It is not my intention to drag out the issue that was my last post, but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this recent clip of New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella.
Normally I find Torts to be way over the top in how he goes out of his way to be deliberately difficult with reporters, but he was right on the money here.
We don’t actually get to hear the reporter’s question, although the voice-over on TSN says he was, “asked in an indirect way” about Rick Nash’s lack of production. Much the same as Claude Noel was asked in an indirect way about how he thought that game went.
“Are you asking me is Nash playing good enough? Is that what you’re asking me?” Tortorella challenged the reporter.
“Yes, but without… asking it that way,” he responded.
“Ask me that way. You’ll get an easier answer if you just ask me that way, instead of beatin’ around the bush.”
I can’t say I understand why some reporters seem to be too intimidated by a coach after a loss to do their job effectively. I mean, I suppose I understand it well enough, but I guess I’d just suggest the reporter try to find a little more confidence then or maybe a new profession.
Hopefully if someone is a sports reporter, he or she is a sports fan. And being able to think like a sports fan is one of the greatest assets a sports reporter can have. A sports reporter should know what he or she would want to read, the answers he or she would want, as a regular fan.
“How did you feel the game went?” might seem like a lazy question, but yes, fans want to hear the coach’s thoughts on the game. “How tough is this loss?” Not a sports fan in the world who wants or needs the answer to that question.
Ask the question you want an answer to. It’s your job, don’t be afraid to do it.
Jobs in journalism are hard to come by. I mean that within the broad spectrum of all job industries in the world, and I feel qualified to say that living in Fort McMurray, surrounded by the oilsands industry, in which, if you want a job, you’ve got one. But as with any industry, if you’ve got talent and work hard, someone will recognize it and give you a job.
What I’m trying to say is, since the broader picture of journalism as a whole doesn’t have a lot of jobs to offer, it’s kind of like trying to find a needle in a haystack if you want to get even more specific about the job you want, ie. politics, crime, arts… sports.
I never wanted to be a city reporter, the job I have now with the Fort McMurray Today, but I realize that if I choose to sit around and wait for a sports journalism position to open up, I might die of starvation before I’m employed. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard at the job I currently have, it’s just not where I ultimately want to end up.
So when I’m watching a post-game scrum with the Winnipeg Jets’ head coach Claude Noel, after arguably the team’s most devastating loss in the two seasons they’ve been back in the NHL, and I hear someone who has a job I would kill to have ask him, “How tough is this loss?” it makes me want to scream until I throw up blood.
What exactly are these guys doing in the three hours they’re up in the press box, being paid to watch a hockey game? I realize they need to have a game story as good as written by the time the 3rd period buzzer sounds, I know what’s required, but really? The best question you have after 60 minutes of hockey is, “How tough is this loss?”
I don’t want to pass judgment on whoever it was that asked the question, because I know absolutely nothing about the situation. It could be someone new in the position (although Noel was quick to point out that the offender asked the same question last season…) and I know what it’s like to feel like a small fish in a big pond and end up asking a stupid question. Yes, stupid questions do exist, no matter what your parents tell you.
I guess it just dismays me to see someone not care enough to come up with one decent question to ask, when I’d like to think I would have been jotting down potential educated questions based on the game to ask during the post-game scrum.
But then I also think to myself, maybe this person simply takes his or her job for granted. Maybe I would have asked the exact same question if I was hired by a major media outlet as a sports reporter right out of college. But instead, I’m actually missing hockey games I’d love to watch, because I’m in a city council meeting, trying to force myself to care about things that wouldn’t even be on my radar otherwise.
So when I finally do get a chance to ask Claude Noel a question after a Jets game, I can appreciate how fortunate I am to be doing something I love for a living, realize what I had to put up with in order to get there, and come up with something a little bit better than, “How tough is this loss?”
The other bit of good news is that I’ve been there. I’m not just speculating that it’s where I want to be, I already know it is. It’s not a place that I’m trying to get to, it’s a place I’m trying to get back to.
It was only eight months ago but, no exaggeration, it feels like years — multiple years — since I wrote that. You may be wondering whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but just don’t ask me, because I don’t even know.
I was leaving my hometown for my first post-college job, and had no idea what was in store in for me, if I’d like it here, or even if I would be moderately successful at this whole journalism thing.
