Bitter Leaf Turns 6

I started this blog six years ago - March 26, 2006. The Leafs were floundering as an organization, they were out of the playoffs, the GM's moves were not panning out, and the future looked cloudy. It's hard to believe how much has changed...

Over the last six years, I've posted nearly 500 entries, been read by maybe 35 people and logged a very small number of page views. More importantly, I've found a somewhat productive outlet to deal with the Leafs and the frustration and disappointment that unites us all.

A look back at some of my favourite posts from the past six years:

1. My very first post: Tedesco, Ferguson and Me
2. Toronto sports media story generator (this one might be my favourite)
3. Taking on one of the most tired tropes: Are the Fans to blame?
4. On JFJ's Reign of Error and his firing
5. First Leafs games - my daughter's and my son's
6. Top Ten items I'd like to see banned from Leafs coverage
7. An open letter to the Ottawa Senators
8. My first anti-Burke post - 7 months before he was hired
9. On Sundin and the Leafs' captains - I'm so sick of Goodbyes
10. Some dislike for Darcy Tucker here, here, here, here, here and here.

Thanks to all of you who have read an entry, left a comment or sent me an email. Hopefully I'll be able to put up a post about the Leafs winning a playoff game when this Blog turns 10.

I declare thumb war

Roy MacGregor filed nearly 1,000 words in the Globe and Mail on the sad state of story telling in sports ("The Thumbing Down of Sportswriting"). I want to ignore it, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't.

I loved MacGregor's book The Last Season. He was very nice to me the one time I met him. I've heard great things about him from friends and colleagues, but this story, this 1,000 words of meandering, hand-wringing, pap. I couldn't resist...

It is the classic skit of sports: Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First?

Today, however, sports is almost entirely about “Who’s first?” and while being first with information obviously matters in the business of sports journalism, the obsession with being first to shout out even the most arcane and meaningless “news” has so ballooned beyond reason that … well, it isn’t funny at all.

There may indeed be an obsession to be first, but it’s a meaningless pursuit and it's meaningless to rail against.

Never before has a scoop been less important.

Never before has source mattered less.

As Chuck Klosterman noted, "if something legitimately interesting happens…it’s immediately going to be linked to on 200 other sites…If something on The Big Lead gets linked to Deadspin, nobody who finds it on Deadspin gives a shit how it got here or where it came from originally. Following the link is no different (and no less efficient) than reading the original content in its original setting. The experience is identical…Networking is far more essential than writing or reporting…I will eventually get all that information without even trying. It aggregates itself."

Sports journalism – the well from which all great sports books have been drawn – has taken its eye off the ball.

I’m sorry, but did MacGregor say all sports books have been drawn from the well of journalism?

I'd submit that two of the best sports books ever written are The Game and Ball Four. Neither one was touched by a journalist. Salvage King Ya makes my top five of sports books and author Mark Anthony Jarman isn’t a sports journalist either.

I don’t mean to get all pedantic on this, but if MacGregor wants to build his case about writing, the words he picks have to matter…

The pendulum that swings between breaking news on minutiae – length of suspensions, minor trades, contract breakdowns, retirement of marginal players – and “storytelling” on the far side has been stuck for some time now on the picayune.

A pendulum is the wrong analogy here. It’s not a pendulum it’s a continuum. It’s not one or another, it’s a matter of degree.

All of the breaking news can be part of a larger narrative, an element of great storytelling. And great storytelling can exist despite a narrow band of editors, reporters or fans being stuck on the minutiae of sports.

Somebody used to read all that agate in the sports pages right?

Please understand, both sides are important to good sports coverage. Both sides feed off each other and complement each other, one doing the telling, the other the expanding and explaining, one the announcing, the other the introducing. In today’s sports journalism, however, the announcing has become so paramount that readers and viewers rarely get anything more of players they increasingly know less and less of.

I’m with MacGregor right up until the notion that “announcing has become so paramount.”

Readers have never had more choice. Never.

There is an incredible amount of information out there for sports fans.

When it comes to coverage, readers can get as deep as they like or stay as shallow as they want.

Into advanced stats and sabrmetrics? There are blogs, websites, and writers out there for you.

Like long form pieces? The internet doesn’t have word limits or the constraints of column inches.

Your favourite player is European? There are fans out there translating and posting the latest interviews, no matter the original language in which it was conducted.

Want just the facts, you can get those too.

This is a golden age for sports fans and we should be celebrating it.

This is not the raging of a Luddite contrarian. In 1983, I was The Toronto Star’s guinea pig for the Tandy TRS-80 (“Trash 80”) computer that transformed sports filing and had no small part to do in killing off afternoon newspapers. I love what the Internet makes possible, admire those who use social media effectively and even appreciate the power of Twitter.

Me too.

What this is, hopefully, is a cautionary flag being raised by someone who sees the sports world marching into a journalism trap where Gay Talese’s monumental study of Joe DiMaggio, the Esquire magazine feature The Silent Season of a Hero, would have to be delivered in 140 characters or less.

Whoa. Stop right there.

No.

There is so much wrong with that sentence I don’t know where to start.

Twitter has not replaced the long form story. It never will. Twitter is just another channel to promote your writing. To exchange quick ideas and share links.

Journalists continue to publish incredible long form work while (get ready for it) being on twitter.

Don’t believe me? Here are the 2009 Canadian National Magazine Award Winners and their twitter accounts.

Gold – Carol Shaben
Silver – Chris Nutall-Smith

Off the top of my head, here are five other magazine award winners working in long form who have twitter accounts (and manage to produce pieces longer than 140 characters):

Chris Jones
Michael Kinsley
James Fallows
Tom Chiarella

Scott Raab

Somehow these great storytellers are able to write compelling, award winning, long form pieces that manage to break free from a 140 character limit.

In fact, if long form journalism is your thing, there’s a twitter account that does nothing but promote it: Longreads (if you're on twitter, follow them).

What it means for the future of sports books – think of Roger Kahn, George Plimpton, Ken Dryden, Roger Angell, Earl McRae, A.J. Liebling et al. – is even more disturbing.

It is called, derogatorily, “BlackBerry Journalism.” Television, ironically, is the worst offender, with the most visual of tools reducing so much of sports journalism to talking heads reading off rumours or various crumbs of minutiae handed off to them by those in a position to control such information. Having a number of excellent “hockey insiders” is critical to good hockey reporting in this country – think of TSN’s Bob McKenzie and a small handful of others – but when every new hire is presented as a “hockey insider,” you dangerously approach a situation where when the sports establishment – in this case, the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association – controls the information, they also control the message.

Let’s start with the problematic list.

George Plimpton was a great writer. But he wasn’t a newspaper man. He didn’t cover a beat like MacGregor. He pursued larger, literary pieces.

Could twitter, blogs, social media have had an impact on Plimpton? Sure.

Would it have eliminated, constrained or been detrimental to his larger body of work? I doubt it.

Plimpton was known for, among other things, playing alongside professional athletes and writing about it. Looking back at Plimpton's incredible body of work, were he working today I would guess that he'd be just as accomplished AND a youtube sensation. Sid Finch would have gone viral on twitter in 45 seconds or less. The Paris Review would likely have launched, like Grantland, in a digital only form.

Ken Dryden is one verbose dude. Nobody’s going to put a limit on that guy.

Earl McRae may be beloved by other journalists, but putting him alongside Plimpton, Liebling and Angell is a HUGE stretch. HUGE.

As for TV, I agree with MacGregor that it is the worst medium for trying to exchange meaningful information, but I’d also wager this has been the case for at least 30 years.

As for the NHL and the NHLPA controlling the message, I don’t see it.

Thanks to centre ice and other digital packages, fans can watch the games for themselves - and grey market streams will circumvent the NHL’s bizarre geographic blackout rules. PVRs give fans the power of slow motion remote control on every single play in the game whenever they want it. The ubiquity of Youtube makes those replays accessible to fans around the world.

And who wants to hear from the NHL or the NHLPA anyways? When was the last time they made a meaningful, insightful or sincere statement?

What the national game needs is more “hockey outsiders” not beholden to the minutiae dispensers. And what all sports needs is more old-fashioned storytelling.

MacGregor and I are in full agreement on this thought, but where we differ is on the execution.

I'd argue that sportsfans have never had more or better access to outsiders who are telling great stories. That there's never been a time when more fans could get more information from such great writers with such ease and at so little cost. Often the best way to find this great content is through Twitter.

Where MacGregor and I also differ - I don’t think there’s a lack of old-fashioned story telling, I think there’s a lack of insightful storytelling.

Tell us about the players, please.

No. Don’t tell me about the players. I don’t care about the players. I don’t need to know that the goon has a heart of gold or the agitator is the baby of the family.

Tell us how the game is being played.

No. Don’t do this either.

I watch all 82 games. I can listen on the radio, stream it on my computer, catch the highlights on a 24 hour non-stop news cycle. If there’s any information out there that’s of lesser value than telling fans how the game is being played, I’m not aware of it.

Wait. I thought of one: hypothetical line combinations. These have lesser value.

We actually don’t care all that much about minor trades or whether the suspension is four games or six, or how the contract has an average cap hit of $X-million a year. A couple of good insiders can handle that role; it doesn’t take an entire network to chase.

Sure. But as a fan I want to know this stuff.

