Blogger Power!

David Singer, Tom Benjamin, Bill Houlihan, and others have been chiming in on the role of the hockey blogger, and how that might interact with the motivations of an NHL team. Should bloggers be given press passes or locker room access?

It’s a tricky question for sure.

From my perspective, I don’t think that player access is really something I’d want. It’s not that I’m that conscientious about ‘selling out’ or that I can’t be bought, rather it’s more that as a fan I am quite unimpressed by the bland locker room commentary that NHL regulars have all learned to spit out. For better or worse, professional sports stars are becoming more delicate in their responses than politicians; I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle just to have someone tell me how playing a full 60 minutes one game at a time is preferable to some lazier alternative.

What I would much rather see would be an NHL team allowing JavaGeek to access its stats database rather than making him re-construct it himself from marginally usable sources. Heck, I’d love Gary’s statboys to even take his data wishlist into serious consideration.

I would find that infinitely more interesting and revealing than having another robot interviewed.