All Things Avs blog: Dater finds a way to make people still care about Anderson

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/03/06/is-craig-anderson-the-avs-best-hope-for-the-no-1-pick/6635/#disqus_thread

Here we have Dater's blog entry about the Avs' position in the upcoming draft. He opens with an "I'm not going to (blank), but..." statement, saying that he won't go into the reasons why he thinks the Anderson trade was a bad one. Naturally, he then immediately spends the remainder of the paragraph rehashing the reasons why he thinks the Anderson trade was a bad one. Enough already.

He moves away from this, though, to discuss what effect Anderson's turnaround in Ottawa might have on the Avalanche. Dater's theory is that if Anderson plays well enough, he could pull the Sens out of last place, making room for the Avs to swoop in and take the #1 pick.

This blog entry is telling for two reasons. One, it shows us that Dater is toeing the line of obsession with the Anderson trade, and Two, it suggests that Dater does not understand how the NHL draft works.

It's a lottery. Every team that doesn't make the playoffs gets thrown in the lottery, weighted by where they finished... the 30th-ranked team has a 25% chance of winning the lottery, the 17th ranked team has a 0.5% chance of winning. The single winning team moves up a maximum of four places from their finishing spot, and every other team falls in line based on where they finished. This means that the bottom five teams all have a chance at the #1 pick, and the team which finishes 30th will draft either first or second no matter what.

However, Dater writes sentences like this one:

That leaves Ottawa maybe only standing in the way of that No. 1 pick, and Anderson’s red-hot goaltending since the trade (though he lost his last start) could make the difference in dropping Colorado to No. 30.

which sure sounds like he's under the impression that the 30th place team automatically gets the #1 pick. Well, they don't. Because only the next four teams can leapfrog over the 30th ranked team for the first pick, the 30th place team has a slightly less than 50% chance of that first pick despite only having a 25% chance of winning the lottery. And because there's only a single winner which could move up spots, the last-place team is guaranteed the 2nd pick at worst, at just over 50% odds. So it's basically a coin flip for that last-place team, with the odds slightly in favor of the 2nd pick over the 1st.

There are two possibilities here: either Dater does not understand the draft but writes about it anyway, or he DOES understand the draft but just doesn't care enough to be accurate when he writes. Either one is unforgivable for a journalist. Take the time to know the facts and to present them accurately, AD.

D

All Things Avs posts: Sharks/Avs recap

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/20/postgame-avs-sharks-the-grim-march-continues/6552/

After a few blog entries that simply reviewed the recent trades the team has made without offering a great deal of insight, Dater had this entry after the Avs got shut out against San Jose.

Up to this point, Dater had done a reasonably good job with his assessments of the two big trades over the weekend: he seemed to understand the reasoning behind the Anderson trade (they were not going to re-sign him anyway, might as well flip him for somebody they might be able to hold on to and develop) and kept his remarks largely in the "boy, things sure happen fast!" neighborhood. And his comments on the Stewart/Shattenkirk-Johnson trade were equally balanced: Dater worries that giving up Stewart is a mistake, but he also knows that Johnson is exactly the sort of player he's been saying the Avs need all along, and you've got to give up talent to get talent. Again, up to this point, he'd been OK, and those blog entries together receive a C+ grade.

But all it took was one game to end all that. This blog entry is a return to the mopey, pessimistic, sky-is-falling attitude that pervades Dater's work... if it had stopped there, then it would have been merely bad. However, this blog entry also offers an example of one of the prime reasons Adrian Dater should be removed from the Avalanche beat: his clearly-stated bias towards certain players and against others.

Dater starts with a variation of his "I'm not one to (blank), but...," this time saying, "I'm not going to start second-guessing the Stewart-Johnson deal tonight, after one game." I have my doubts, but let's take him at his word on that, and move on...

Next, he digs into the Anderson trade. Remember, he was pretty shruggy about this one up to this point, but that was before Anderson stood on his head for Ottawa that night and sent him all into a tizzy.

But I still want to second-guess the Craig Anderson deal some. I still can’t believe Anderson is gone. He was so great last year, and now he’s gone, traded for a guy who has been terrible all year in Ottawa. Can’t believe that’s all that came of Anderson, after a first year in which he literally carried the team into the playoffs, playing 71 games.

So, you can't believe it. OK. Rub your eyes, take a deep breath, and get back to work. Guess what? Anderson was terrible all year in Denver, too... so what's your point? One good game in Ottawa and he's a Vezina candidate?

