this liveblog thing might catch on

Once again, I am liveblogging tonights hockey game. Oilers vs. Blue Jackets.

Oilers-Flames 2009 Gameday live-blog

Okay, its perhaps a little late to link to this now, but I did a live blogging of the 2009 Oilers season opener, a 4-3 loss to the Flames thanks to a Khabibulin blunder.

Highlights:

• In retrospect, its not surprising that Don Cherry knew more about hockey than me. It's still disappointing.
• Its not a party in Edmonton unless there are Scotsmen with bagpipes.
• "Early on we're getting a feel of the identity that Pat Quinn wants to bring to Edmonton" is the comment after a big fight in front of the Calgary net. Er, Pat Quinn wants the team identity to be "having to fight to regain momentum after dropping a goal in the first 12 seconds?"
• Sounds like the Oilers are going to be a crash the net sort of team. Is Ryan Smyth available to join the roster?
• The Oilers power play under Pat Quinn is so far just as shitty as it was under Craig MacTavish. Special teams will sink this club, mark my words.
• 20 hits in 18 minutes. Is niiiice.
• Two losing Ontario coaches give pressers about "simplifying" the game. Thus a 10 minute discussion of what good advice it is that didn't help Ottawa or Toronto win their games today.
• You can buy a DVD with the Flames "10 best playoff games". I think all of them were in 1989.
• Did Hemsky just deliver a blow to Regehr? Holy Christ.
• Edmonton crowd is chanting "Calgary sucks". All Lee can mutter is that the fans are "trying to motivate their team". Its not like the "asshole" chant when Pronger is on, you're allowed to say "sucks" on the air. How else could anybody review The Hour?
• It still makes me shiver involuntarily watching Pat Quinn chewing gum on our Oiler bench.
• Edmonton's penalty kill is similarly no better than last year. Phaneuf just scored to make it 1-3.
• "Khabibulin doesn't know where it [the puck] is!" I really really really wish Lee wouldn't keep getting chances to say that.
• CBC just played the "Peter Puck" segment. I half expected his debut to come with the disclaimer that he might disappear soon and he's only here now because Glen Sather bailed him out.
• Every time we play Calgary and Moss is on the ice, I keep hearing "Moss has the puck" and thinking ever-so-fleetingly that Joey Moss has somehow made the team. Right now I'm not convinced that wouldn't be a good idea.
• Is it too late to get Roloson back? Bulin misplays the puck again, this time in the low slot, and David Moss gets the puck into the empty net.

Every stinking year

Just once in the last decade I would like not to have to look at the Oilers in a position like this in late March:

The Oilers blogger controversy

Right now the blog world and the media world are facing off for what seems like the 89,433,012th time, this time over a Covered in Oil posting that happened to feature a live-blog... by somebody in the press box on other business. (Minor caveat: the business was entirely post-game, so he wasn't robbing his employer as some commentators believe).

In my mind though the most interesting part of this is not the Oilers heavy handed treatment of somebody who at the end of the day was a fan (this wouldn't be the first time) but rather the reaction of several media members. What caught my eye was Jason Gregor, the loudmouthed know-it-all on Edmonton's Sportsradio station. In an interview with the Edmonton Journal he simultaneously shows how condescending he is to most bloggers but also illustrates the problem that Edmonton media (and Toronto/Montreal media, and Vancouver/Calgary/Ottawa media to a lesser extent) have: that they 99% of the time wind up as apologetic mouthpieces for the team, too scared to say anything that would cause management to deny them press passes in the future. (And at the end of the day, an Oilers VP indicated that it was the "sassy" blogging style that didn't "properly respect" certain less-than-NHL-calibre players the Oilers are trying to sell T-shirts of)

Take for example this:

My beef with bloggers is that anyone can be one. Most are nameless, faceless people who write their opinions, but unfortunately there are too many false facts in blogs. I understand the next generation gets most of their information from the Internet, but unfortunately lots of it is horribly written or inaccurate.

