Friday, September 01, 2006

A Few News Items Between My Rambling

The calendar turns over today, at least for most people. I think my America: The Calendar desk calendar is still on Tuesday. Anyway, it's September now, and I officially deem this the end of summer and the start of fall, meaning the start of the college hockey season starts soon. In retrospect, I really should have waited until today to start posting the season previews, but I got excited and posted them a little early. I set the standard pretty high, by posting two of them per day, which was all fine and good for the stuff I wrote over the summer, but now we're getting to the point where we're at the stuff I haven't finished, so they may be a little slower in coming. I think they're solid efforts though, and hopefully people enjoy reading them.

Shooter Walters says Minnesota defenseman Nate Hagemo has been cleared to play after missing the better part of a year and a half due to a shoulder injury. I'm still skeptical about Hagemo's return. Reports earlier this summer were that the shoulder hadn't really healed in the 15 or so months since he really hurt it at the World Junior Championships in 2005. I'd be surprised if it's miraculously healed over the past two months. I'd really like to be wrong about this and see Hagemo return at 100% this season, but given the nagging nature of shoulder injuries, I'm not confident it will happen.

I hope I'm not the only one noticing how underrated Elliot Olshansky is as a hockey journalist. His latest article deals with the recent trend this summer of goalies leaving due to lack of playing time(Vicari, Boron, and Keserich out here in the West). There's a lot of interesting quotes in there from coaches on whether it's better to rotate two goalies or have a clear cut starter. Growing up with the Sharples/Shields/Turco/Blackburn/Montoya succession at Michigan, I like have a clear cut starter, but there's also a case to be made for having two goalies.

George Gwozdecky had a particularly interesting quote:

"It's worked well for us," Gwozdecky said of his two-man system, "it's been a comfort for us, but it doesn't necessarily mean - and I want to emphasize that - that we will do that for this year."


Is that just his famous Gwozspeak to motivate his goalies, or will one of Denver's goalies this season(probably Glenn Fisher), not see as much playing time? I have a feeling it might be the latter.

How cool is this? A bunch of Badger fans carved out a nice little Bucky Badger hockey logo into a corn field in Wisconsin. Though I imagine it's less impressive from ground-level, I think that if you're ever near Deerfield, Wisconsin, you've got to check this thing out.

As an update on the press pass thing I posted about yesterday, Runnin' with the Dogs isn't a fan, and really, I can't blame her. I'm probably not applying for any Mankato games, because what fun would they be if I couldn't loudly proclaim what a failure at life referee Marco Hunt is? That said, I'm totally down for heading to some St. Cloud and Minnesota games on off weekends. My first attempt at real college hockey journalism will be October 6th at the XCel Center for the US Hockey Hall of Fame Game between Minnesota and Maine. So if I'm unnaturally nice to the fine, upstanding people at the U for the next month or so, you'll know why.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking from knowledge of other people's experiences, I wouldn't count on getting much access to Gopher games. The Gopherhole website that used to be affiliated with Rivals.com had a lot of difficulty getting media credentialed access to various Gopher sports. If they had the backing of a company (and their site had been established as a pro-Gopher site for many years before that) and had a tough time with gaining credentials, it will likely be very difficult to get credentials as an "unknown" blogger. Whether those those five rules are used or not. Maybe they have relaxed their standards a little bit since then but given how they were treated by Fox9 last year, I get the feeling that is unlikely.

In regards to the comment section in the earlier post on the "five rules". I think bloggers actually do a better job in a number of areas when compared to your typical local beat writer for a team. Mainly because we aren't as limited to the stereotypical stuff we see in the papers. The local "pros" idea of "breaking news" is usually writing game recaps, telling people who is injured and who the latest commitment is (and the latest commitment has usually been talked about on the internet well before it is in the newspaper so the "pros" are already way behind and aren't breaking anything new in that regard).

I think I can speak for Chris in that some bloggers live by the same kinds of standards as the "pros" and won't post things unless they get them from the same kinds of quality sources that the "pro" media does. After all, some of us care about our credibility too. When I wrote the Phil Kessel going pro stuff, I wasn't guessing about it. It came from the same kind of sources that the "pros" media types use. Maybe Schlossman doesn't realize it but the local beat writer doesn't have a monopoly on great sources of information.

DC said...

FYI, I never actually disagreed with Chris. I merely pointed out that my blog is neither legitimate nor serious, which is the way I like it.

He hasn't gotten my email yet, nor seen the comment I left him, so I'm imagining that he will make a change to this post once he sees either.

Don't you hate it when you can't tell what the letters are for the word verification?

Chris said...

I don't have the highest expectations that I'd be able to get in, but I figure that it'd at least be worth a shot. I could certainly understand why someone wouldn't want to give me a press pass. I probably wouldn't have even thought about until I saw the OWO post.

BTW, I agree that the word verification is annoying, but it's done a good job at keeping out a lot of spam stuff. I did see a "match the cute kitten" verifcation thing once, but I'm no where near technically advanced enough to set that up.

DC said...

Word verification is fine, I have it too, because ain't nobody gonna pimp their mortgage company on MY SITE, but I was pissed off because I couldn't read the word.

DC said...

Also, if you want to link up for one of those Minnesota-Twin Cities or St. Cloud games, I'd definitely be an entertaining companion.