Today’s sports reporters are not to blame. The various “platforms” they work for treat them like hamsters stuck in an endless wheel, spinning nowhere. They must set up games, tweet from morning skates, transcribe tape, blog from the rink, upload video that no one watches, and file, file, file…

If these are the same sports reporters who file about teams not giving them adequate quotes or putting the best players into the scrums - they are to blame.

If these are the same sports writers that file stories about their travel itineraries - they are to blame.

If these are the same sports writers who will ascend the ranks and become sports editors demanding this type of content - they will be to blame.

The obsession with “content” has meant next to no time for substance. In far too many cases, tweeting and blogging have become a form of public masturbation, where size matters – as in number of hits or followers one can attract. Hits, newspapers will one day realize, are not circulation.

I dunno about this. Plenty of guys can do content and substance. James Mirtle sure does. Jonas Siegel has stepped it up since moving to 1050. Joe Posnaski is fantastic. Bruce Arthur is great. Rob Neyer is informative on twitter and files a pretty mean column. And so on…

In sports, however, storytelling has always mattered, greatly. It is not dead, just rather unwell these days. We still have excellent books appearing this fall by fine story-weavers (Gare Joyce, Al Strachan and Steve Simmons to mention three);

Whoa. What is it with MacGregor and these lists?

Gare Joyce does not deserve this company. Gare Joyce can write. I don’t know that I’ve enjoyed anything Strachan has ever written or said. Half the time I don’t know what Simmons is on about and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either. If MacGregor is holding up Strachan and Simmons as what's missing in sports journalism, let's just stop right here.

we have a new publication, Sportsnet Magazine, that holds promise; and there are, importantly, a handful of television essayists who do much-appreciated work. Unfortunately, storytelling costs a lot more money than yet another panel discussion.

Wait. Is this is about the business model of modern media? Talk about backing into a lede.

It can't be though, there's so much great content out there for anyone willing to look. Great storytelling has never been cheaper, more accessible or less constrained.

I have spent the past few weeks rereading old sports classics such as Paul Gallico’s Farewell to Sport and Leonard Koppett’s The Rise and Fall of the Press Box. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if Canadian sports editors and TV producers had a look back themselves.

First off, Paul Gallico can write. That dude is a must read. Seriously, order some of his books from your library. Track his essays and interviews down on the net. It's good stuff.

That said, Gallico only became an author after his newspaper sportswriting gig came to an end. He retired from sportswriting in 1936 to dedicate his life full-time to writing larger pieces. (Like Talese, Angell, Plimpton, later-stages Liebling, Gallico did his best work when he wasn’t working on a beat or for a daily paper.)

Or maybe that's the point of all this? In order to get great storytelling in sports, sports writers are going to have to leave their day jobs and concentrate full time on writing.

To be frank, given what greets me when I open the paper or turn on the TV, I could get behind most of them quitting. I'd also set the over-under on the production of great long form essays resulting from such a sea change at 4.5.

Koppett, the brilliant New York Times and Oakland Tribune sportswriter who died shortly after his book appeared in 2003, was particularly prescient, seeing that the overload of media in dressing rooms was killing thoughtful exchange. He also believed that “excessive use of statistics, if not checked, may turn out to be a fatal malady.” It’s certainly getting close.

I’ve never been in a professional dressing room. I have no idea what is said between reporters and athletes, but I can probably count on two fingers the number of times an athlete has said something profound in a post-game scrum.

As for stats, I love them. I like transparency and the open exchange of information. If stats aren’t for you that’s totally cool. But a fatal malady? If anything is a fatal malady for narrative and sport it’s talking head professional athletes. It's the meaningless pre-game, mid-game, post game quote from the jocks who just want to give it their best shot and, the good Lord willing, it will all work out.

But Koppett also wrote, “The secret of good reporting is simply being around.” Hanging out, he said, is “how a writer learns to know what he needs, what and how to write about it, to evaluate relevance and fairness, and how to distinguish the important from the trivial.”

It’s a fine sentiment, sir, and we’d certainly be happy to try it if we didn’t have to tweet, blog, upload video, edit audio and continually check our BlackBerrys.

Gary Smith said the same thing (he's another must read for those who like long form sports writing).

But does anyone else see the irony in MacGregor burning 1,000 words bemoaning the lack of long form story telling instead of, you know, writing a 1,000 word good ol’ fashioned sports story?

No.

How about the fact that he tweeted about it?

HNIC: Career Back-up Makes Bad

Anyone who wanders into Major League Baseball can't help but notice the stark contrast between the field of play and the uneasy space just off it, where the executives and the scouts make their livings. The game itself is a ruthless competition. Unless you're very good, you don't survive in it. But in the space just off the field of play there really is no level of incompetence that won't be tolerated.
- Michael Lewis

The late Roone Arledge transformed the way television covered sport.

Those beautiful shots of the host city and its skyline that open each broadcast? His wife’s idea. Arledge introduced it after going to San Francisco to see a Major League Baseball game.

Multiple cameras and, amazingly, cameras that move? Arledge.

The instant replay? Arledge.

Iso cams? Arledge.

Slow motion? Arledge again.

Monday Night Football? The dude created it.

The only staple of modern sports coverage Arledge didn’t invent, and the one that’s become the most essential part of my nightly sports viewing? The mute button.

I get that the Leafs aren’t a particularly good hockey team. I watch them struggle night in, night out. I can read the standings, a box score, and you don’t need to go into the agate type to do a quick calculation of their goal differential (I’ll save you the time: it’s not good).

I also know that there are huge swaths of this country that takes great delight in the Leafs struggles, a feeling normally described as Schadenfreude but often seems more akin to pulling the wings off a fly.

But Saturday night’s Leafs Habs game may have hit new lows in terms of tone and content. Garry Galley and Glenn Healy combined for a rare daily double of snark and stupidity.

Healy was a career back-up goalie who put up a .887 save percentage. He received a Stanley Cup ring for opening the bench door on the 1994 New York Rangers, which is the equivalent of claiming part of a Pulitzer for working on the copy desk. The main exception to that analogy being, the kid working the copy desk likely wouldn’t run his mouth as much about his role in the big win.

I recall Garry Galley being a marginal player on a lot of teams (Boston and Philly in the mid to late 80s). I had no idea he was a broadcaster and I wish it were still so. I’m not sure what team he normally covers but I hope he returns to them as soon as possible.

This isn’t a complaint because the Leafs lost. The Habs were hands-down the better club and were full marks for the win. They deserved the two points and they seized them.

I also - as anyone who has ever read this blog, listened to one of the PPP podcasts, or met me in person knows – have no problem with criticizing the Leafs. And, let’s face it, there is much to criticize.

What I do have a problem with is irrational or unfounded criticism and Saturday night’s broadcast was replete with it.

Two quick examples:

Countless times Galley and Healy spoke about Thomas Kaberle’s propensity to never shoot the puck. A quick look at NHL.com shows that Kaberle’s actually 31st in the league among defencemen in shots. In half an NHL season Kaberle has just 13 less shots than James Wisniewski who, according to Galley and Healy, is a revelation on Montreal’s defence.

Viewers were also told that Montreal hasn’t given Toronto “a sniff” this whole season. That’s absolutely true if you ignore that Toronto beat Montreal 3-2 on October 7 and 3-1 on December 11th and the season series is actually 2-2-0.

On and on it went, the snark coming so thick from Healy it was as if he’d ingested an entire strata of comments from TSN or HFBoards and the toxins and stupidity were desperately trying to purge themselves from his body.

The mute button is an adequate response for dealing with Nick Kypreos’ history of head injuries, Doug Maclean’s rampant managerial incompetence, Healy’s chronic unfunny snark and the regularly scheduled rantings of Pierre Maguire. The downside is, I don’t get to actually hear the game and its wonderful sounds.

The crowd at the Bell Centre has to be the best in hockey. They are passionate, engaged, and they clearly “get” the game. That’s what I want to hear when I watch hockey and that’s what the game lacks when I have to keep hitting mute.

I’ve often said that I would be willing to pay extra for the CBC or TSN, or Sportsnet (Home of the StupidTM) to offer a digital package with game only sounds. I would have paid a pretty premium last night.

In a country full of journalism schools and a passion for hockey it’s shocking how few “outsiders” make it on air. Many of the sideline guys and panelists are outstanding, but when it comes to colour guys, the metric for competence seems to start and end at former player.

The Leafs, love them or hate them, draw the largest ratings in the country. They play in the most populous centre among the largest corporations in the land. They are a terrible hockey team that, oddly, is much beloved. National broadcasters, you would think, might want to court this massive fan base. Maybe finding one or two on-air personalities that aren’t so openly hostile, or ill-informed, would be a good start.

Might be the sort of thing an innovator like Roone Arledge would do.

**addendum**

Glenn Healy added this gem to the Saturday night broadcast: "I played for the Toronto Maple Leafs and you don’t get shutout on Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada.”

That's a great insight from Healy, especially in light of his performance with the Leafs against the New York Islanders on Saturday, October 4, 1997.

Yeah, it was a 3-0 shutout loss for the Leafs with Healy between the pipes.

Leafs Aren't Toronto's Only Embarrassment

The catalyst for starting this blog over four years ago was an asinine article by Theresa Tedesco in the National Post. I was fed up with what passed for sports journalism in Toronto and took to blogger.com to vent.