Oh, and do you have any idea what the word "literally" means, Dater? This is one thing I can't stand for, is when a person who is PAID TO USE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE treats it like this. "Literally" is a word, it has a meaning. Learn it.

So many fans seem to think he “quit” on the team this year. Does anybody have any evidence of that? I sure can’t find any. 

Well, there were all those times he half-assed a save attempt, where he played like he didn't really care. He didn't look like the same goalie he did in the first half of last season, and even his biggest fans would admit it. Ironically, the Ottawa game Dater is talking about that convinces him that Anderson should have been the Avs Goalie Of The Future is all the proof some of us need to show that Anderson's play this season was the result of giving up on the team... in his first game in Ottawa (a team with pretty bad defense, themselves) he performed like he hadn't for Colorado all year. Looks like pretty convincing evidence to me that he might have been holding something back with the Avs. Good riddance to him.

Sorry, but I’m an Anderson guy. I think this: I think Anderson DID feel less wanted this year, after the Avs didn’t give the time of day to his agent toward talks on a new contract.

Two problems with this one. First, it came to light right after this that the Avs DID, in fact, offer Anderson a very nice contract and a substantial raise, and he turned them down. Glaring mistakes like this are why real reporters routinely include something called "fact gathering" as part of their work.

The big problem here, though, is:  "I'm an Anderson guy." How often do we see a professional journalist proclaim the guys he likes and doesn't like the way Dater does? It's just ridiculous... journalism is all about being free from bias on the subject you are covering, and what bias you cannot rid yourself, you do your best to mask and keep out of your stories. Not only does Dater fail to make an attempt to keep his personal bias about the Avalanche out of his writing, he pretty much flaunts it. Frankly, I can't believe he hasn't been fired for this sort of thing. He should be.

Then he had a couple of bad games, and suddenly he was in a rotation basis with Peter Budaj. That’s where I split with the coaching decisions from there on the goaltending. I still think Anderson needed another bunch of games to play by himself before he started to be in a platoon position with a guy who has NEVER proven himself as a No. 1.

 
AD, he had more than "a couple of bad games." He was under .500, and his backup had better stats than he did. This is the problem with bias in reporting... it makes you unable to discern (and thereby report) report the truth. Bias is poison to journalism.

Now, if you're one of those who will dismiss it by saying "But it's only a blog!" consider this: yes, a blog writer is different than a journalist and is subject to different ethical boundaries (if any)... but when a blog writer IS a journalist, it creates a major problem, and this is a perfect example of it. It is a conflict of interest to get paid as a journalist to cover the Avalanche, and then spew out ill-informed and completely personal opinions on the same subject, ESPECIALLY on the same website.

And why take a dig at Budaj here? Budaj did his job as the Avalanche backup this season. Anderson failed, spectacularly, in his job as the starter... but what does Dater do? Defends Anderson, attacks Budaj. Recall just a bit ago when I said that bias poisons journalism? There's the evidence of it, right there... no hockey mind or journalist would ever suggest that the problem with a team is its backup goaltender.

After bitching about this for another few paragraphs, Dater then returns, as you knew he would, to second-guess the Johnson-Stewart deal for a while. Big surprise, right?

Dater does get one thing right in this blog entry, and this is it:

I was wrong.

He's wrong about a lot of stuff, folks, but that hasn't stopped him yet.

Grade: F

Postscript: The comments section produced an interesting exchange. 

Vamjl: 

Why are you so quick to cut Andy all the slack in the world and just as quick to throw Budaj under the bus and back over him? 

Jimbo (me):

I agree... Dater goes out of his way here to make excuses for Anderson, but when it comes time to discuss Budaj Dater dismisses him with one sentence.

Whether Budaj hs proved he can be a #1 goalie or not, he DID prove to the coaches and the Avs that he gave them a better chance to win than Anderson this season, and that says it all... if Budaj's as bad as Dater says and the Avs STILL went with him, then we've just learned everything we need to know about what Andy brought to the team... if Dater put his massive bias aside for a bit he might be able to give a better analysis on the goaltending situation, but he'd rather be the writer with an edge than the writer with the insightful commentary and analysis. 

"Adrian:" 

Jimbo,
Congrats on the most idiotic post of the 100 comments so far. Bravo!
How many games has Budaj won lately, I wonder? Oh, and Anderson won 13 games this year, and Budaj 12 so far. So there goes your statement about giving them the best chance to win.