Yes because no hockey fan in Canada ever recalls hearing a whitewashed story of some controversy that years later gets hinted at being untrue. Par example, for years Tommy Salo's Oilers performance was deteriorating. Rumours abounded that his wife was being unfaithful, and that Stanley Cup winning Mike Comrie was the "other man" (full disclosure: Mike Comrie has been the "other man" in a past relationship of mine as well). Meanwhile the local media merely reported on the deterioration. After Salo had left the team several major outlets hinted that there was a simple reason for Salo's problems, a "personal issue" that they had known about the whole time and wouldn't report on. Brutal and unfair to the player to let that information out? Probably. Would discussing a hockey player's sex life be one of the slimy and underhanded things that media are detested for? Most certainly. On the other hand, at the end of the day Gregor's media buddies were giving us unaccurate information. Hockey players may not be Maxime Bernier, but they also aren't E. Prill in west Edmonton either.

Blogging is like most things in our society nowadays. Quick, impromptu and impersonal. How many bloggers could actually do an interview, and you don't need people learning on the job at the NHL, CFL, NFL, NBA or NLL level.

The problem with media getting "personal" a lot of the time is that selective biases can become far too strong. Being on the VIA rail train with Elizabeth May can result in a lot of good human interest tales regarding a new face on the political scene, but it also means a tendency to fluff over criticism of "my new friend" who a reporter is socializing with on a day-to-day basis. How many bloggers could sit down and host a one-on-one fireside chat with the Prime Minister? Does it ultimately matter? Gregor is chosen for the radio because of his voice, his ability to "broadcast" his voice to the room as it were, and some sports knowledge and interest. Can he analyze stats as several mathematically-inclined bloggers do on a regular basis? Is there no division of labour anywhere in his world?

Dylan probably possesses few of the on-camera skills of Peter Mansbridge, but I didn't recall that being a necessary quality for a written medium. What is happening here is that there's a group of self-publishing opinion writers out there who will have opinions that paint team management in a bad light. The reporters who count on the Oilers or Maple Leafs signing off on press passes year after year will never express those opinions if they share them, but are quick to defend the hand that feeds them if they don't. Which is why bloggers suddenly have a built-in market -- they go against the mainstream media grain. This is the same reason the Washington Capitals embrace blogs: their mainstream media ignores the NHL entirely, so bloggers provide a counter-voice: hockey is good. Myself and the other writers of this blog and the writers of other hockey blogs and the readers of all hockey blogs agree with this basic premise, which in Canada puts us in the same category as the professional writers. But in other areas there will continue to be this battle.

"Just don’t expect (Oilers media relations manager) JJ Hebert to issue you a pass and save you a chair alongside (newspaper columnists) Terry Jones or Dan Barnes in the rink. And don’t shout indignantly about being discriminated against when he doesn’t."

This comment from sports reporter Robert Brownlee is hilariously enough making my point: Jones is always in perfect agreement with the Oilers in the same way as the Toronto Star was always in perfect agreement with Jean Chretien. And both recipients of the fawning media coverage didn't like it when somebody said otherwise. Just ask CinO's Dave Berry. Or Coleman Prison's Conrad Black...

Ray Emery is Russia bound

I know its maybe bad form to ask this, but when disgraced clubhouse cancer Ottawa Senators goalie Ray Emery moved to Russia to play hockey, was he aware of this report?

Cocaine trafficking is not widespread in Russia. Cocaine prices in Russia remain very high, though the drug is easily obtained.

And you know, he might just wind up staying in Russia for a while.

Damn

I guess success is a magnet for sought after free agents. I was hoping Hossa would make his way here this offseason.

On a related note, I think Gillis is insane for having made this offer.

The obvious reason Edmonton lost the fight for Hossa

Just look at his girlfriend. Don't you think that when she heard "Edmonton" nightmares of being Lauren Pronger the Second bounced around endlessly in her head?

How else do you explain Hossa turning down $1.6 million per year?