For years there was easy content to be had in questioning the work of what Cox Bloc so aptly came to call the mittenstringers.

A few years ago, I stopped writing about these half-wit media articles. As I noted with the Cox Bloc boys over at Zambonic Youth: 1,000 blogging monkeys at 1,000 laptops in 1,000 basements couldn't staunch the flow of crap and nonsense that passes for sports journalism in this town.

But I simply can't resist the latest entry from the Toronto Star's Municipal Affairs columnist Royson James.

This is seriously craptacular work. I don't know that I could come up with such a steaming pile but I can certainly question it. So let us begin....

Toronto deserves more from the Toronto Maple Leafs. The hockey club owes us.

Agreed on the first part, not so sure that I'm following on the second...maybe in as much as the Toronto Star owes the citizenry some informed insight and quality writing.

The once-proud franchise in the centre of the hockey universe has long been the butt of jokes. Now, it is the answer to trivia questions on sports futility.

Wait, so it was ok for the Leafs to be the butt of jokes, but it's not ok for the same team to co-hold the record for the longest Stanley Cup playoff drought along with Los Angeles and St. Louis? That's an interesting line in the sand...

Meanwhile, in remarkable endeavours radiating beyond this hockey graveyard, Torontonians are thriving, reaching for the stars.

Did anyone else read that with Casey Kasem's voice in their head? Ok, guess it was just me...

K’Naan waves the city’s flag across the globe as his catchy anthem for Africa’s World Cup dominates the airwaves. And the industry’s top rapper, Drake, hails from the T-Dot.

Fuck I hate that waving flags song, my daughter butchers it daily. She sings it like it's a camp song for the hearing impaired.

Is this what we hold up as a success today? A tone-deaf song that sends shivers down the spines of parents everywhere?

As for the rest of James' thoughts, isn't it really just a re-hash of the well known "Rick Moranis Principle." A predictable cycle that's marked by the Leafs hitting bottom just as a Toronto born entertainer hits their peak?

When the Leafs went without a cup from 1951 to '61, I'm pretty sure the Toronto Telegram filled their pages with notes on Christopher Plummer's success and the decline of the Leafs.

But back to Mr. James...

It’s almost TIFF time, when the world’s film pilgrims trek to our screening houses, as if this were Cannes or something.

Two guys, the late David Pecaut and Tony Gagliano, had a dream to stage an annual festival of the arts and creativity that attracts the world’s best. Luminato has delivered as promised.

Canada’s banking prowess has been on display during the global economic collapse, earning praise and envy from world leaders. Toronto is its nexus.

Even our oft-criticized Mayor David Miller has been stellar on the world stage. He’s the elected chairman of C-40 global cities, 40 large cities from Addis Ababa through London, New York, Sydney and Warsaw that are committed to fighting climate change.

And since last Thursday, the Toronto City Summit Alliance has been staging an ambitious effort, Toronto Homecoming, to lure back the city’s great scientists and bright minds and world-class talent to work in the Toronto of their birth or affection.

Great. Someone should commission Dolores Claman to write a big bouncy anthem about all of this Toronto wonderfulness.

There is just one major boil on the city’s attractive buttocks. The Leafs.

Ouch. My favourite team reduced to an open sore.

But seriously, those NBA Raptors sure have certainly stepped up. I've lost track of how many NBA Titles they've amassed. What's that? Oh, ok - I've lost track of how long their consecutive playoff appearance streak is. Wait. Um, oh yeah, I forgot how much Hedo Turkoglu has down to promote the city of Toronto.

And those Jays! 17 years without a playoff appearance. They're doing the city proud! Just look at them, one second place finish in nearly a dozen years playing to crowds of 11,000.

No boil there. No siree.

Just the hockey.

The beloved hockey team, playing in the media capital of a hockey-crazed nation, is a blot on Toronto’s image.

A blot? Well, it could be if you really think a municipality's image is based on the performance of its local sports teams.

Oh, I see by the next paragraph that Mr. James certain does...

Now, wherever sports fans talk about losers, civic futility, championship droughts and sporting misery of global proportions, Toronto’s name is on the short list — up there with the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL, the Chicago Cubs and the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.

Can Royson James not even get the list right? If you're going to dump on my team, at least do your homework.

The list of crap municipalities and crap teams goes like this...San Diego hasn't won a pro-sports title since 1963; Cleveland since '64 and Buffalo since '65. Seattle last won with the Sonics in '79, and they lost that team in a heart wrenching manner.

Nobody talks about the Sacremento Kings, it's the Clippers who are mocked.

Does James not have access to wiki?

And, wait, didn't Chicago winning the Stanley Cup set this whole thing off? James says as much in his next paragraph...

The Chicago Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup this week, after 49 years of failure. Leafs fans are now hockey’s longest suffering, winless since 1967. For a country weaned on hockey this is unbearable.

Despite the logical disconnect in all of this, it should be noted that Leaf fans do indeed find this unbearable, but I have the feeling the majority of the country is quite fine with this.

Actually, I think "thrilled" is the word the rest of Canada prefers to use when referring to the Leafs lack of success.

Or "happy beyond belief."

But maybe Royson James doesn't need to know about that...

A generation of Torontonians — several, really — know nothing of Leaf glory, except from banners hanging from the roof of Maple Leaf Gardens and, now, the Air Canada Centre. What could it have been like to win three in a row in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s?

Hey, what if the media made a better effort to tell Torontonians and Leaf fans about 1967? Maybe that would help those lost generations?

You know, work "1967" in to a few more columns so people would be more aware of past glories. All of the media should be required to do it as some sort of civic duty.

But back to James' column:

The Blue Jays were fabulous. We told our children to cherish the back-to-back titles in 1991 and 1992 because it might never happen again. They scoffed. The folly of youth. Now they are young adults wondering if they’ll ever see a hockey parade up Bay St.

Wait, the Jays get another pass here? And Jays fans are wondering about a Leafs parade? Do editors get the weekend off at the Star?

Actually, the city’s descent into the hockey abyss is even more damaging and debilitating than fans realize — the annual ritual of futility numbing the senses to the depth of the loss.

For Leaf fans, there is no numbness, only greater expectation.

This city will explode like a post-season molotov cocktail hitting a Montreal cop car when the Leafs get their next playoff win. (and then Leaf fans will be mocked for celebrating early, for magnifying the commonplace into the celebratory. It's a can't lose proposition for the media machine).

Consider, since the likes of Frank Mahovolich and Red Kelly and Ted Kennedy, hockey’s best players have not worn the blue and white. Canada’s Team — the grand and glorious Maple Leafs — has failed to sign a single one of the game’s greatest players during all those championship-empty years.

Wayne Gretzky may consider this his NHL home city, but Leaf team owners managed to scuttle any chance The Great One would skate for the home side. Bobby Orr, Mark Messier, Pavel Bure, Teemu Selanne, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and the most spectacular talents shone elsewhere. Leaf fans settled for Darryl Sittler, Mats Sundin and Doug Gilmour.

Ok, there's this thing called the draft. NHL teams procure the rights to players for a set period of time and then...wait, Teemu Selanne and Pavel Bure? Seriously?!? You're going for a list of the greatest players that have been in the NHL since 1967 and you're going to put those two on the list ahead of Hasek, Roy, Trottier, Leetch (who played for Toronto), Clarke, Sakic, Bourque, Robinson. Really? Canuck please.

The New York Yankees routinely sign baseball’s biggest names and brightest stars. They pursue the best. They are the Yankees. That’s what they do.

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has no such pretentions. Their preoccupation, it seems, is to bring smiles to the faces of the teachers’ pension fund.

Yeah, screw the NHL's salary cap!

The Leafs should be above the rules of the game and just buy the best players at every position. The Yankess do it, why can't Toronto? Different league, different sport, different CBA, different rules, but it certainly worked for the Leafs and Rangers back before the lock-out.

Is it just me or is this article a deadly combination of badly researched, horribly written, and just plain awful. It's like the Howard the Duck of sports columns....and yet there's more:

The Chicago Black Hawks’ roster is replete with Ontario lads who would no doubt revel in playing for their province’s capital city. Leafs fans must demand they come home.

Screw the CBA and binding contracts! Bring back the C-Form! If you're born in Ontario you play for the Leafs. Leaf fans must demand that your place of birth dictates where you play...and all those Canadians that have found success in Hollywood or any foreign market, you need to get your asses back home - Hiccups, Little Mosque on the Prairie and The Bridge need you.

All around us Toronto is competing and succeeding against the world’s best. Only hockey embarrasses. Forty-three years of losing. Enough is enough. Bring home the cup!

Only hockey embarrasses.

Not the Raptors, not the Jays, not the Argos, not Mel Lastman's run-in with WHO, not Corey Haim, the $1B G20 summit or the $2M fake lake at the MTCC.

Not the MFP scandal, Adam Giambrone's great couch adventures, the mountains of dead animals at Toronto's Humane Society, or Dr. Anthony Galea's work with the NFL.

Not Nazim Gillani, not the polluted beaches where Torontonians can't swim, and certainly not Toronto Police fighting a visting soccer club from Chile.

Only the Leafs (and James' latest article). Speaking of which...

Maybe one of the tens of mayoral candidates can unveil a platform to deliver a Stanley Cup parade in Toronto during the next term of city council. Forget transit. Ending our image as losers is an election winner. Guaranteed.

