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Despite the best intentions of blogs like "HLOG", we cannot recall a concerted effort to collect the thoughts of the hockey blogosphere's most talented women. With that thought, we enlisted some of our favorites for a new feature called "Odd Woman Rush."
The plan is to run this feature with considerable regularity, tackling topics that range from the obvious to the obscure. (So if you're a talented female hockey blogger, don't feel like it's ever too late to join in the festivities) In fact, there might be a part II of these origin stories later this week.
Here's a list of bloggers featured after the jump:
Finally, here's the prompt:
Why are you a blogger? What pushed you across the threshold to go from fan/journalist/whatever to someone who publishes hockey posts? Did it have anything to do with "proving" your knowledge? Describe your motivation for starting your blog(s).
First, Gray of Couch Tarts:
Why did I start blogging?
Well, it wasn't for any lofty goals or to prove that just because I was born with two x chromosomes, I possessed the ability to both understand and love sports. No, I started blogging because Mina thought it would be a good idea.
We already spent way too much time IMing each other during games (and other tv shows) and we thought we were pretty funny. Why not share our humor with the world?! I did have my reservations, but Mina can be convincing when she wants to be. Plus I figured it wouldn't last more than 6 months, we'd never get readers, and we'd both move on. (She'll kill me for typing that but ,Mina, you so know it's true)
I came into this pretty secure in the fact that, as a relatively new hockey fan, I knew nothing.All I could do, and all I felt comfortable doing was giving my opinion as a fan, and from a fan's perspective. I don't speak for all fans, but someone out there might be able to relate, right? Plus, I was looking for a break from my furniture painting job. Something that would allow me to work on my cartooning skills, but in a fun way that wouldn't bore me like work did. A hobby, I guess you could say. You can only paint bees and butterflies so many times before your eyes start to melt out of your skull and your brains drip out your nose. I didn't have much confidence in my work, but since I assumed this was just going to be some short term lark and I had already flooded a MMO forum with avatars, I decided to dip my toe in those scary waters.
Didn't exactly go as predicted. I posted a few cartoons explaining my feelings about the playoffs back in 2008 (Flames and Stars, dear god, I nearly had a heart attack during round 1) and had some fun doing it. Defying all odds, we somehow got readers. Not only that, but I discovered that I really enjoyed blogging. Then came followers.
Plank over at Fear the Fin was our first biggest followers and somehow Earl Sleek of BoC discovered we also did cartoons. We got more readers after that, and somehow, after seeing what we had to say, they stayed! Holy balls!
To this day I am continually amazed by the fact that people like to read what I write (and draw). Amazed and thankful.
Now, if only I could parlay this into a paying art gig...
I'd have one of the best jobs in the world.
***
"Mina's Take or a History Major Tries to Write a Short Answer"
OK for reals, I started blogging because I am an attention whore. Part of the reason I am a teacher is so I can get attention from people everyday. My initial plan with Couch Tarts was to make it multi-sport blog where I could talk about all the sports and teams that I follow. But I knew that I wouldn't be able to be interesting enough on my own and I worked my magic and talked Gray into helping. Trust me, that was no easy feat as Gray can be quite stubborn when she wants to be. (If you want to be talked into buying something, talk to me. If you want to be talked out of buying something, talk to Gray.)
When we first started, neither of us were all that engaged in the Internet hockey community. In the summer of 2007, neither of us were on Facebook, there was no twitter, and neither of us posted much on any forums (save the YPP forums) and we didn't really post much at all. I was pretty sure we'd never get readers and eventually we'd just give up and go back to our ever-entertaining IM conversations. It's hard to say that we would have given up without getting readers, but I think that it might have come to that.
For me, part of the joy of the Internet is being able to interact with strangers from the comfort of my couch. Sites likeDeadspin provided a model for me in what I wanted: a site with good sports content overall and a very active reader community. (Though over the years, I have come to look to Fear the Fin more for inspiration.)
When the 2008 NHL playoffs arrived, Couch Tarts became more like the blog we have today. I know in my heart that there is no way that this little blog would have survived without Gray and her artistic talent. People came to us for the cartoons and stayed because we had something interesting to say. I am constantly amazed by her creativity and talent and I am greatly appreciative of what she does (and that she's managed to put up with being my friend for what seems like my whole life). To see where this blog started and what it has turned into blows my mind and makes me happy everyday.
