I was an early subscriber for the Athletic — I follow sports and devour sports journalism like a hungry ogre so it seemed reasonable to pay for high-quality and regular insight. The Athletic was founded as a tech start-up (uh oh) out of Silicon Valley and they quickly won over established sports journalists and fans alike with their promises of independence, regionalism, and hefty financial backing.
Like all tech start-ups, the Athletic’s founders were betting on being a disruptive new entry into a stagnant and slowly withering field. Fans consumed sports media of all kinds, but it didn’t seem to generate enough revenue for the beaten and battered Old Media firms. Bit by bit sports media journalists lost their jobs, lost opportunities and just couldn’t put it together. This especially hurt hockey media which is somewhere between provincial and niche in comparison to the other major sports leagues.
Far be it for me to extol the virtues of commercialization — I couldn’t care less how much money was in hockey and the hockey ecosystem. As long as the lights are on and I can see my Habs, is my philosophy.
What I care about is insight. Tell me something I don’t know, give me something I can’t get myself, show me something I wouldn’t be able to see without your help.
Things I cannot get without someone else:
Analytic insight
Hockey Analytics is no longer in its infancy but its application is only now leading to interesting and applicable insights. Professional teams have hired “amateur” hockey analysts for about ten years now, some of whom used to do it on social media before being picked up by a club looking for an edge. That’s how you know these guys are providing something valuable.
Sports journalists have been usurped by these passionate analytics experts. Suddenly the reporter can no longer slap on a few basic stats (PP%, Shot%, Sv%) to their write up and call it a day, safe in the thought they illustrated something the reader hadn’t seen. Sports fans who are interested in this sorta thing can see and follow all the beautifully visualized statistics and analytics all over the internet, they can even access the league’s own Stats page and comb through a lot of it by themselves.
Player insight
Quotes are good, interviews are betters, gossip is best. For the good of the game, the Old Boys Club — a club of abusers, thiefs, pederasts, and plain ol’ jerks — must be dismantled brick by brick and it starts with unshackling players and letting them speak their piece. A confident sports journalist can poke at a team’s public-facing narrative when it comes to eg. concussions and head injuries and, in doing so, actually help push the sport we love into a better direction. Most sports journalists are afraid.
These reporters are afraid of the day the doors shut on them and they lose their access, they’re afraid of rocking the boat, they’re afraid of being rendered irrelevant. They’re rather be unobtrusive and uninteresting, but keep their boss happy, than actually report and investigate interesting topics for the benefit of the readers (their boss’ boss’ boss). To put it another way": they focus on the short term gain (not upsetting their subject and not risking their own employment) and not the long term strategy (impressing readers, winning new ones with more insights), which is precisely the strategy that has decimated Old Media firms all over the world.
There’s a handful of hockey reporters left who aren’t afraid — Larry Brooks comes to mind. Larry Brooks is the beat reporter for the New York Post covering the New York Rangers, he’s popular and abrasive and nigh untouchable. He survived because he brings value to his readership and the Post; the New York Rangers cannot get rid of him and know better than to keep trying.
League insight
As with the topic above, there is a lot that goes on across the league and between managers, agents, coaches, and owners and everybody in between. Sports fans are voracious consumers of information — if some team’s draft associate is interviewed, you can bet a big portion of fans will read and watch that piece multiple times over.
Hockey “insiders” often serve are mouthpieces for different elements across the NHL. Among other relationships, Bob McKenzie was the mouthpiece of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, those two had a win-win relationship at the expense of fans who hear (from the trusted Bobfather himself) what the NHL was thinking about a certain topic. Bob didn’t challenge the NHL’s narratives, he served them on a plate for hockey fans to consume. Others are cozy with agents or specific GMs or coaches. In Montreal Francois Gagnon of LaPresse was a native of Ottawa who was thick as thieves with fellow Ottawa-valley native, Habs head coach Jacques Martin. Wouldn’t you know it, upon Martin’s ignominious firing Gagnon raked the club over the coals for the rest of the season. But that was about ten years ago.
Things most sports journalists give me
Crap.