Should any Mayoral candidates want to take this up as a platform, I'm sure they can get some great advice from their municipal colleagues in Vancouver. It certainly has done the Canucks franchise wonders, their drought is only a non-embarrassing 39 years.

Stanley Cup Droughts

Why does someone, in the midst of your worst suffering, decide the time has come to drive home, disguised in the form of character analysis, all the contempt they have been harboring for you all these years? What in your suffering makes their superiority so fulsome, so capacious, makes the expression of it so enjoyable?
Philip Roth, American Pastoral

A strange thing happened when the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. Amidst the celebrations by the victors and grief for the losers, a number of hockey people turned their sites on Toronto.

Yup, Toronto.

The culmination of an interesting regular season and a tremendously compelling playoff, during one of the most remarkable moments in professional sports, is apparently not the appropriate time to celebrate the victors or recognize the fight of the Flyers. No, it's the time to talk about the Leafs. More specifically, it should go without saying, it's time to point out the Leafs' failings.

You see, with the Blackhawks victory, the Leafs now have the longest current Stanley Cup drought in the NHL - an astonishing 43 years. The drought is an accomplishment the Leafs share with the Los Angeles Kings and the St. Louis Blues. Except neither the Blues nor the Kings resonate quite the same way with hockey fans or the hockey commentariat, so you won't hear much about those two other teams. No, you'll only hear about the Leafs.

You also likely won't hear about how it's not even the longest drought. The New York Rangers went 54 years without a Cup Win, but that doesn't quite fit with the need for a negative Leafs narrative, so it will be skipped.

On the bright side, all droughts eventually end.

At some point the Leafs will win the Cup. It might be in 2015 or it might be in 2050, but when the Leafs finally do raise that magnificent silver cup, I hope that the sporting press and twitterati wait a day or two before pointing out the failings of another franchise. It would be nice if the focus remained where it should: on the winners and the team they defeated.

Personally, I'm thrilled the Hawks won the Cup. Chicago is one of my favourite American cities and the Hawks were clearly the better team. It should be one helluva parade on Friday, I hope the fans revel in it.

Leafs and Goaltending: Playing the Percentages

Even though the Leafs are just two games into the season the team is dealing with a so-called goaltending "controversy."

Fresh from off-season hip-surgery, Toskala has looked decidedly sub-par in pre-season and regular season action. He's surrendered 14 goals in his last seven periods of play and was pulled after giving up three goals on just eight shots against Washington, including whiffing on a forty-foot wrist shot just 17 seconds into the game (go team!).

His save percentage is a frightening .800

Waiting in the wings is one of Burke's big off-season signings, goaltender Jonas Gustavsson. He was considered by many to have been the best goalie outside of the NHL last season (note to so-called experts: does Raycroft being in the league have any bearing on this title?)

Leafs management are waiting until game day to confirm whether Vesa "punainen valo" Toskala or Jonas "the Monster" Gustavsson will get the start against The City That Fun Forgot^TM SNES on Tuesday night.

It may be early, but given how tight playoff races in the East have been over the past three years - where every single point really matters - this decision could have a significant impact on the Leafs post-season aspirations.

The bad news is, the Leafs may be in trouble if they can't sort out their goaltending situation.

The good news is, the Leafs are covered by about 40 professional journalists who have incredible access to players, coaches, managers, agents and other various insiders. Sometime in June 2010 one of them will report on what was really going on in the room and just what Nonis, Burke and Wilson were thinking about Toskala early in this 2009-10 season.

Toronto Sports: The Blame Game

With not much going on with my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, I thought I'd make a decision tree for some of Toronto's sports reporters who might be looking for easy story ideas. Unfortunately, this came out a little blurry - you can click on the image for a bigger, clearer, look.

It took a Tattooed Boy from Birkenhead

There was a time (roughly 1979 to 2008ish) when the only thing more porous than the Leafs' defence was the Leafs' front office.

Every move the Leafs made: management changes, upping concession prices, free agent signings, internecine board squabbles, waiver moves, logo changes, likely even mascot issues, appeared in the media at least five days prior to being officially confirmed by MLSE.

Now, sometimes an organization needs to float a trial balloon or two to soften the news before it hits (the McCabe - Van Ryn trade is a case in point). But the Leafs went way beyond trial balloons. For decades this organization was like a fingerless Dutch boy, unable to stop even the smallest leak.

How times have changed.

Joe Nieuwendyk started interviewing with the Dallas Stars three weeks ago. The news didn't break until Dallas announced he'd been hired.

This week the Leafs signed three prospects. Again, the news didn't break until the Leafs put out a press release.

Burke is actively trying to move up in the draft. The only rumours that have emerged to date (Kaberle and Schenn for the #2 pick) were addressed personally by Burke within hours of the news being reported. Fold in his recent appearance on the Watters show and you've got a GM who's shooting down the media as if they were Sonny Corleone in a toll booth.

I'm not a trade rumours kind of guy, so I love this new organizational silence. Others may differ.

In 30+ years of following this club, I can't recall a time when news from Leaf-land broke after the fact or was so controlled (although I likely wasn't paying that close attention to media trends as a six year old when Roger Neilson was behind the bench).

Perhaps it's just a coincidence that when Peddie was removed from hockey operations the leaks stopped.

The draft is less than three weeks away, it will be interesting to see if the controlled flow of information from the Leafs can be maintained. Moreover, it will be fascinating to see how the media adapt their approach to covering the Blue and White.

With so many reporters on the beat and so many Leaf fans clamouring for information, I don't think the cone of silence can be maintained. But I am enjoying it while it lasts...

Bob McKenzie or Kerry Fraser: You Decide

The guys at PPP asked me to send them a paragraph on where I was during game six of the Leafs - Kings playoff series back in 1993, a game played 16 years ago today. Not being so good with directions, I gave them a bit more than that...

# # #

Believe it or not, I don’t remember much about game six of the Leafs Kings playoff match back in 1993. I know I watched it, but I couldn’t tell you where I was or who I was with.

I’d like to think I was livid at Kerry Fraser for his blown call. I’d like to tell you that Gretzky’s high stick on Doug Gilmour is seared into my memory like some sort of Zapruder film (“back and to the left”), but I’d be lying if I told you it was so.

You see, I was so thoroughly convinced that the Leafs would win game seven that I thought it was best to just put game six behind me. Nothing to see here, just another bad Leaf bounce, just another blown call by the notorious Kerry Fraser. I honestly thought a Leafs-Habs match-up was just too good for the Hockey Gods to pass-up.

It's only with the passage of time and plenty of hindsight (maybe too much) that Fraser's blown call has emerged as the defining event of that series and, perhaps, somewhat sadly, a defining event in the history of the Maple Leafs.

Now game seven I remember. There’s a game that’s seared into my mind like a red hot medallion clutched by the soft pink palm of a Nazi.

I have often dreamt of a Leaf victory in game seven. A dream so palpable that I have stepped out of bed convinced the Leafs did indeed come back and were going on to the Stanley Cup Finals.

But it’s not to be.

And I am a little bitter about that.

But my bitterness is not for Kerry Fraser. No, my bitterness is reserved one for Mr. Bob McKenzie who penned the infamous article headlined: “Gretzky Playing As If He's Got A Piano On His Back”

As if that headline wasn't bad enough, McKenzie went on to say:

Now just one loss away from elimination, the Kings could desperately use some old-fashioned Gretzky pyrotechnics to light up the Leafs in Game 6 at the Great Western Forum and send it back here for Game 7 at the Gardens on Saturday night.

Yeah, that’s exactly what that series needed: some bulletin board inspiration for the opposition. And the media tells us it’s the fans who are to blame for the Leafs’ failures.

As we all know, Gretzky went on to score the overtime winner in game six and net three more goals in game seven, including the winner from in back of the net, bounced in off Dave Ellet’s skate.

The Leafs mounted a late comeback in game seven but it was not enough.

And so we wait.

And when the Leafs get close again, and they will, I may be a little difficult to track down (and there will also be an empty chair on the TSN panel).

There's a Place for us

So Cujo is making noise about not retiring. Great. Mike Zeisberger ran with it yesterday at the Sun and Dave Perkins picked up the lukewarm leftovers today at the Star.

As far as the Leafs go, this really is a non-story. One needs to look no further than Coach Wilson to realize that Cujo isn't in the Leafs plans:

"He can still be a backup somewhere [emphasis mine]," coach Ron Wilson said. "He was not what we expected but he's been good the past three or four games."

You'd think that quote would take the air out of the Cujo returns storyline (Somewhere?!?, Do you think Wilson meant the AHL or the stick hockey games in Cujo's basement?) but apparently not...

I realize there's space in the paper and call in shows to be filled and nature and sports media abhor a vacuum, but it's non-stories like this that make me abhor the vacuous.

He Who Laughs Last Didn't Get the Joke

When the Sundin-returns circus ended we all knew the media would move on to yet another all important topic - it's not just nature that abhors a vacuum.

I wasn't sure what would become the defacto big story for the sports writers out there. Perhaps it would be a chimpanzee who can almost calculate pi, a series of columns on trade rumours that will never happen, the endearing story of a career AHLer from some small town who's waited forever for his shot at NHL glory or maybe another profile of an NHL tough-guy that's a gentle giant off the ice.

