Cleaning out the Brain

Don’t fret. The Northwest Division Preview should be coming this weekend. Until then, however, I’m going to give you a little bit of the random junk that falls off the top of my head as something to tide you over.

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A week or so ago, there was a debate raging over the seemingly never ending battle between bloggers and the mainstream media.

Now, I’m a little late to the party mostly because I didn’t have the time to weigh in on the issue, but here are my thoughts nonetheless.

I am, above all else, a blogger. I don’t have a journalism degree, nor do I write for any traditional news source. I blog for Wild Nation and I also write more traditional articles for Hockey Primetime.

That’s it. No newspapers, no print journalism. Just those two.

Now, as a blogger, I don’t answer to anyone but myself. There is no editorial staff on Wild Nation that reads every single thing I write and fact checks it or even checks it for grammar. That is my responsibility, whether or not I choose to do so.

If I so chose, I could write that Brent Burns wears a pink thong instead of a jock strap when he plays and post it because there’s nobody to check the veracity of my claims – the facts of what I write are taken as truth or not based solely on my own integrity.

Are there bloggers out there that hold themselves to a higher standard? Absolutely. There are bloggers around the interweb that genuinely put in the work. They do the digging and they find good, newsworthy material for their blogs and manage to do so in a fairly objective manner (if a little skewed towards their own viewpoint).

But the problem remains that most bloggers aren’t subject to an editorial staff, nor do they have anyone that holds them accountable for what they write and this accountability is key.

On a whole, there are blogs that are either a) part of a larger network or b) part of a media outlet that are held to these higher standards. Yahoo’s Puck Daddy blog and the blog platform SB Nation are examples of each of these. Both have earned a reputation for bringing on people that will legitimately do the legwork to make sure that what they are writing, no matter how inflammatory, is based in fact.

Meanwhile, there are independent blogs and some other networks that don’t have this reputation.

One of these larger networks is the Bleacher Report. {Author’s Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, I used to write for the Bleacher Report.}

While the Bleacher Report has an extensive editorial staff, this staff does not check for facts (or, at least they didn’t in my experience there). Their sole duty is to check for stylistic and grammatical errors.

That’s it.

So why, oh why, would the league credential writers who are not accountable to anyone? Why in the world would a team want to credential someone who would be free to make any outrageous claim he or she wished, which would then hold the weight of coming from a credentialed writer?

The bottom line is that, truthfully, they shouldn’t.

Yes, it sucks for those of us that genuinely try to do a good job and genuinely try to put in the legwork and do the research to get the facts. Does it frustrate me to no end that I likely wouldn’t be able to be credentialed through Wild Nation?

Absolutely, because that access would allow me to give my readers an even more in depth look into the team and not have to rely on media outlets to get snippets of behind-the-scenes news.

But I understand completely why teams are weary about giving this access out to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.

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I’ll be honest here. I’m really getting sick of this whole Ilya Kovalchuk fiasco.

I love Kovie. I think he’s one of the more exciting players in the game to watch. But this has seriously gone on long enough.

I like that the NHL rejected his first contract because, quite honestly, it was ridiculous along with all of the other long-term contracts that are getting signed these days. But, from what I understand, the Devils were in close contact with the league on this second contract that they submitted.

Sooooooo…

Shouldn’t that mean that the league shouldn’t have had to extend the deadline to approve it?

I mean, really…WTF mate?? Just get it done already or let him go to the KHL – one or the other, because we’re all getting sick of hearing about it.

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There was some pretty awesome stuff going down on Twitter today in the shape of a #80shiphopfantasyteamname meme. Check out some of the highlights.

@gonebeancountin: Vanilla Yzerman

@Sean_Leahy: Straight Outta Comrie

@Steve_Dangle: Public Eberle

@BanginPanger: Salt n Peca

@mserven: Doughty by Nature

@DownGoesBrown: Hip Hop Souray

And, a couple of mine:

Me, Myself and Iafrate

Fight For Your Right to Pardy

Kurtis Foster Blow

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And finally, am I the only one that really, really hopes that the offer sheet to Niklas Hjalmarsson was some diabolical plot by Doug Wilson to steal Antti Niemi from the Blackhawks?

I just have the image of Wilson sitting at his desk saying a Mr. Burns-esque “Excellent” at the news that the ‘Hawks matched the offer sheet.

Hopefully this brings some sort of blood feud between the two teams because, let’s be honest here…That’s something the NHL needs infinitely more of.