I am always worried that I am not going to have the ability to compete with the big boys. When I have sports conversations with others, I can impress them with bits and pieces that I picked up from ESPN or listening to sports radio. I think this is mostly because people don't expect much sports knowledge coming from a girl. But with the Internet, people expect your A game. There is so much knowledge at your fingertips with the Internet that readers aren't going to bookmark sites that don't bring good information. (Editor's note: Uh oh!) My handicap is that I've only been a hockey fan since college and have the memory of a goldfish in most cases so I don't have a long history of hockey experience to draw upon. And I will never be as good with stats as many of the big time bloggers. In that way, my biggest hurdle is for me to acknowledge that people are interested in my thoughts and what I have to offer is interesting for others.
A few days ago I watched a video (above) by Steve Dangle (who does outstanding work with his Leafs Fan Reactions video) talking about having reached 1 million views of his videos. Much of what he said echos my feelings. There is something scary and awesome about putting your thoughts on the Internet and having other people read them. I am thankful everyday for Gray for her dedication, Plank from FTF and Sleek from BOC for the traffic they sent us, Bloguin for giving us a chance to make money off this crazy thing, and to each and every person who has read our work (though to be fair, I love the people who comment more *^_^*) Oh, and I would like to thank my mom and dad and the Academy...
Oh wait, that's a speech for another time
So in short, that is why I became a blogger and why blogging is the greatest, non paying, part time job I have ever had.
***
Cassie from Raw Charge:
I left Washington State, where I grew up and lived, in 2005 for Florida. I'd decided that, instead of sending out emails to 20 different people once a week, writing a general personal blog might be better. Then, if people had more specific questions, they could ask. It'd be simpler for everyone, I thought.
It's only when I'd moved from Tallahassee to Tampa in 2007 that I'd decided to start writing about hockey on the NHL's fan site. I was finally living in a town with an NHL team, which I'd never done before, so I naturally started writing about them. I had no idea I'd go anywhere with it.
I played hockey in the early 1990s - I was a defenseman, though I really should've been a center since that was my natural position. I love hockey. The problem is, none of my friends really do. My sister liked it a lot, tho not as much I did/do, and we used to go to games in Vancouver together. But when I moved, I didn't really have anyone to bond with over hockey. So that was a large part of my motivation to start writing - to get the stuff in my head out. The other part is that I enjoy writing. So hockey blogging works for me.
I'm not trying to prove anything, and I'm not looking for notoriety. All I want to do is to write about hockey because it's what I love. I gave up caring about what other people think a long time ago - such as some men who think that women only like sports only because they want to pick up on the athletes, and other women who don't like sports so they sort of thought the same thing as many men. They can think what they want; it doesn't matter to me. I write about hockey because I genuinely enjoy it. It's that simple.
The added bonus to blogging about hockey are all of the great people that I've met, and all of the friends I've made. I just started doing it to get my thoughts out, but I've ended up finding people who love the game as much as I do, and people who understand where I'm coming from. Men and women both. Now I finally have a home - a community - where I belong. An unintended side-benefit of doing something I was doing for myself anyways.
***
Amy Jo Green from The Good, The Bad, The Coyotes
Before I started my blog, I discovered that there wasn't a deluge of Phoenix Coyotes blogs out there in the great unknown that is the 'Net. The few blogs that are out there I read for news and tidbits about what is going on with the team and analysis from the view of the fan. They are the CNN and MSNBC's of Coyotes blogs. I am a slightly different read. I try to be the Daily Show/Colbert Report of the Coyote blog world! Hockey is a funny sport. It makes me laugh on a daily basis. I want to make people laugh while talking about my team (note: not laugh AT my team). If the Coyotes can make us cry so damn much, they better be ok with making us laugh.
I have a crapload of hockey blogs in my Google reader, Cycle like Sedins included ;) . I've pulled things from all of them that make me laugh and have smashed them all together in the chaos that is The Good, The Bad, The Coyotes. Any picture that I add captions to using Paint are an homage to Two Line Pass (http://thetwolinepass.com), who cracks me up with his blog. My friend Jenna (www.hipchecks.com) and I recently experimented by doing a podcast that I then added pictures to. I love the freedom that a blog gives you. One day I can do a game recap, the next do funny captions for game pictures, and the next I can do a youtube podcast. I was really surprised how many people look at my blog. Hockey fans will read anything I guess!
I feel bad for the table cloth that died to make this sports coat ...