I mentioned to someone just the other day that I really only started to feel officially comfortable in my position at the paper about a couple of months ago. I probably felt like I was comfortable two months or so in, but around month six I realized I wasn’t even really comfortable back then, because now I feel this whole new level of comfort. So I suppose around the one year mark, I’ll renege on these comments as well, and say NOW I’m comfortable here…
There’s still no question that if I plan to stay in journalism (of the print or photo variety) I’ll need to make the move over to sports eventually. I had the opportunity to cover two Fort McMurray Oil Barons games over the weekend, and the difference in my passion and enthusiasm between that and the regular, day-to-day news can’t even be properly measured. To this day, covering hockey, be it university, AJHL or NHL, remains the only work I’ve ever done in my life that I can truly say didn’t feel like a job. And, to Darren Dreger’s dismay, I fully intend to pursue sports journalism as a long-term career.
By far what has surprised me the most since coming up here is my relatively new-found love of photography.
Fun fact: I didn’t touch a DSLR camera in my entire two years in CreComm. I even had assignments that required me to take my own photos with a professional camera, so… you do the math, just don’t tell my instructor. Thanks.
Fact is, professional photography was just one of those things that intimidated the crap out of me. I’m not really sure why, since I spent probably over 100 hours of second-year college with a professional camcorder, shooting a video documentary for my final project of the year.
Even once I was at the paper, I was pretty afraid of picking up a DSLR camera. And it goes without saying that the dial was pretty consistently set to Automatic every time I went out with it.
Then I went out to an Ellis Hall concert on June 3, and snapped this photo —————————————————————–>
And I think I can pretty honestly pinpoint that as the moment I got the “bug” for photography.
As someone who hasn’t studied for a damn thing in his life, when I begin to independently research something on my own time, that’s a pretty good indicator that I have a genuine, and pretty strong, interest in something. I started reading up on the manual shooting modes, trying to learn the terminology, techniques to make my photos look better, but most of all, I just tried to get in as much “practice” shooting photos as possible.
I also think a “good photo” can only be 50% (at the MOST) credited to the photographer who took it. Are there great photographers out there? Of course. They know exactly what settings to have their camera set to in a given situation, but at the end of the day, what did they do to capture the moment? They moved their index finger a fraction of a centimeter and pushed a button. The great photos that exist today, wouldn’t if it wasn’t for their subjects just happening to be doing whatever it was they were doing. The photographer was just there to capture it.
I did get my first real taste of shooting a hockey game over the weekend though, and listen, I’ve never tried crack, but I would hazard a guess that photographing hockey, for me, is a very similar sensation to doing crack.
Over the two hockey games I worked, I shot more than 1,000 photos, which were ultimately narrowed down to about 30 or 40 that I kept.
At at a smaller newspaper like the Fort McMurray Today, we don’t have the luxury of being able to send two or three reporters to a hockey game, meaning I had to stay on top of tweeting, and write the game story for both games on top of taking photos. I can only imagine the level of enjoyment I would find in only being responsible for the photographs.
But as much fun as I have here doing some of these things and keeping busy, I’m ready for a vacation, and looking forward to going home for almost two weeks on Dec. 28. My brain may not know how to properly react when the combination of no work, being home, and World Junior Championship all comes together at the same time. I just shivered.
I suppose what I’m trying to say that I’m beginning to feel like I’m accomplishing things I wanted to come out here to do, and even things I had no intention of conquering when I decided to move here eight months ago. It’s been a great, educational, sometimes very tiring, experience thus far, and I’m looking forward to seeing what 2013 has in store.
With the NHL players now officially locked out by the owners, the fate of the 2012-2013 season is up in the air, but it’s almost certainly not going to begin on time — if it begins at all.
However, as with most things, there is a silver lining.
The Winnipeg Jets’ AHL affiliate, the St. John’s IceCaps. Formerly the Manitoba Moose.
The NHL squads have all made re-assignments of some of their current, younger talent to their AHL affiliates.
This gives prospects a great opportunity to hone their skills, and get lots of ice time that they probably wouldn’t see if they were playing in the shadow of the seasoned veterans of the NHL.
It also brings NHL-caliber talent to some smaller markets, at a more affordable price. And since these young guns will be big fish in a little pond, hockey fans can likely expect to see some jaw-dropping highlight-reel goals coming out of the AHL this upcoming season.
To date, the players to watch in the AHL this season are:
*Last season’s stats in parentheses.
St John’s IceCaps (WPG): Alex Burmistrov (13G, 15A, 28P)
If you haven’t watched Janne Makkonen’s video Together We Can, just take a moment right now and watch it; you won’t regret it.
I think he did an absolutely fantastic job of basically summing up the frustration of the fans (the ignored third party in these CBA “negotiations”), who seem to be the only ones who are capable of remembering what the sport of hockey is all about. A hint; it’s not money.