But to think that sucking sound you hear is the collective brain power of several writers trying to figure out whether or not the Brian Burke on Twitter is the real Brian Burke, that's something I wasn't expecting. I mean, it's not like there's a big hint right in the bio line.



As for the charge that this very clever, acerbic, twitter account is setting back the cause of bloggers - I have no idea what cause that may be; moreover, I'd hate to think what the day to day contribution of sports writers is when they look at the bio line of a twitter account and presume it's a reference to a level playing field for all participants.

It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

I don't mean to pick on Jeff Blair, but I was lured into reading his article about the Minnesota Wild this morning and am left rather puzzled as to why it was filed or what Blair's point might be. Of course, I could just be having reading comprehension issues this morning.

I'm an unrepentant fan of Money Ball the book (in fact anything written by Michael Lewis) and I also find the work of Bill James fascinating. I know I'm not alone in wondering what role advanced statistics have in the NHL and in helping GMs identify value (e.g. players performing higher than their cap hit) in an inefficient system (the NHL).

Given that the NHL is the only sport with a hard cap and guaranteed salaries, you'd think there would be an insatiable appetite for fresh insights and new approaches, especially now that several GMs (Howson, Gillis and Risebrough) are looking at new ways to build a team.

But back to Blair. He finds himself with the Leafs in Minnesota and he's got access to Wild GM Doug Risebrough and he turns in this little bowl of sadness:

MINNEAPOLIS — The epitome of the feisty player who makes the game's dinosaurs go all dewy-eyed, Doug Risebrough — who once ripped Marty McSorley's jersey to shreds in the penalty box in one of the more memorable chapters of the Battle of Alberta — now carries a backpack and talks in Moneypuck.

That's a great lede. The juxtaposition of the sweater tearing goon with the book reading, stat loving, GM is solid.

He will patiently explain the need to "react quickly in your own time." He will talk, as he did Monday, about how the Minnesota hockey market "understands the balance between defence and offence," and if you need to figure out what he thinks about the Minnesota Wild, all you have to do is go to the club's website (wild.nhl.com) and there you'll find a hockey operations blog and "Thoughts about our team at the all-star break, by Doug Risebrough, president and general manager." No need to have your message distilled by the media. It's all there. Not quite the thoughts of Chairman Doug, but a dispassionate analysis, in this case, of why his team is scoring less along with an obvious and repeated defence of personnel decisions made in the off-season.

Ok, first of all, there's way too much crammed into this paragraph. Secondly, Blair has several opportunities here to offer up something interesting and he whiffs.

1. Does he speak to any Wild Fans to see if they do indeed understand the balance between defence and offense? Can he contextualize the feelings of the Wild fan base writ large?
2. Whoa, a GM is adopting modern(ish) technology to by-pass media filters and speak right to his audience, this is cool isn't it? Are other GMs doing this? What does this mean for fans? For the media? Does Risebrough even write it or is it ghost written? Why the blog? Did Risebrough think the Wild couldn't get their message out? Was it being too filtered? Too much media reinterpretation? Sadly Blair doesn't weigh in, he's on to other stuff...

Blair continues...

The Wild do things like this, either Risebrough or director of hockey operations Chris Snow, a former baseball beat reporter with The Boston Globe. Three fewer wins than last year, an equal number of overtime losses, but six places lower in the standings and they can make it all make sense.

Um, that first sentence needs a bit of work (why the passive voice?) but that second sentence is a killer. How hard is it make sense of the Wild's current place in the standings? Seriously, in four words: "The West is tight." Who would have thought Phoenix would be in fifth?

When the Toronto Maple Leafs meet the Wild Tuesday night at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, they will face a team that on the surface appears to be one of the most nondescript in the NHL, without the type of identity crisis that afflicts the Leafs.

Blair mistakes boring with non-descript. Ask any hockey fan to describe the Wild in three words or less and "defence" "trap" and "low scoring" will be mentioned with more frequency than a Hab or Sens fan dropping "1967" on Leafs Nation.

It isn't exactly comforting, but the Wild know who they are: ninth place in the Western Conference; their best forward, Marian Gaborik, possibly due back in town Tuesday after a rehabilitation stint following hip surgery, but still weeks away from a possible return; and a simmering contractual issue with free agent to be and all-star goaltender Niklas Backstrom. This for a team that had Brian Rolston and Pavol Demitra leave to free agency.

No Mr. Blair, that's not who they are, it's where they are.

In the local media, some sniff about a "smartest kids in the classroom" thing that might segue into something resembling baseball arguments about Moneyball. It's not just failure that undermines being newfangled; so can treading water.

Some of the local media don't like Risebrough's attitude, ok. But what's the meat of these arguments? Who's on which side? What can we learn, if anything, from this new approach or it's detractors? Sadly, it's nothing that Blair wants to share...

Two first-round exits in consecutive playoff years require some spinning to constitute progress to the average fan.

Spinning. Really? GM gets a blog and suddenly Blair is re-living 1990 and the War Room. Is San Jose spinning after numerous playoff choke jobs? Are the Sens spinning? When is it spinning and when is it offering explanations? (I'd wager in the Wild's case it's spin as it attempts to go right to to the fans via a blog without the great big brains of sports journalists as intermediaries.)

Riseborough. points out that his team is 24th in goals for this season and second in goals against. And (all you dinosaurs look away): "As we must, we are taking fewer penalties than all but two teams and killing the ones we take at the second-best rate in the league."

Um, dinosaurs? What? Older hockey fans can't understand or don't want to understand that penalties hurt your team? These so-called dinosaurs don't get (or don't want to get) that it's good to have a strong PK? I have no idea what Blair is on about here.

The key is getting some goals 5-on-5, where the Wild have just 62 goals, tied for lowest in the NHL. "In the previous three seasons, no player in the league scored at a greater rate at even strength than Marian, 1.61 goals per 60 even-strength minutes - compared to 1.58 for Alexander Ovechkin," Risebrough writes.

That's a really solid insight from Risebrough. More than 2/3 of every game is played 5-5, it makes perfect sense that all teams should want to increase their scoring rates during 40+minutes of play. Be great if my local sports page could provide this type of insight and, most importantly, give it the proper context so all fans (including Blair's so-called dinosaurs) can enjoy it.

Risebrough believes that the key to success in the salary-cap era is spreading out risk. So he did that in the off-season, taking the $11.75-million that it cost other clubs to sign Rolston, Demitra and Mark Parrish and spreading it out (plus $1-million more) among five players who have outscored the departed.

Another great insight on team building, albeit buried past the mid-point of the article. Amazingly, Risebrough's approach looks like it's working too - he spreads the risk and gets better performance. Wouldn't it be great if we had a comparator here, like I don't know a few teams that didn't spread the risk and are near the bottom of the standings (Ottawa, Tampa). And as the local club is going through a re-build, why not ask Burke his take on risk management?

In the end, he believes it wouldn't matter if Gaborik was healthy, and it looks the same from the dressing room as from the executive suite. "All those 2-1 games add up," defenceman Nick Schultz said yesterday. "Any little mistake, you know? It's never just a matter of 'Oh, they got another one, so we'll get one and even it out.' "

A player and a GM on a different page? Stop the presses. A player who knows where it's deficiency might be and who'd like the talent to help, that's not exactly new. My beer league team would like our goalie to come out of the blue paint some time this year too.

Head coach Jacques Lemaire shrugged in response to a question about the lack of offence. "What do you do?" Lemaire said. "You have to be better somewhere, naybe the power play. The first 25 games or so, it was our power play that carried us. But you know, you can't keep that up all year. You have to start scoring 5-on-5."

I think Lemaire is absolutely right and it's a shame that Blair hasn't decided to explore the GM and Coach's insight of the importance of 5 on 5 play.

And this is who the Wild are. If you doubt it, check the GM's blog. Minnesota is "playing to its identity," Risebrough writes, without relying on hooey about grit or chemistry, to a fan base that apparently understands but might be prepared to ask hard questions about why that's the case. The guess here is Risebrough's ready for them, fingers poised over his laptop.

Yuck. Is this who Blair is? I don't doubt it but I won't be checking out much more of his stuff if he continues to phone it in. Talk about a missed opportunity...I'm sure Blair is ready for more, fingers poised over his laptop too.

And he never gives an answer

Jeff Blair at the Globe has filed the annual "cities that suck at sports" story.

You'd think journalists might wait until that awkward time after the Super Bowl and prior to Spring Training to start dragging out these old (and largely useless) set pieces.

But looking at the story (I won't link to it, it doesn't deserve your eyes and the Globe doesn't deserve the click throughs) I think Blair has taken journalistic laziness to a whole other level.

Yeah, Blair's calculated the collective winning percentages of the Leafs, Raptors, Argos and Jays - but where are the winning percentages of the Calgary Vipers, Vancouver Canadians, and Edmonton Cracker-Cats?

Really, if you've got the gumption to tell me the Jays stink (breaking news since, what, 1995?) you need to tell me what those Cracker-Cats have been up to.

Canadians from Tofino to Trout River are dying to know if their local town (or heaven forbid a Canadian rival) has a shot at being the Black Boot Trophy Champs any time soon. Millions, if not hundreds, want to know if those no goodniks from Fargo-Moorhead might dash the Golden Eyes' hopes in 2009.