Jimbo (me): 

How is my comment idiotic? I said that the coaches and the Avs had pretty clearly stated that Budaj gave them the best chance to win, as evidenced by his increased workload as the season went along. Prove me wrong... go ahead. Show everybody what an idiot I am, or admit what a petty, unprofessional writer YOU are. 

I thought I made a pretty good point, don't you? After being given a very heavy workload to start the season, and then again after he returned from his knee injury, Anderson eventually fell into a platoon situation with Budaj, and then near the end it seemed he might actually be headed towards a backup role. They ultimately traded Anderson away, of course, and on top of all that, Sacco actually said at one point "Right now [Budaj] gives us a chance to win"... the clear implication being that Anderson did not.

That sure seems like a lot of compelling evidence to back up my statement that the Avs' decisions (and statements) about the goaltending told us a lot about what they really thought of Anderson as the season went on. Dater apparently doesn't like reasoning that follows a linear path, however, as it clogs up his frothy-bias machine and he has to spend the rest of the night getting it running again. So instead of responding to the argument, Dater throws out some facts that don't really support his point (or damage mine), and lashes out, calling my post "idiotic." Classy.

Now, it was pointed out that it might not have been Dater himself posting as "Adrian," and I responded that if this was the case I apologized to the real Dater... but frankly, I have little doubt it was Dater who wrote that comment. All it does is show how thin both his knowledge of the game AND his skin really are.

All Things Avs blog: The Rending of Garments

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/14/valentines-day-2011-darkest-day-in-avalanche-history/6492/

In this blog entry, Dater presents his recap of the day's events. Only two things really happened today: Peter Forsberg did not show up to play hockey, and the Colorado Avalanche did not show up to play hockey. So really, it was a pretty uneventful day when you think about it.

Dater starts with another "Look, I don't usually (blank), but..." intro, and considering that this entry is gloomily subtitled "The Darkest Day in Avalanche History," it looks like it's going to be a solid "F" from the get-go. The second paragraph begins with Dater describing the day as a "disaster in Colorado Avalanche history." I know he's feeling the pain today, but a disaster would be the team plane hitting the side of a mountain (presumably, one that does not resemble a hockey goal). An aging player who can't skate announcing his retirement is NOT a disaster, and a 9-1 butt-kicking is just that, a butt-kicking. So I would have backed off a bit on the "disaster" description, and maybe just have said that the day did not go exactly as planned.

Dater moves on to question whether Sacco will keep his job, and to wonder what other changes might take place before the Feb. 28 trading deadline. I know it's just a quick thing here, but this is a big part of what bothers me about Dater's blog: once again, he's thinking (and writing) like a fan, and not a reporter. He's treading very close to a conflict of interest here... as soon as he says "Sacco should be fired," he pretty much loses his ability (if not the right) to cover Sacco or the team objectively. Of course, many fans are wondering themselves if Sacco will/should keep his job, and they are wondering what the Avs will do to address their losing streak... but Dater's personal musings on the matter should remain personal. At least, though, he doesn't try to answer these questions here, he simply asks them.

He does include some insight from Peter McNab about the team's current struggles, and McNab's assessment is a good one. He says, essentially, that a team needs to lose like this to learn how to win, and I couldn't agree more. To this point in the season, I think the Avs have skated hard and are trying their best, for the most part, and that's a good sign. This losing streak hasn't been a product of any lack of effort, but rather a dearth of talent and experience. I'm going to go ahead and write off the Calgary game as the result of the month-long Forsberg distraction coming to its inevitable conclusion, and hopefully they continue to play hard, even if the wins remain difficult to come by.

Dater closes with a teary good-bye to Forsberg, saying he was honored to cover him and to shake his hand, and telling him he was the best player he ever saw. It's pretty clear that's not really an objective statement by any stretch of the imagination, but I suppose it's probably OK for a reporter to say something like that after a guy's already retired. I'm going to have to think about that for a bit.

Grade: C-  It starts off just awful, really, with Dater not even remotely interested in acting like anything other than an Avalanche fan, throwing in some impressive hyperbole and some truly high-end Feeling Sorry For Ourselves. Adding the insight from McNab, and a good-bye to Forsberg that comes close to being authentically touching, pulls it up from a low D.