I haven't really had people come at me saying I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm a girl. Well, except at the last home game, this guy sitting behind Jenna and I thought we were posers. He says to his friend, "I bet you five bucks that they don't know who Ron Cherry is." I turn around and say, "You don't think we know who who is?". He says, "Ron Cherry." I told him that I didn't know Ron, but Don Cherry hosted Coach's Corner on HNiC, wore crazy suits, hated visors, and hated Ovechkin. That is pretty much the extent of the pop quizzes I've had to answer to get cred when it comes to hockey. Because Phoenix fans have been banded together by almost losing our team and being pretty rare (seriously, hockey in the desert?), we like share our opinions and blogging is an easy way to do it.
Basically, I love to write, I love hockey, I love to make people laugh, and the Coyotes need some exposure dammit.
Thanks everyone!
***
The Prompt
Why are you a blogger? What pushed you across the threshold to go from fan/journalist/whatever to someone who publishes hockey posts? Did it have anything to do with "proving" your knowledge? Describe your motivation for starting your blog(s).
The Bloggers
(Read them all after the jump)
In some ways I think I was born to be a hockey blogger.
After all, I've always had the necessary characteristics: a borderline obsessive love of the sport (that started in the womb), a passion for writing, a willingness to debate and a complete lack of anything resembling sanity. Looking back, I'm surprised it took me until the summer of 2006 to jump into this crazy world.
At the time we had a team that was young, full of potential and exciting to watch even when they lost - which is good, because they did it a lot. I was excited for what was to come and badly in need of an outlet for my enthusiasm, yet was surrounded by media that still seemed to only see the burgundy and gold of the Redskins. Friends and family, even those who followed hockey, quickly grew tired of me babbling on about the Caps this and hockey that.
And that's how A View from the Cheap Seats came about. It became my own little corner of the internet where, as CapsChick, I could vent about losses and gush about wins and just indulge in my own special brand of ridiculousness. I never set out to prove my knowledge, but my readers gave me some validation that I knew my stuff - the day they forgave my occasional swooning over one Brooks Laich was the day I knew I had credibility.
Laich, really? You learn something new everyday ...
I stepped away a few months ago to become part of Japers' Rink, a site that I've long considered to be the best Caps blog - and one of the best hockey blogs - around. And while I consider myself the Alexandre Giroux to the Alex Ovechkin-like writers the site already had, I also like to think my oh so feminine presence helps keep the boys (and our insanely amazing readers) in check.
***
Elise from 18,568 Reasons Why
Growing up in Minnesota, hockey’s ingrained in the culture. I was only two years old when the North Stars moved to Dallas in 1993 (and subsequently dropped the “North”), but hockey returned in 2000 in the form of the Wild. I began following the team and gaining an interest in hockey and attended my first game during the memorable 2003 playoff run. That game was against the rival Vancouver Canucks. Wild enforcer Matt Johnson and Canuck Brad May dropped the gloves seven seconds into the game. Following that playoff run, one in which the Wild came back from two 1-3 series deficits to defeat the Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche, I was hooked. Rivalries, fights … how could I not love this sport?
I started off blog lurking before deciding to start my own blog. I had written for my school newspaper since my freshman year of high school and, since no one in my immediate family knew enough about hockey to talk or debate about it, I enjoyed the interaction with people who knew the sport back and forth. I began reading mainly within the Wild blogosphere. I talked to Nick from Hitting the Postand Kirsten from Land of Lakes and Hockey about running a blog before launching 18,568 Reasons Why in December of 2007. The blog started out very casual with random musings and sporadic posts. It morphed into more of a game recap/news/opinion spot last season and lately it’s been mainly opinion due to my move down to Chicago (and it’s a lot harder to find Minnesota game feeds in a dorm).
Starting my own blog didn’t really have anything to do with “proving” my fandom or being a girl. I just loved hockey and loved writing about it and decided to try out the whole blogging thing and see where it took me. And it’s been fantastic thus far. My blog has led me to all sorts of things. Without my blog, I wouldn’t have been able to work with companies like Versus, Easton, and Blackstone Sports or interview people like Chris Snow and Jonathan Toews, all things which I enjoyed immensely. I’ve met so many cool people and gained so much experience that I can’t even imagine now what my hockey fandom would have been like without a blog.
And one of the best things about it so far is being a part of the blogosphere. The men and women who make up the hockey blogosphere amaze me with their knowledge and creativity. I enjoy reading blogs from the perspective of a multitude of teams and have learned a lot more about hockey because of it; I don’t think I would know as much about Eastern Division teams if not for some of the wonderful bloggers who cover them. The high quality and wit of this group of bloggers makes the hockey world unique and a great thing to be a part of.