The Raptors won-loss record may bave been factored in, but where are the Edmonton Chill and Vancouver Volcanos? Seriously, does Blair not have an internet connection and calculator?

And I see another mathematical error: Toronto's professional sports teams may have a collective winning percentage of .457 to Ottawa's .443 but there's nary a mention of the nation's capitol.

Based on Ottawa's omission from the piece I can only conclude that either Blair is saying the Sens aren't a "professional team" or towns like Ottawa need to have a second sports team in a 100 mile radius to be part of this story. I'm not sure which one it is...

Anyways, my point remains: this must be an important story as the Globe set aside 1,200 words and who knows how many column inches for it. The least they could do is some basic math and a few google searches. After all, the municipal pride of millions is on the line here (isn't it?).

With investigative journalism like this, I look forward to Blair's next big expose: Is Edmonton really the City of Champions?

**UPDATED**
This piece was written with my tongue firmly in cheek. I think it would have been hilarious had Blair actually looked at minor league teams, but I guess it's just me...

Rayanne, she's a stayin'

New York Times media columnist Bryan Curtis steps up with a great article on terrible locker room sports cliches and the journalists that help generate them.

Frankly, I’m sick of bland, odorless quotes, and I sense that both athlete and reporter are, too. A War on the Locker Room Cliché would end this mutually unsatisfactory relationship.

It's a must read and the timing is fascinating given the debate the last fews days over Berger, the role of the MSM and the reaction of the Barilkoshphere.

It has a nice ring when you laugh at the low life opinions

Dear Most Valuable Losers:

Yesterday, continuing a long-standing trend, another Toronto reporter took a cheap shot at Leaf fans. This time it was Howard Berger who called us "losers" but we've seem the same cookie-cutter article from virtually everyone who covers the team.

Quite frankly, we've had enough.

As fans, we believe that those most deserving of our praise and our scorn are directly involved in the game, whether it's on the ice, in the press box or in the executive corridors. Fans don't pencil in the starting five, make bad trades, or write the headlines of the day and shouldn't be blamed (or praised) for the totals in the wins and loss column.

Hockey may be just a game but it's also a passion. If you're looking for passionate hockey coverage that offers insight and humour and you're sick of being blamed for supporting a team you're passionate about, you have a better option.

It's time to leave the media superstars behind. There's compelling, timely, wide-ranging content waiting just for you online in the Barilkosphere.

Many have found this better way of following the Leafs, but not every Leafs fan has been so lucky. Please send this message to your fellow Leaf fans via e-mail or postings on message boards and let them know that they do have a choice.

We hope you'll join us here in the Barilkosphere and become regular readers and contributors.

• Pension Plan Puppets
• Battle of Ontario
• Big Smoke Sports
• Bitter Leaf Fan
• Cox Bloc
• Die Hard Blue and White
• Down Goes Brown
• He Score, He Shoot!
• Just Your Usual General Borschevsky
• Leafs at Hockey Analysis
• Maple Leafs Hot Stove
• Old Guys in Blue and White
• The Passion That Frustrates Us All
• Repressed Optimism
• Sports and the City
• Toronto Sports Media
• Wonderful World of Loser Domi

PR 101

Most tired debates of all time:
5. Creationism v. Giant Spaghetti Monster
4. Tastes Great v. Less Filling
3. MLSE: Giant Evil Corporation v. MLSE Meddling Ruinous Corporation
2. Toilet seat up v. down
1. MSM v. blogosphere

Yeah it's number one on the list and in our hearts, it’s overdone, and here's 1500 words on it…(sorry, as a communications consultant there are certain topics on which I just can't help myself).

Dave Berry v. Edmonton Oilers

Back story is here. Interesting take from Edmonton Journal reporter David Staples here and CBC's Eliot Friedmann here. Mirtle weighs in with a sane approach, Staples has some more good reporting on the Oilers’ side of things and, as always, there's great additional commentary at MC79Hockey.

Now you're all caught up and it's time to go all the way back to first principles here...

PR 101: What does it mean to be credentialed?

In short, media credentials enable organizations to screen and select the media that are invited to cover a news event.

Depending on the organization or the news event, the credentialing process can be as short as asking for a business card or it can involve filling out forms in advance, meeting pre-set criteria, requiring a photo to be taken and issuing a typical laminated pass (oooh, and a branded lanyard).
More formal credentialing usually happens with federal and/or provincial legislatures, law enforcement agencies or for events where there is a great deal of media interest and limited space.

The vast majority of media events have a cute 20-something PR staffer sitting at a table with a stack of media kits and a photocopied sign-in sheet (Name, Media outlet) hoping that some media actually arrive.

Why Issue Credentials?

Organizations issue credentials to filter who gets access to events and, by extension, to help control or shape the resulting coverage. No credentials means no access.

Usually the two main criteria required to get credentials are subject knowledge (is this a beat or topic the applying media regularly cover) and circulation or reach numbers (and the bigger the number, the quicker the media will get their press pass).

Once the lanyard goes around the neck, can you take it back?

Organizations may have the right to screen and select the media that can attend their events; however, once the credentials are issued, these organizations do not have any right to dictate what that resulting coverage might be.

Journalists are expected to observe the rules of the event and or organization – e.g. hold your questions to the end, wait for scrums and one-on-one interview opportunities; certain topics may be off-limits (SEC investigations are always a good place to start) and please stick to your allotted time for the interview.

There are credential rules all over the net, and they're pretty much all the same.

I’m not sure if live blogging or real time reporting changes any of this. The expectation that the rules will be followed remains, just as the media shouldn't expect their copy or coverage to be censored.

In 15 years of working in communications, I’ve never seen credentials get pulled and I’ve never seen media ejected from an event. (The ACC has wi-fi in their corporate boxes, I’d love to see what would happen if a fan live blogged the game from their luxury suite… )

There’s a reason they call it “earned coverage”

For most organizations, earning media coverage is tough. Really tough. Media consolidation may have increased the number of news outlets, but it has decreased the number of journalists and access to the tools of their trade. Toronto may be the number four or five media market in North America, but you can count the number of radio reporters on your fingers and TV stations have very limited access to cameras and staff.

There are fewer and fewer journalists and more and more organizations are competing for their time and attention. Generating media coverage, even on-line or blog coverage, is a key part of generating revenue, be it in the form of increased sales, sales leads, raised profile, brand enhancement, third-party validation/credibility etc. Even in the public sector, NGO and not-for-profit organizations seek earned media coverage to raise their profile, to validate their causes, build awareness, increase funding, etc.

It’s Different for Hockey

The one place this media relationship or framework doesn’t exist in Canada: professional hockey.
There is so much demand for NHL content and such limited space available in the press boxes and locker rooms that Canadian NHL teams can exercise extremely tight controls over which media gets access, and more importantly, who gets to keep their access.

This is something to keep in mind (yeah, goes for me too) when one wonders why the media are willing to harp about decades old ownership woes but don’t say boo about current roster decisions or locker room toxins.

Mittenstrings and Media Relations: It’s All About Revenue, Stupid.

Just like their corporate brethren, revenue is the core of media relations, but for professional sports teams there's a bit of a twist. Unlike the relationship between conventional organizations and the media, external coverage for professional sports franchises actually represents potential lost revenue. From the follow-up piece on the Oilers-blogger mess:

Part of the reason that no media outlets are allowed to blog live from Oilers games is that the Oilers want to have this kind of information only available on their own official website, Watt says.

Watt says many of the blogs are trying to get increased traffic so they can make money, but the Oilers don't want to give up that traffic. "We spend $100 million a year to create NHL hockey in Edmonton and there are some things that we think we own. This is one of them (the live blogging rights)."

Perhaps some blog company will come along with $10 million a year for the exclusive rights to live blogging, then the Oilers would look at that. "That's the business we are in," Watt says.

In other words, eyeballs that go elsewhere for information deprive the teams of click-throughs and ad dollars; grey-market on-line streaming reduces audience numbers for TV and PPV. Declining consumption of traditional media (the team-preferred source for news) means potentially less rink-side advertising from the newspapers and fewer paid cross-promotions in the local Sun (be sure to collect all your favourite team medals!).

This is why NHL executives, when they talk about blogs, play the “blogs are such low-quality and can’t-be-trusted” card. Or they talk about how hard it is to separate the good blogs from the bad.

Sure, this attempt to disparage and conquer blogs is a short-sighted and likely a losing strategy, but when was the last time the NHL or an NHL executive did something that made you think they were ahead of the curve?

Disintermediation

I’ve argued in the past that the NHL could do a much better job with their team web-sites or they should let individual teams take over (I think the Leafs site could be miles better, but I have no idea what constraints their staff are working under). I’ve also applauded the Leafs PR staff for offering unfiltered access to press conferences, interviews and other events. That’s the type of stuff that will get eyeballs as it’s content fans can’t get elsewhere.

But the traditional concept held by the NHL and the media that access in the form of meaningless player quotes and bland blog entries on team sites is a primary source of traffic is curious. It certainly isn’t the golden ticket to eyeballs and ratings that teams believe it to be, no matter how hard they want to make it so:

Watt says that when it comes to interviews with the players, the Oilers now want to go direct to consumers. "We would like our website and NHL.com to be places where people can find that information exclusively as possible, and as a result of that, traffic, and as a result of that, monetization.