All Things Avs blog: Dater Puts Sacco On the Hotseat

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/13/postgame-avs-predators-time-to-start-questioning-sacco/6467/

In this blog entry, Dater focuses on some questions about coach Joe Sacco's handling of the Avalanche during their now-seven-game losing streak. Dater starts off, as he often does, with a personal story: this time, griping about cab drivers who don't like to accept credit cards (it's because their tip will be reported (and therefore taxable), Dater... if you're going to pay with a card, tell him up front you'll tip cash, and I reckon you won't get nearly as much resistance), and then thanking the creator of a Predators blog for giving him a ride to his hotel. Dater graciously links to that guy's blog. Hopefully, Dater actually checks out that blog, because it's a lot better than his.

Dater then uses his "I'm not one to (blank), but..." intro to lead into questioning many of the coaching moves made by Sacco recently. Dater says something in that lead-in paragraph that I completely agree with, and since I go out of my way to point out the things he says that I don't agree with, it's only fair to give him a high-five when he says something intelligent and insightful:

Coaches, to me, are guys who get too much credit when things go well for their team, and too much blame when things go bad.

This is exactly correct, and is why I'm not really too down on Sacco right now. Sacco, like his team, is learning the NHL game, and mistakes are to be expected. He was given a young and inexperienced, poorly-constructed, bargain-basement team that got hit hard by the injury bug, and none of that is Sacco's fault. However, he has been making some decisions that I think should be questioned if not necessarily criticized, and Dater touches on a few of them.

Despite the griping that follows, this entry did not come across like Dater thinks Sacco should be fired, or that he believes Sacco is the cause of the problems the team is facing right now. I personally think that's the correct angle here. Dater did a reasonably good job of keeping the focus on certain choices Sacco has made lately, such as yanking goalies mid-game, benching players to (presumably) send messages, and allowing David Koci anywhere near the ice with his skates on. Although I don't think the team has tuned Sacco out, I can definitely see how some of the things he's doing right now might get them on that path... and Dater alludes to this as well.

The issue with this blog, though, is the tone Dater uses throughout. Although the questions Dater asks are legit, he presents them in a typical-for-Dater watercooler voice that treads the line of appropriateness for a serious blog, but is far too conversational for a guy who's the Avs beat writer for the only major newspaper in town. I know that this is where a ton of people would say, "Hey, man, it's a blog, not an article. Stuff like that's OK in a blog," but then I would look down from my white horse and say, "Yeah, and for a regular fan the guidelines of journalism aren't a big deal in a blog, but it's not written by just a regular fan, he's the Avs beat writer, whether he's blogging or not."

Although not nearly as blatant as some others he's written, this entry is an example of the Conflict of Interest Dater creates with this type of coverage... it's Dater's job and responsibility to cover the Avalanche. If Dater wants to blog about cabbies and drug addiction and KISS, he can be as conversational as he wants (as long as the Post doesn't think he crosses some line or another), but when he blogs about the Avs, his blog must maintain the same level of professionalism and integrity as his reporting.

The questions he poses are appropriate and fair, but there is a way to approach them and maintain the professionalism expected from the team's beat writer, even when they're presented in a blog format. I really don't know how the Avs take this guy seriously when he asks questions, when he turns around and writes things like this.

To be honest, this topic would have made a great news article, had Dater done the reporter thing and asked these questions of Sacco himself... his readers could have learned a lot about the team and its coach with a good, hard-hitting investigative story about these issues. Instead of doing that admittedly difficult work, however, he just takes the easy way out, asks a bunch of open-ended questions that are really just criticisms with question marks at the end, and puts it out there for discussion.

In other news, Dater (of course) finds a way to get in a dig on Peter Budaj:

And then there have been some of Sacco’s other decisions (staying too long with Kyle Cumiskey, choosing him over Holos, benching Craig Anderson in favor of Peter Budaj, who simply isn’t a No. 1 goalie in this league...).

Why is that necessary? Budaj hasn't been the Avs' #1 guy in years. He's the backup, and that role has been pretty clearly defined. Has Sacco ever insinuated that Budaj was the number one goalie, or even that there was a goalie controversy on the horizon?  Not to my knowledge, making it a completely superfluous comment, but when Dater sees a spot to get a jab in at Budaj, he takes it.

So overall, Dater's inappropriate tone brings a reasonably solid effort down to C level. Too bad, because the idea was on target, but the resultant entry was lacking much.