Now it’s been 16 years since the North Stars left, 9 years since the Wild began playing, six years since my first Wild game, and almost two years since I started my blog. I’m a freshman in journalism school and not sure what I’m going to do in four years when I graduate. Considering no one seems to know what’s going to happen to journalism in the future, I’m not trying to figure it out yet. But being a blogger has definitely been a highlight so far and I know it will only get better.
***
The Hockey Junkies
Why are we bloggers? That seems to be the million dollar question after a year and a half of doing it. Everyone wants to know why we blog about hockey. There are quite a few reasons why we started a blog. But to this day, we only remember one main reason why. Blame our existence on The Pensblog.
Around the 06/07 season, Henrik found a website that would do hilarious recaps of Penguins games. Every morning after games, we would load The Pensblog and laugh the whole game away (win or loss). Reading that blog was always so much fun but there was something off about it. It almost felt like we were left out from the punch line at the end. They didn’t talk about things that we thought were important, they made jokes that we could only marginally understand. It was like a boys-only blog sometimes.
Our blog isn’t about proving anything because we already know that we’re awesome. We have been hockey fans since the tender age of six. Our first game was in the old Chicago Stadium between the Blackhawks and the Blues. Since that game, we have been addicted to hockey. We go to different arenas instead of the beach for vacations, we’ve met most of our friends through hockey and we watch at least three games a night. Henrik knows way too much about the Rangers and Sidney Crosby than should be healthy. And I know the stupidest and strangest facts (like what Jimmy Howard’s mask looks like) for no reason at all.
The most impressive thing about (most) girls who love hockey is their ability to be knowledgeable about the sport yet also embrace what it is to be a girl. What we always found offensive was the fact that girls who know their stuff about a sport have to be devoid of anything feminine. It’s almost like we can’t know hockey and be a girl, we have to pick one or the other. We can’t just turn our femininity off because some guy thinks it’s funny to call us ‘puck bunnies’. So now we accept it. We twirl our hair and talk Valley Girl at card shows just to get a better deal on a Steve Mason rookie card. We wear make-up and ‘fuck-me’ boots with our Brooks Orpik jersey. If that makes us skanks, then so be it. We can do and say whatever we want because we are skanks who know our stuff.
We had always wanted a blog that talked about what we thought was important. Things like hotness of this player and the color schemes of jerseys and which players were single. We wanted a blog that would feature the things that we always talked about with our friends. That was why The Hockey Junkies was started. And if we didn’t write the damn thing, we would probably read it.
***
Sarah of Tea Party Throwdown
I never really thought about blogging when I got really into hockey last year. Sure, I'd see links floating around on twitter, for for the most part I was satisfied to sit on my ass and make stupid image macros and laugh at people on HFBoards, and that was that. For the most part.
Something started picking at the back of my brain around Trade Deadline Day last year, though. All these opinions and breaking news blogs, and the excitement of sitting in front of NHL live for 8 hours trying to figure out what was going on with all the rumors flying rampant - I began to wish for a place to express my own opinion of why exactly Mark Recchi was an awesome pickup and why I thought Steve Montador was a fantastic way to get rid of Petteri Nokelainen. And there were other factors, too - I'm an Earth Science nerd, what better subject to blog about then the fact that on the night that TWO in-state playoff series games ended in shutouts, there were earthquakes in BOTH states and only one was California? I mean, seriously.http://forpuckssake.blogspot.com/2009/04/playoff-hockey-2-north-american-plate-0.html
But let's be honest. My team is the Bruins; there are a squillion-and-one blogs out there trying to do the same thing I'm doing; in many cases with a higher fanbase, better graphics, more professional looking, whatever. That's not why I'm here. I blog because pouring a few hours into a well-researched post is my GAME. I blog because as a journalist with no other platform to express my opinions, I need a creative outlet. If five or ten people read my posts, fine - that's all well and good; the benefit for ME is seeing my work outside of myself, quantified as words on a page instead of just stupid thoughts in my head. I've tried blogging alone, blogging with a friend (Margaret, now of eyerollsports.com), and now am back at it alone; I'm not quite at the stage where I care about followers, just getting my stuff out there.
Plus, what better way to record one's hockey adventures than with a travel blog? :) Really this is all for my own entertainment. It's just more fun when people come along for the ride.
