HockeyRhetoric

I’ve never considered myself much of a sports writer, but when Paul asked me to contribute to Hockey Rhetoric, I was honored. I only read a handful of hockey blogs, and Hockey Rhetoric is one of them. It would be impossible to regularly read every Sabres blog out there, and I barely have time for the few I do read. I doubt you’ll see many posts breaking down games, as I’m not really interested in doing that. The idea for my contribution to this blog stems from the twitter chatter that surrounds the Sabres. Some of it is incredibly interesting, and some of it is inane, but there is a lot of it. What I am going to try to do is report on the twitter conversations that I find interesting. There are no rules for this, and I expect to make mistakes. I am a full-time student, an associate news editor for the Buffalo State Record and a contributing writer to Aslanmedia.com. I write a lot, so I may not get to everything, or anything, depending on what’s going on. I want to have fun with this. Feel free to send me suggestions for things I may have missed. My email address is Mcanfield36@gmail.com, and my twitter account is http://twitter.com/#!/MikeCanfield36.

Sports Illustrated and SI.com hockey writer, Michael Farber, had this to say on a recent podcast, hosted by Richard Deitsch:

“You have teams in places where hockey is not the topic of conversation. It seems to me, [in accordance with] basic business principles, you want to put your product where people who like that product can sample it. It would be like putting a McDonald’s in an area where everybody is a vegetarian. Unfortunately, in the Southern United States — not to pick only on the Southern US — there a lot of hockey vegetarians.”

It should be noted that Farber made this comment in summation to a point he was making on the degree to which Canada has embraced the Jets. » Read the rest of this entry «

Watching this past weekend’s Sabres games, I was reminded of something I noticed during HBO’s 24/7 Penguins/Capitals: Road to the NHL Winter Classic.

Seeing the Penguins and Capitals documented helped me to fully realizing what those two particular organizations were all about. I consider the Pens and Caps to be something of model franchises for hockey in the post-lockout era. They play in the East, so they have an advantage over the Red Wings and maybe the Sharks or Canucks in terms of visibility but ultimately, the Pens and the Caps were, and still are, the envy of the league. They’re both loaded with elite level talent, smart executives, committed owners, and their facilities are off the charts. Because of these things, their fan support is strong and they get a large share of the national attention. » Read the rest of this entry «

Jason Pominville was recently named the new, full-time captain of the Buffalo Sabres. I have several unimportant, semi-related thoughts on this.

To start, count me amongst what was probably the majority of Sabres fans who, prior to the official announcement, had endorsed Thomas Vanek for the title of team captain. I think the strongest reason for this is also the simplest. Vanek is one of three elite level talents on the Sabres. Myers is probably too young for the captaincy and Miller is of course a goaltender. Vanek is the most talented scorer on the team and by a pretty wide margin too. At this point in his career, Vanek affects every game he is in the line-up for and in a very noticeable, if not measurable, way; but Vanek’s potential impact as captain goes beyond his ability to set up and finish scoring chances. » Read the rest of this entry «

I’d like to formerly announce that Mike Canfield will be doing some writing for the website. I approached Mike with an idea in mind and asked if he’d be interested in contributing. He agreed to give it a try and now here we are.

Mike is committed to building his profile on the web. I’m committed to progress. The start of Mike’s contributory role on HR is representative of progress both for me personally and this website in general.

I’ll explain. » Read the rest of this entry «