The NHL is missing the key point that fans want, and many blogs deliver, insights that the media and NHL teams can’t or won't match - whether it's advanced statistics, legal insight or profanity (and in many cases all three).

The NHL appears not to understand that, while fans want quality content and interesting information, they’re savvy enough to know good sites from bad and they’re not too concerned if the site is run by a monolithic corporation or a guy procrastinating during his day-job.

The NHL appears not to understand one of the biggest shift in the consumption and transfer of information is that more and more news providers are providing information not to inform their audience but to confirm what their audience already believes (Case in point: Fox News and HuffPo).

The final, and perhaps most important, point that the NHL doesn't get (or doesn't want to get) is that information is so easy to access and transfer that hoping to hold eyeballs at a team site is antiquated at best and a fool’s errand at worse. Chuck Klosterman put it best when he was asked what blogs he reads:

…there is no single blog that is “required reading” every day, or even every week. This has become more and more true as the blogosphere has expanded. All the information is shared. If something legitimately interesting happens on any specific blog, it’s immediately going to be linked to on 200 other sites, so there’s no need to consistently go to any one source. That’s the biggest philosophical difference between old media and new media: If a sportswriter at the Washington Post breaks a story the New York Times doesn’t have, the Post wins that day — the NYT will have to play catch-up the following morning, and readers will start to see the Post as a better product. But blogs aren’t like that. If something on The Big Lead gets linked to Deadspin, nobody who finds it on Deadspin gives a shit how it got here or where it came from originally. Following the link is no different (and no less efficient) than reading the original content in its original setting. The experience is identical. Both sites win, as does any other random blog that connects to the content. They all share the same traffic. Unlike journalism, blogging is not competitive — its cooperative. Networking is far more essential than writing or reporting. Which is why I don’t need to read any specific sports blog on a day-to-day basis; I will eventually get all that information without even trying. It aggregates itself.

So What’s Next?

In terms of policies and formal media relations, Mirtle said it best and it’s clear that NHL organizations require clear, modernized media relations policies that are supported by effective open communications between the media relations staff and the media they are credentialing.

Other than a free invite to a game, I can’t see any value in bloggers seeking formal credentials from NHL clubs and I don't see any reason for Canadian NHL teams to ever offer them.

As for the future of coverage, the NHL may want to be the on-line destination of choice, but they’re not going to make it if they continue to offer what they’ve been offering. And more importantly, this is true for the sports pages.

The Star has become a destination for Leaf masochists (I'm boycotting them. So long as the fans support that organization, they have no impetus to change). Joe O'Connor is a good read, Hornby provides the straight goods and the Hat is money, but - to Klosterman's point - I can get all my other Leaf info distilled from the beautifully named Barilkosphere (nice work Chemmy!) complete with a side of humour. Best of all, none of it insults me for supporting my team, feels the need to mention 1967/42 years in every piece, or relies on limo drivers for insights into how to run a multi-million dollar professional sports franchise.

Of course, it may all be moot. Apparently blogs are so 2004...

No Predictions, Low Expectations

Cross-posted from PPP where the fellas were kind enough to ask me for my thoughts on the coming season, instead I gave them this...

No predictions and low expectations. That pretty much sums up my take on the upcoming Leaf season.

This is a year where, with the exception of Nikolai Kulemin and Ron Wilson, the most intriguing story lines will occur away from the ice at the ACC: the development of Schenn and Pogge; the backroom deals struck to bring in more picks and prospects; the on-going (never ending) search for a President and GM; the build-up to the trade deadline; prepping for the 2009 draft; the ongoing efforts to untie JFJ's Gordian knot; and hopefully avoiding the thin (thin!) 2009 UFA pool.

In place of a guess at a win loss record or what odds the Leafs might have of making the post-season, I offer this instead...

What We Can Learn from Cliff Fletcher

The first thing most people remember about Cliff Fletcher’s original tenure with the Leafs: blockbuster trades.

This is the GM that brought the Leafs Doug Gilmour and Mats Sundin; two trades that, in an ideal world, would buy this GM all sorts of latitude from the media, stakeholders and the fans.
This being Toronto, his legendary work is often brought into question by two simple words: "draft schmaft" (proving the lasting value of mnemonics).

The next thing fans are likely to recall is Fletcher dismantling the team. As then-owner Steve Stavros’ grocery empire came crumbling down it necessitated a series of salary dumps and resulted in one of the more recent dark periods of Leaf history (who was a worse coach, Mike Murphy or Paul Maurice? Discuss).

Between the big trades and the eventual decline of this club, Fletcher demonstrated not just a keen understanding of how to build a team, but how to evaluate one.

Fletcher is the first GM I can recall who looked at his team in ten game increments and openly talked to the media about using ten game trends to identify strengths, weaknesses and patterns in his team's play. (This could very well be more a function of having a string of horrible front office staff in Toronto than it was Fletcher bringing something new to the game, the fans and the media. For all I know, Cecil Hart and the Habs were doing this with The Gazette and La Presse back in Chelios' rookie season in 1937).

Breaking the Pain Down into Ten Game Segments

Fletcher's approach back in the day is something we fans could learn from and need to apply to the coming season.

This year the focus should be on player development and team trends over ten to 20 game increments, not on who blew coverage on the PK, which player kicked a sock in anger and how to best quantify the greed of MLSE and the alleged concomitant stupidity of Leaf fans.
Looking at how the Leafs have performed since the lock-out, we fans can do ten games in our sleep. It's also a safe way to approach a year that is likely to set some sort of record for media hysterics.

Mittenstringers, Mouth Breathers and One-Fingered Typists

Despite being covered by one of the largest media corps in Canada, one certainty for the coming season is that we fans will be fed a steady diet of little more than who won, who scored, and who's to blame. The nutritional equivalent of a cheeseburger-in-a-can, quick, easy, and entirely beside the point.

Look for the mittenstringers to second guess every Leaf transaction and to contradict themselves over what's "best" for the team and the players while neglecting to notice that the bulk of the roster is made up of players for the times rather than players for all time. Let's face it, many of these skaters won’t even be wearing the beautiful blue and white leaf on their chest come March.

Considering the transitional nature of the roster, instead of running these players out of town or setting up effigies, I suggest that the Barilkosphere lead the way in looking at the bigger picture.

How much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

In public polling (or "research" as those in the trade like to call it, don’t know when it happened but it seems pollster has become a bad word) one of the most fundamental questions one can ask it the "right track/wrong track" question. And it’s a question we should likely be asking every ten games leading up to the trade deadline. Is this team on the right track or the wrong track? Are management’s player personnel decisions on the right track or the wrong track? Are Wilson's systems on the right track or wrong track? Is Pogge's development on the right track (65 starts) or the wrong track (benched for Clemmensen in the playoffs)? Are the Leafs acquiring picks and prospects (right track) or dealing second round picks for 15 games of Yanic Perreault (wrong track)?

Let's face it, it really doesn’t matter if the Leafs win 14 or 40 games this year. What matters is how management reacts to the results in the wins and losses column. Building a team that can eventually take a serious run at and challenge for the Cup has to be, must be, at the root of every decision management makes.

Right track or wrong track?

A simple question to keep top of mind for the upcoming season.

A simple question that will hopefully distract us from countless third period melt-downs, rookie errors, and a media contingent that takes obscene delight in the failures of the Leafs and questioning the loyalty of Leaf fans.

Breaking News from 2005

The Leafs need to change the culture in their locker room.

That's the latest story line from the media horde that covers the Leafs:

Vesa Toskala tells the National Post that he's "not surprised" at the changes in the room.

Ken Campbell of the Hockey News goes public with a very revealing, albeit five or six year-old quote from Bryan McCabe ("in one ear and out the other...”)

Ron Wilson says the Leafs have lacked leadership in the room for the last three seasons.

David Shoalts asks a few Leafs to comment on Wilson's lack of leadership allegations and offers this tidbit to close out his piece:

When former GM John Ferguson let both Roberts and Nieuwendyk leave as free agents, the team's leadership suffered. Four years later, the Leafs are still looking for a solution.

This is all great to know, but here's my (rhetorical) question to the army of journalists that cover the Leafs:

Where the hell have you been for the past three seasons and why is this only making the news now?

Seriously, can someone get Ken Campbell to tell us why he waited five+ years to report that juicy McCabe quote? Or perhaps Dreger can explain why his inside sources didn't tell him about the desperate need for change down at the ACC (apparently they were too busy telling Dreger that a Tucker buy-out wouldn't make sense and that Ron Wilson wasn't coming to Toronto).

Isn't the fact that the locker room was a country club (Or is it a lack of leadership? Or bad apples?) the type of information that trained professionals with primary sources and locker room access are paid to gather and report on?

In the end, it all comes down to access and favour.

If a sports repoter tells us what's really going on, he or she will lose access. And if they lose access, they won't be able to collect all those great stories that they can't tell us about.

Leaf Captains: Two to be Honoured, One to Sign?

So the Leafs have announced they will be honouring Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark this season.

As many of you likely know, the Toronto Maple Leafs only honour numbers - they don't retire them (the only two numbers the Leafs have retired are #5 for Bill Barilko and #6 for Ace Bailey).

It's official team policy to retire the jerseys of outstanding players who are struck by tragedy while members of the club (still to be determined: if management's abject failure to properly build a club around the talents of Mats Sundin qualifies as a tragedy).