***
The Prompt
Why are you a blogger? What pushed you across the threshold to go from fan/journalist/whatever to someone who publishes hockey posts? Did it have anything to do with "proving" your knowledge? Describe your motivation for starting your blog(s).
The Bloggers
Read all about them after the jump ...
First, Dee Karl
I have a saying, “I Blog – Therefore, I am tired.”
I don’t really know how it happened. It was just something to pass the time while my husband was taking night classes and my daughter was too young to leave alone. I found the community that never sleeps and won’t shut up: The World Wide Web of Hockey Fans. The most web savvy, chatty, net knowledgeable fans in all of sports. They kept me company night after night. In return, I tried to keep them entertained.
It started with a message board addiction. But once my comments started reading like O’Henry short stories, the administrator offered to create a web journal for me to pen my hockey misadventures in the land of the NY Islanders.
That was 2004 and “misadventures” they were. The Season Ticket Holder events, the charity events, the concourse consequences, the airport stalking, and then the dreaded “work stoppage,” all became public chapters of hockey fanaticism viewed by tens. I made friends of hockey writers who had nothing better to do than chat with fans.
When I won the NHL’s 7th Man Contest for the NY Islanders in April of ’04, the world became my oyster. I had even more hockey adventures and with new access to the team, so many more stories to tell. Of course, I couldn’t tell ALL of them. I’m not writing Hockey Confidential here. I’m just writing about the misadventures of one fan following her love of the NY Islanders wherever it may take her.
In 2007, it took me to the NY Islanders “Blog Box,” a diverse group of Islanders fans who all had blogs of sorts who would promote the team on an ongoing basis in order to give the team more internet coverage. It is a great idea that generated great friendships and a lot of hard work on our part and a little free publicity on theirs.
Being the media whore that I’ve turned into, I’ve written on Bleacher Report, Hockey Barn and various others. I’ve been the Islanders reporter for HockeyBuzz.com, the website that started it all, since June of this year. It’s a challenge.
I never changed my style. My posts are STILL basically about ME. (Because isn’t it just always about ourselves anyway?) They’re about ME interviewing players, ME inadvertently turning the lights off in the locker room during post game, ME being told to sit in the front row of the Scott Gordon press conference and ending up in the Getty Images photos. (I was shaking so bad, I’m surprised I wasn’t just one huge blur.) Me, Myself and the NY Islanders.
In the past three years, I’ve slowly learned how to ask questions that won’t make a coach look at me with that “WTF” look in his eyes, how to talk to a hockey player standing in a pool of sweat in his underwear and I have even become comic relief for an oft times media reluctant GM. Some days, it’s just tough to be me.
My days are long. My nights are longer. I am sleep deprived. I play “sports reporter” but am always quick to say I am NOT one. No, I’m not a “journalist.” Journalists are trained professionals with a degree. I’m just a writer. Hopefully, one day, one with a book deal. I hate the term “blogger” as it has taken on some negative connotations in some circles and even seems encompass main stream media types.
I’m a suburban mother with a press pass and a book idea in her head. It’s taken me ten years to get from my couch to the press box. It’s been one hell of a ride. I am lucky to cover the sport and team I love with some of the most gracious athletes there could be. They call me by name. They put up with my inexperience and odd questions. They’ve never been rude or condescending. Every one of them has been a pleasure to know.
For this reason, maybe my work can be considered “homerism.” Personally, I don’t. My original web journal title was “The Unique Perspective of 7thWoman.” I was chastised for the word “unique.” I am watching these boys turn into men through a mother’s eyes. My husband sees them as multi-million dollar assets of the team. Yeah, my perspective is “unique” in my household at least.
I “blog” for my own satisfaction. There are days I’ll put out two or three different entries. Sometimes people will comment, sometimes people will rip me a new one, sometimes I will verbally mother slap them with a wooden spoon if I find their email address. Don’t piss off a mother blogger. Seriously… don’t.
‘Cause I blog – Therefore I’m tired – and I’ll smack you upside the head. Now go wash your hands for dinner.
***
Sarah from Punch in the Face
Why exactly am I a blogger? I'd say that's a bit of a loaded question.