All Things Avs blog: Dater goes mental on officials for helping Jackets bully poor Forsberg

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/11/postgame-avs-blue-jackets-foppa-and-the-not-ready-for-prime-time-players/6463/

This is Dater's postgame thoughts from the Avs/Blue Jackets game, which Columbus won 3-1. It is pretty standard Dater whining, sky-is-falling, these guys are pathetic/they have no heart stuff, until this point:

Referee Stephen Walkom didn’t dignify the proceedings tonight. I try to stay away from analyzing the referees, but they do a job just like any other guy out there and deserve to a look once in a while. Walkom let a few blatant calls go tonight, some involving Forsberg. Overrated, overpaid Sammi Pahlsson pulled his usual clutch and grab, hit’em-after-the-whistle routine once tonight on Forsberg, and old-school, time-has-passed-him-by Walkom just swallowed his whistle and let Forsberg get wrestled to the ground behind the play.

Guys like Walkom should do the hockey world a favor and retire, because he doesn’t know anything about today’s faster game and how to call it. He seems to want every game to go back to the clutch-and-grab disaster it was prior to the last lockout, and that ain’t the way it’s done any more Steve.

Better to take that league pension and go back to the backwaters of the sport you so clearly miss. Nobody else in the modern world does. But one of Walkom’s good ole Canadian boys, Rick Nash, got looked at crossways by American Paul Stastny in the second period tonight and Walkom blew his whistle and administered a slashing penalty – a slashing penalty, on a guy whose stick never actually touched Nash? Yessir, two minutes in the sin bin for Stats, while more rodeo hockey could ensue on guys like Forsberg without consequence.

So, first star tonight to Stephen Walkom, for giving us all a nice circa 1998 game out there. Well done, NHL marketers.

Where to start with this? Well, first of all, if you didn't see the game, it was actually called fairly even. The Jackets had two power plays, and the Avs had one. That's not saying it was called well, but it was called the same for both teams, and in hockey that's about as much as you can ask for. The Stastny call he mentions was not a great call considering the things that were not called, but neither was it as innocent as Dater makes it out to be. As in ANY hockey game, there were missed calls, but the officiating didn't figure into this game at all.

Dater seems to not have noticed that Forsberg pretty much grabbed Pahlsson by the back of the neck and pulled him to the ice; the way he remembers it, Forsberg was "wrestled to the ground behind the play." In fact, if this game had been called the way Dater apparently wants to see it called, Forsberg would have probably taken at least as many penalties as he drew... he played the same sort of game he always did, which frankly I was happy to see. Forsberg gives as good as he gets, and that apparently hasn't changed, floppy ankles and all.

Am I saying that criticisms of the officiating are improper in a newspaper setting? Not at all... but there is a professional way to go about it, and there's a rabid homer fanboy way to go about it. That Dater chose the latter is the issue here.

There was zero professionalism in this entry... it starts with a Dater standard: "I usually don't (blank), but..." and then he goes on to do exactly what he says he never does. If also featured Dater's typically snotty tone, a real journalism no-no. It included personal insults -- including, incredibly, a charge of xenophobia -- directed at Walkom (apparently Dater does not realize that there were two refs on the ice allowing Forsberg to get mugged, as Walkom gets 100% of his wrath here). He threw in an unnecessary sideswipe at Pahlsson, sarcastically gave the officiating the first star of the game, and he topped it off by donning his tinfoil helmet to assert that the NHL has put crooked officials in place, apparently in an effort to ensure that the league will thrive by allowing skilled, star players to be easily neutralized?

I mean, seriously... how cranky is Dater on this one? So the refs missed a couple calls. Did it really warrant 250 bile-filled words for a game between two second-division teams? But he really went for broke here, and I'm not sure why, because as I said earlier, the officiating had no bearing on this game. The difference here, I think, is that Saint Peter was on the ice, and therefore any and every missed call involving Forsberg is a Crime Against Hockey! Dater ultimately comes across here as the unabashed Forsberg fanboy he really is.

The rest of the entry reverts to the tone it started with: no-insight, cliche comments like "I question [Stastny's] fire to win," and "Where is the emotion out there?" Basically, this blog entry is an insight into nothing more than all the things Dater was cranky about before going to bed last night. I suppose there is a place for that in the blogosphere, but I fail to see how it fits in with professional newspaper coverage of the Colorado Avalanche.

Grade: F  This useless yet oddly entertaining blog entry includes a classic Dater rant, reminiscent of the anti-ESPN rant from a few years back. Too bad that he didn't put nearly as much thought into this as he did then... the ESPN rant was silly, but at least there was an actual argument in there somewhere if you took the time to peel away the junior-high taunts and name-calling. This is just frustration... if the team is frustrated, report it. I don't really care, however, if Dater is frustrated.