‘new’ and ‘old’ media.