I've always been a huge sports fan in general, but hockey's relatively new for me. Actually, I started watching the NHL just last season. I suppose some would say I was a bandwagoner, but, truth be told, I didn't know anything about the Caps or the NHL or even hockey. I was just surfing the channels on TV, and it landed on a Caps game. I didn't know a single player's name or what their record was. I'm a fan of losing MLB and NFL teams, so I figured, What the hell? Might as well give these Caps a shot. Even if they do suck, I'll learn to love them just like the Orioles. But I think what really made me fall in love with hockey and the Caps was a game in December against the Rangers at MadisonSquare Garden. Joe Beninati had been going on about how the Caps hadn't won at MSG in a lot of games or something. We were losing 4-0 but started coming back after Ovechkin got it started. Then, BAM, tied 4-4 and going into the extra frame. All I remember was Joe B yelling, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAONE MORRISONN!!!" about a minute into OT. It was a beauty of a slapper from the left circle, if I remember correctly. Apparently, I'd have at least one team I thought could win more than what I was used to.
Punch In The Face started this past June after the playoffs. By this point, I knew a lot more about hockey, and I knew I was not a fan of Sidney Crosby. Everyone was bitching about him apparently snubbing the Red Wings in the handshake line after the Pens won the Cup. I actually started part of the post with "because I really feel like putting my opinion out there," so I suppose that's part of why I became a blogger, to share my opinions with whoever happened to stop by. (By the way, I just read over that first post, and I sounded like a fucking idiot...whose opinion has slightly changed after watching the Hershey Bears celebrate their tenth Calder Cup on Manitoba ice.)
I've grown up in Maryland, and we're mainly associated with churning out top notch lacrosse players and teams (JHU all the way, baby), not really anything hockey. My parents were never hockey fans and my brother played baseball growing up, so I couldn't really talk puck with anyone. The blog let's me do that. It's a lot about just writing up some posts on random hockey topics with an occasional vent or opinion. I've had some pretty futile attempts at being witty or funny, and I tried to keep other Caps fans up to date on players or events (like development camp, the draft, QOs) during the summer. There's been stuff from a massive post about fake Twitterers to Patrick Kane being arrested to the Caps' Hockey 'N Heels to the analysis of the Capitals and Hershey Bears fighting stats. Blogging for me is just about fun and writing about whatever. That being said, I've never wanted to prove my hockey intelligence because I knew I didn't know everything. I was determined to not be one of those people who puts out stupid shit that isn't even right. But I do hope that by now, anyone who reads PITF thinks that I have at least a few good ounces of hockey smarts in me.
I'm the Matt Bradley of these ladies. I'm the fourth line grinder(slash shootout specialist slash Ranger Killer) who gets seven in a season, while my much more skilled teammates make it look all too easy when they keep crankin 'em out for 20 goal seasons. But then again...everyone #needsmoreBradley in their life. (;
***
Laura
Why am I a blogger? Where do I live? Atlanta. Is it easy to sit down and talk hockey with people outside of the internet? Not really. I love hockey, and have since I was a kid. Talking about it, following it, comparing ideas... it's my idea of politics. And it's just damned hard to do that in the South. The Thrashers have the 2nd highest trafficked (after the 'Nucks') message board in the league for a reason, and our blogs tend to be more in-depth and interested than others... and the little family of Thrashers fans and bloggers is pretty tight knit. Why? Because we have to be.
There's another reason I blog. I'm a HUGE Blues fan. Been watching them since I was about 7 or so. I absolutely adore them. And I'm living in Atlanta. It's the only way that I can share my POV about them, discuss them... I'm so very glad for St. Louis Game Time. Not for giving me a platform to argue with myself, necessarily, but for providing me with a slice of home, a place to keep up with the Note, and a great group of people to discuss hockey (and other randomness) with.
Occasionally, though, yeah - a little bit of it has to go with proving what I know. I absolutely hate being ignored about hockey stuff because I'm a woman. I've been following this sport for over 20 years. I know as much, if not more, than the guys that I know who are huge fans. The best thing is, though, is that with the internet hockey fans, all of the guys kind of expect the women to be just as spot on as they are about things. There's none of that "Oh, you're a girl, so what do you know?" thing going on. I guess it's because the guys I know on-line (and a few in real life now, which is nice) are actual real hockey fans who care enough to discuss them. A lot of the guys who think that women don't know much about hockey are usually the blowhard asshats who have to try to prove themselves, but then get on the in-arena trivia games and completely fail. Making fun of women's just their way of trying really hard to make themselves feel better about life. Or whatnot.
The Prompt
Why are you a blogger? What pushed you across the threshold to go from fan/journalist/whatever to someone who publishes hockey posts? Did it have anything to do with "proving" your knowledge? Describe your motivation for starting your blog(s).