For the average joe, blue collar NHL fan, watching the back and forth between the millionaires and billionaires of the NHL as they selfishly fight eachother for a bigger slice of the pie is enough to make most of us sick.
Where along the way did everyone in the NHL, players and owners alike, stop being fans like the rest of us, and become corrupted by the heaps of cash they’re paid to do something that they supposedly love?
We can’t lose sight of the fact that the NHL is a business like anything else, and money is what makes it tick, but for those of us who don’t even breach $50,000 annually, it can be hard to comprehend someone complaining about being paid millions to do what most of us would do for thousands, or for free.
The infinite number of things that don’t make sense about the CBA negotiations aside, Makkonen’s video inspired me to take a look back at some of my all-time favourite hockey moments.
Disclaimer to self-proclaimed NHL historians: This is a list of moments that I was alive for, and remember. Bobby Orr’s world-renowned “flying through the air” Stanley Cup winner doesn’t really resonate with me, as I was -18 years old.
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5) “Welcome back, Sid!”
After being sidelined with a concussion on January 5, 2011, arguably the most anticipated moment of the 2011-2012 season was the return of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain, Sidney Crosby. Sid finally made his season debut almost a year later on November 21, 2011, and to say there were high expectations of him would be an understatement.
All eyes were on Sid “The Kid” right from the puck drop, and it only him five minutes to find the back of the net, roofing a backhand shot on the New York Islanders’ Anders Nilsson and bringing every fan in the arena to their feet.
Crosby would finish the game with two goals and two assists for a four-point performance that not even the most fanatical fans saw coming.
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4) The Finnish Flash Returns
After the smoke had cleared on the initial explosion of hysteria surrounding the Winnipeg Jets’ return to the NHL after 15 years, the first thing most fans did was circle December 17, 2011 on their calendars.
It was the day that Winnipeg would play host to the Anaheim Ducks, and one of the greatest Jets of all time, Teemu Selanne.
The reaction Selanne received from the Winnipeg fans was awe-inspiring. From the initial eruption of applause when he came out onto the ice, to cheering him every time he touched the puck on his first shift of the evening.
With an NHL lockout looming, Winnipeg fans can at least count their blessings in that they had one final and emotional opportunity to welcome Selanne back to Winnipeg, and thank him for all the memories he created there.
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3) Wings vs. Avs
The Detroit Red Wings and Colorado Avalanche will always be one of the greatest (and bloodiest) rivalries in all of sports.
It all started in 1996, after Colorado’s Claude Lemieux crushed Kris Draper from behind, causing him to break nearly every major bone in his face and requiring reconstructive surgery to repair.
The next time the two teams met, in March of 1997, a standard tussle erupted into one of the biggest brawls in NHL history, after the Red Wings’ Darren McCarty took matters into his own hands, socking Lemieux in the mug, and repeatedly punching him despite Lemieux’s defensive, turtle-like position.
The scene of Brendan Shanahan and Patrick Roy colliding in mid-air (0:37 of the video below) is almost as epic and iconic as Bobby Orr’s 1970 Stanley Cup-winning goal.
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2) The Captain Caps It
Possibly Steve Yzerman’s greatest moment of his career.
Playing in the second overtime period, the Detroit Red Wings were locked in a fierce battle with Wayne Gretzky’s St. Louis Blues, in Game 7 of the 1996 Western Conference Semi-Finals.
After stealing the puck The Great One himself, Yzerman brings new meaning to the phrase “full clapper, top cheddar”, rifling the puck top cheese from the blue line, past the Blues’ Jon Casey, to win the series.
Stevie Y is usually pretty reserved when it comes to goal celebrations, but he let it all out after this one. A great and defining moment in the career of who I consider to be the greatest captain in NHL history.
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1) The Golden Goal
Up to this point, I could have called this list my favourite NHL moments, but had to specify HOCKEY moments just for this one right here.
This is one of the rare moments in my life (and not just hockey-specific) that I will never forget exactly where I was, and exactly what it felt like.
After Zach Parise tied the game 2-2 with only 25 seconds left in the third period, the epic battle between Canada and USA in the Gold Medal game of the 2010 Olympics would need overtime to decide a winner.
With the Olympic games being played in Vancouver, BC, the pressure on Canada to take home the Gold in our nation’s sport was overwhelming.
I can’t say for sure whether or not my heart dared to allow a single beat for the entire seven minutes and 40 seconds of overtime that it took before Sidney Crosby slid the puck between Ryan Miller’s pads and ignited an entire nation of hockey fans.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud to be Canadian.
Journo JT 