Honouring v. retiring numbers aside, it's great to see that each player will have his own ceremony. It certainly irked me in the past when MLSE honored groups of players, instead of having the class to give each guy his due at centre ice.

Clark and Gilmour will join the ranks of other honoured Leafs:
1 Johnny Bower and Turk Broda
4 Red Kelly and Hap Day
7 King Clancy and Tim Horton
10 Syl Apps and George Armstrong
21 Borje Salming
27 Frank Mahovolich and Darryl Sittler

Once they're up in the rafters, I hope the Leafs exert some control over who gets to wear such meaningful numbers. Gilmour's 93 is such an odd number that's unlikely to be worn again, but it would be nice for the Leafs to reserve 17 for a franchise guy and to make sure it's never worn by the likes of Paul Higgins again.

The Rush for Mediocrity

Mats Sundin says he's about two weeks away from a decision as to whether he'll retire or sign back with an NHL club.

I'm a big fan of Mats and all that's he done as a Leaf and for the Leafs, but I'm way past caring what decision the Big Swede comes to.

If he decides to play elsewhere, the most painful part isn't going to be Mats' return to the ACC, the potential points he might rack up against the Leafs, or even the bizarro world image of him in a Devils or Wild jersey.

I somehow managed to live through Palmateer as a Capital, Sittler as a Flyer, Vaive as Black Hawk, Wendel as a Nordique (and an Islander, Black Hawk, Red Wing and Lightning) and Dougie playing for what seemed like a third of the league (ok, it was just the Devils, Black Hawks, Sabres and Canadiens). Somehow, I think we'll be ok with Mats lacing 'em up for some other club.

Hands-down the worst part of Mats signing somewhere else is going to be the media sh*tstorm that follows it.

Stemming the tide of the craptacular media coverage will be like trying to stay dry while standing under Niagara Falls armed only a little umbrella from a girl-drink (like say a Chocolate-choo choo, you know it tastes just like candy).

And if the media coverage isn't bad enough, a close second on the continuum of bad outcomes is the possibility that Mats decides to come back and play for the Leafs.

This team desperately needs another top five draft choice and Mats' return is likely enough to move this team away from a shot at a lottery pick to another meaningless outside of the playoffs 11 - 14th selection in the first round.

If Mats signs with another team and the Leafs ice their current line-up, I foresee a nice high pick in next year's draft (hopefully to be joined by more prospects/picks acquired by dealing away Kubina and/or McCabe).

Another year of Mats would be nice but a shot at the Tavares/Hedman lottery would be even nicer.

I don't think the Leafs can have both.

Maple Leafs: Are the Fans to Blame?

There’s an interesting cross-post up between Pension Plan Puppets and Down Goes Brown regarding an abominable article by Howard Berger (I’m not sending any traffic to the Bergermeister Meister Berger's blog so you’ll have to locate the article yourself. Hint: it’s really not worth giving him the page views).

Here’s the money quote from Working Class Howard:

“Leaf fanatics constantly bitch about the likes of Damien Cox and Steve Simmons, only to make them the most widely-read columnists in the city… The same Leaf zealots that call me a rotten bastard in e-mails are the first to wonder where my blog is if I skip a day.”

I don’t know what’s happened to Howard, if it was the Avery Cancer thing, his having to buy a ticket to a Cowboys game with his own money while the team he covers for a living – the horrible terrible no good loosing Leafs, millionaires all of ‘em, were treated to a luxury box or if the rise of user-created content, such as blogs and message boards, has resulted in an increased scrutiny that’s too much for the error-prone radio man to bear.

No matter the cause, someone has poisoned the water in poor Howard’s well.

It’s the Love of the Team, Stupid.

Howard's certainly right in that there is an insatiable demand for all things Leaf. And he’s also right in that it’s Leaf fans that make Cox and Simmons two of the most read columnists in Canada.

Where he’s wrong is in implying that the likes of Simmons, Cox and McCown are the most read/watched/listened to because of any special skills or abilities or even their penchant to stir the pot.

These guys are widely read because they file on the Leafs.

Full stop.

If it was Cox and not the content that pulled in readership, his Wimbledon columns would be among the most read at the Star. But when he files on tennis or the Argos you can hear the crickets chirping between his paragraphs.

If it was Berger and not the leafs that drove the numbers, Howard could blog about Montreal limousine companies day and night and still get 200 comments a post.

It's a tough question, but where would Berger be without the Leafs?

Turning the Sites on the Fans

This is where it gets a little tricky.

It was one thing when the mediots went after Ballard, Stavro or MLSE – targets that were (and are) clearly worthy of media scorn - from Ballard’s personal vendettas to Stavro’s cash crunch dismantling of the team to MLSE’s alleged meddling and hiring of JFJ (ugh).

But it’s another thing entirely to go after Leaf fans.

Let’s be clear about this.

The fans have nothing to do with how sports teams ultimately perform (Coyotes, Predators, Capitals, Black Hawks, Islanders and hell, even Jays fans, are staying away in droves. How’s that working out for them? How many Championships have they lined up in the past decade or two?)

The fans don’t make bad trades for questionable goaltending.

The fans don’t decide who gets top minutes on the PK.

The fans don’t sit at the draft table or have input into player development.

And the fans don’t have much of a say in how the media covers the team.

As far as I know, Leaf fans also don’t have editorial positions at any of the major media outlets in this country.

The fans don’t write the articles and columns praising the team when it goes on a middling win streak and the same fans don’t write the columns and articles claiming the sky is falling when the Leafs go on their annual losing streak each January/February.

The fans don’t program the radio stations around call-in shows.

The fans don’t file blog posts based on emails read after a weekend away in Niagara (nice job, Howie).

There’s a great quote from political circles: “Any party that takes credit for the rain, ought to be prepared to be blamed for the drought.”

When the Leafs finally win a cup (and odds are that they will – eventually, maybe not for 100 years, but eventually) will the media let Leaf fans take the credit after decades of blame?

I doubt it.

Re-shaping the Leafs Media Environment

Howie’s bizarre-o world rant brings to mind the whole issue of information dissemination in this age of blogs, discussion boards, media convergence and really good artisanal salami (sorry, my mind drifted there back to my brief holiday in Seattle).

Given the craptacular job done by most of the media contingent following the Leafs, you'd think that fans would be flocking to the official leafs site. They may be, but the blogs I read aren't, I'm not, and I've never had a water-cooler conversation where someone referenced the Leafs web-page (Cox, Simmons and Berger - yes; TorontoMapleLeafs.com - no).

So, in the spirit of Berger’s odd-post, my rather boring communications consulting day job and the fact that no one I know, including MLSE, is properly using the Leafs web-page, here are ten ways the Leafs could revamp LeafsTV, update their web-presence and easily provide more viable, unfiltered and interesting alternative information for their fans and reduce/supplant the role of the increasingly adversarial, cranky and ineffective media:

1. Continue to post unedited news conferences in their entirety (yes, even the inane media questions) on the Leafs Web-site.
   
2. Increase the amount of first-person reporting on Leafs-TV and cross-post it to mapleleafs.com. Why not a weekly (or better yet, every other day) news interview with one of Fletcher, Jackson, Nieuwendyk, Gilmour, scouts, new players, coaches, assistant coaches, capologists, trainers, equipment managers – you name it (Steve Paikan is a big Leafs fan and a great interviewer – let’s give him the part-time gig).
   
3. Conduct more round-table discussions on Leaf topics with players, coaches, reporters, authors and hockey “experts” to be carried on Leafs TV and cross-posted to mapleleafs.com
   
4. Revamp the “Leafs Insider” newsletter to provide balanced informed insightful content and strive to make it more timely (the Leafs dealt for Hollweg and announced their intention to add two more players yesterday, yet I’ve got nothing from my Leafs Insider email newsletter. Nada. Zilch.)
   
5. Cancel the “Leafs Nation” magazine and put the resources into real-time electronic coverage of the team (was anyone out there aware of this magazine? Any of you ever read it?) News cycles are way too short for a long-lead magazine to be relevant or of interest to today’s fans (case in point: you can read about Paul Maurice and get tips from Kyle Wellwood in the latest issue - for those who are interested, Mr. Wellwood's advice is on how to take a pass, not the secrets of a successful all-you-can-eat buffet).
   
6. Get rid of the cronies. Want better coverage on Leafs TV? Fire/ reduce the number of former Leaf players/ barbie-like hostesses and add more insightful/ neutral commentators.
   
7. Hire better bloggers. This is what MLSE is offering fans? Really? That's an official TML blog? Cripes. Has no one at MLSE read Mirtle, MC79, Behind the Net, Fire Joe Morgan, Basketball Jones, Pensblog, etc.
   
8. Take advantage of digital media and make it entertaining. These guys have got it figured out – why can’t MLSE do something like this at the prospect camp? Who wouldn't want to see Luke Schenn take on Kulemin at Jenga or Hungry Hungry Hippos?
   
9. MLSE should be considering the power of Open Data Exchange - opening, hosting and reflecting (and very carefully filtering/refining) the flow of Leafs information that's out there. To wit: "“The winners won’t be those that control the most data — the winners will be those that channel the most data — and those that create the most value on top of the data flow.”
   
10. Quietly seek extraordinary rendition for any writer, blogger, copy desk editor that uses a plan the parade joke.