The Bloggers
***
Su Ring of Daily Su/hockey editor for King5.com
This whole “hockey blogging” thing has been an interesting journey so far. I’ve been a hockey fan since my college days. My school (University of Alabama Huntsville) has an NCAA Division I hockey team and I went to every home game while I was there. But, I didn’t start blogging about hockey until after I joined the fan forum at NHL.com following the Penguins’ loss to Detroit in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. I needed a place to commiserate with other heartbroken Penguins fans and found a great community there. I started out by writing a couple of things to express my feelings, mostly about the good that players do off the ice. I did not blog a lot, just when the feeling moved me. I wrote about random things: reliving the 1980 Miracle on Ice through my dad’s eyes. The heartbreaking loss of Luc Bourdon. Comparing and contrasting the tragedy surrounding Alexei Cherepanov with the situation faced by David Carle, whose heart problem was caught just before the NHL Draft. Tampa Bay drafted him anyway, as a symbolic gesture. And then came the night I sang the Canadian and American anthems at a local junior hockey game.
That November night at Comcast Arena in Everett, Washington, launched my hockey writing career. It started with a search for a former Everett Silvertips player who was so popular, fans still scream his name during the Canadian anthem.
“LOVE!”
I went searching for Mitch Love after that night, interviewed him and found him to be so charming, I asked him to blog about life as a player in the AHL. He wholeheartedly agreed. After that, I had no choice but to start covering the Everett Silvertips and cross-region rivals, the Seattle Thunderbirds. And as I interviewed player after player, I found that I liked it. Game recaps came next, although very awkwardly and painstakingly. One game would take up to four hours to recap. I’ve gotten that down to about two hours now, but game recaps are still the most difficult to write.
I’m into my second year covering hockey for my station’s website and branching out with more personal offerings on my personal blog. I still find it easier to interview players, coaches and others tied to the great game. Game recaps are still the most difficult but I plug away. Am I trying to prove something? Maybe. To whom? Maybe just to myself. What am I trying to prove? Maybe I just want to show myself that I can write whatever I put my mind to. If other people enjoy the fruits of my labors, all the better. So far, it seems to be working.
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Zoe from Puck Huffers
Puck Huffers started not necessarily to prove our knowledge, but to prove our general quality as human beings. When we started getting involved in the Penguins online community, we didn't know of a lot of blogs. Clearly the biggest Penguins fan site on the Internet is Pensblog, which is run by two guys, Adam and Derek. While there are plenty of fellow females in their comments section, the only blog run by women with any significant following that we were aware of was Hockey for the Ladies.HftL tends to indulge seriously those female fantasies that they might actually become involved with professional athletes, and runs many features about the "hotness" of players with very little focus on the game at hand. The writing style, too, left a lot to be lacking, seeing as every sentence seems to end in two exclamation points (even when inside parentheses!!)!! Sure, we're women, we thought, and we're straight women, we like dudes. But. . .damn. We are also passionate sportsfans and creative people. HtfL's main writer, Stephanie, also maintains a more serious website called the Steel City Sports Fan, but this is generally purely news-oriented. We simply felt that we could run a better website. It's as easy as that.
Taken from Hockey for the Ladies ... oh dear.
Not only a better website, but a website that could appeal to both men and women, that dealt with actual sports in addition to, say, our natural interest in men (when we choose to publicly express it) and our sick, dirty, bizarre senses of humor. We tend to do our own thing and not worry about censoring our thoughts or taking things too seriously, and it's worked out well for us. What started out as a kind of WE CAN CLEARLY RUN A WEBSITE OKAY experiment quickly metastasized into a living, breathing project with its own mythology, folklore, and quite a lot of followers and readers, most of whom we'll never meet. We now enjoy the side-effects of running a website, which include, aside from general insanity, the rewarding feeling of "being a part of something."
Which may, actually go to the heart of why we started PH: we thought we could "be a part of" the Penguins community in a more effectual way than we were, and do it better than the women that were doing it at that time. And we've been pretty successful, and met a lot of good people. The community aspect makes it worth it, and the popularity provides the validation. It's win-win. And our inspiration is the team, hands-down. We write because we love our team--those goofy, absurd bastards, all of them. If we didn't, the success and popularity never would have come to pass.