There is a reason why a typical hockey journalist is constantly looking over their shoulder for the day they lose their job. It’s because they’re worthless and, to use an analytics term, their performance is below replacement-level. They offer nothing.
I made the decision to stop renewing my subscription to the Athletic when they let go of their writers who produced interesting things. What was left was a pair of beat reporters who had all the access in the world, and were editors in chief of their respective domains (English and French), but offered ZERO insight.
Not one bit of proactive reporting.
In an off-season as kooky as the past one, neither Arpon Basu nor Marc-Andre Godin thought to inform fans that 3rd year player and restricted free agent J. Kotkaniemi was upset with the club, nor that Carey Price asked to be left unprotected in the Seattle Kraken expansion draft, nor the extent of Shea Weber’s supposedly career-ending injuries1 , or contract matters with Danault (which were only written about after he had moved to Los Angeles). Another reporter broke the Carey Price expansion draft news, other amateur or pseudonymous reporters broke contract signings, and only months later did Darren Dreger mention that Kotkaniemi’s team were upset at his usage in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Even during this past season there was a lot of drama — a Covid-19 outbreak, a condensed schedule, a coach firing, a player who poof vanished from the team, a struggle to get the last playoff spot. That neither Basu or Godin figured to poke around and ask some questions or get some actual insight on eg. Drouin’s case (why was there a media embargo?) is pathetic.
Drouin disappeared from the club during a massively important stretch of games. Even worse, one the Habs’ best paid forward had no mention during any of the Stanley Cup Finals playoff games. Other players go through hell to get on the ice. Alex Killorn of the victorious Tampa Bay Lightning broke his fibula in the first game and was trying to get going in case there was a Game 6.
Drouin’s complete disappearance was a big deal and as much as everybody likes to go hush-hush with anything construed as “mental health issues”2 the dearth of objective reporting and investigation into this was nothing less than cowardly. The reporters didn’t do their job and instead let the club and the player’s agent manage the situation entirely by themselves, without any challenge. To state: the idea isn’t to bother a player who is troubled with injury (physical or mental) but to investigate the facts behind a sudden disappearance and report that to the fans who, like it or not, are stakeholders in the situation.
We’ll never know if Drouin really was afflicted with X or Y, or if “anxiety and insomnia” is a convenient and succinct story take place for something else. Drouin and the Habs have had nearly six months of uninterrupted peace and quiet to come up with their PR release — it’s only natural to think they curated their only words on the issue with great attention and care.
What’s Arpon’s headline today, after Drouin gives two interviews with decidedly not The Athletic journalists?
Thank you Arpon Basu for you courageous reporting of a televised interview (done with someone else) with a player whose every word was clearly coached and managed carefully. We’d be nowhere without you.
What does it say about Arpon Basu or MA Godin or The Athletic that Drouin didn’t feel seen enough to sit down with those two? What does it say about them that they had no idea about Drouin’s suddenly-revealed years-long battle with anxiety and insomnia? Did the Habs know about this when they acquired him? Did the Lightning know about this when they drafted him?
Did Basu know about this situation he’s so breezily repeating like a court stenographer?
Or is he just another lazy reporter who is just Doing His Job (cranking out content on the Habs) without actually doing his job (delivering insight that only he can deliver)?
I think I know the answer to that last question — and that’s why I didn’t renew my subscription.
If Shea Weber’s injuries are career-ending, then why aren’t the Habs naming a new captain? The club is engaging in more games with their star player’s injury — last time they did it was at the expense of fans who were given the impression that Carey Price and Shea Weber’s injuries were far less impactful than they really were. My feeling is this time it is the opposite, Shea will try to rehab and heal up and see if he can go again (So: not career ending).
Defeats the purpose of the whole Let’s Talk About It campaign, doesn’t it? As soon as someone is purportedly sidelined with mental health issues it suddenly becomes a big secret that cannot get out and no one can even come close to the player — huh? How’s that for a good example of Talking About It?
Godin famously blamed the fans for Drouin's (then-unknown) mental health problems.
I guess you could do that...or you could actually be a reporter and dig into the story.