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Vancity Canuck from Benched Whale and The Hockey Bay
I am a blogger because some people I knew suggested to me that I might want to start my own blog. So instead of starting just one, I started two. You can partially blame my existence as a blogger on The Pensblog or the Kurtenblog. Before I wrote a blog, I read blogs. I loved to talk hockey and in Vancouver, if you are out with friends to catch a game or out for a few drinks, you will spend at least a portion of the night discussing what is wrong with the Canucks and what you think needs to be done to fix the team. I guess my hockey knowledge started to get a little out of hand as I noticed that my friends would be overwhelmed at my enthusiasm with talking about the sport, so I took to the net instead.
The suggestion came one night from my flatmate while watching a Canuck game at home on the couch. After sitting through a whole game with me giving insight, opinion and plenty of hilarious commentary (I think I'm pretty funny some days), my flatmate suggested that maybe I would want to start my own blog. Perhaps this was a suggestion because he didn't want to listen to me talk about hockey as much, maybe, nevertheless this is how my Vancouver Canucks blog started.
My other blog, The Hockey Bay began because at that time, there was very little written about the Tampa Bay Lightning (shocking I know). I found myself constantly searching for news and a certain type of commentary (ridiculousness) that just wasn't offered about the Lightning by other blog writers (there were like 2). So I started to write it myself.
Horny female bloggers know this photo well. Sadly, so do I.
I don't write the blogs to prove anything to other fans. You either like to read my stuff or you don't. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a stats junkie, but I know my stuff. I started the blog
assuming that no one would read it and I wrote just because I enjoyed to write. At first, I didn't even tell any of my immediate friends in my day to day life that I even wrote a blog, let alone two blogs. I eventually had to have a blog 'coming out' e-mail sent to them revealing my hobby, and my friends think it's pretty awesome that I blog about hockey. These days what keeps me blogging is the hockey blogging community that I have met. There are so many creative, smart and hilarious people whose insightful work I have read or whose posts can have me in stitches laughing out loud.
I don't try to be a girl blogger, I'm just a blogger that happens to be a girl. Most days that doesn't change the way I write about either team and on the days that I happen to post a half naked photo of Victor Hedman on my blog for draft day, well my readers take it in stride.
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Talk Hockey to Me
As a child of the west coast, I got brought into hockey by a Ducks fan from Anaheim, and a Sabres fan from Bend, OR while we were at school in Tacoma Washington. I initially thought I was a Penguins fan (Colby Armstrong and getting into Penn State might have helped that), and in order to connect with other Penguins fans, I had to go to the internet to find people.
I’d been blogging my life (not well, mind you) for a few years at that point, and when I picked up the hockey thing, a mess of my friends whined about how much they didn’t *actually* care about any of it. My hockey blog was really a spinoff of my “normal” blog, and now my normal blog is the one that gets ignored for weeks and weeks on end. At first I was trying to make a connection between hockey and roller derby, as a new derby player, and the blog started with the name “Life in the Sin Bin,” with a nod to the goonery of hockey as well as my um… occasionally shady derby dealings.
Eventually though, it settled on “Talk Hockey To Me,” which I will fully admit came from the sticker that graces one of my nalgene bottles, “Talk Nerdy To Me.”
The blog title also forced that awful song in my head. Ugh.
I quit playing derby and went to grad school in PA, lived in Hershey and fell in love with the Bears (and out of love with the Penguins) and the connection between “female” and “hockey fan” became a big enough deal I wrote my entire masters thesis on it. (It lives at the blog.) At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m the only self-identified feminist hockey blog out there, and I’m usually the one at the forefront of picking the puckbunny fights, which has gotten me both exceedingly good friends and exceedingly vitriolic hate mail. While the feminist agenda isn’t the only thing that keeps me going, some of my best posts have come from the differing treatment of male and female fans (pink jerseys, anyone?) At this point I’m interested in yes, proving my knowledge, but at the same time, trying to break down the barriers that women still encounter just in fandom.
Right now, I’ve realized that while the Hershey Bears are and will forevermore be MY TEAM, their associated NHL team (that DC gang with the Russians) isn’t feeling like the NHL team that’ll stick for me and my posterity. Part of the blog now is an NHL-less Northwesterner (go PDX WINTERHAWKS!) seeking out *her* team, for better or for worse.
Essentially, I’m all about being a messed up, bruise friendly, counter-culture feminist sports blog that doesn’t shy away from pushing the boundaries and constantly evolves beyond even where I thought I’d wind up. And even if I could stop it at this point, I don’t think I’d want to!
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