Deadmarsh Blog - Removed?!?

Howdy! With the Stanley Cup playoffs in the history books, we enter the slowest time of the year for a hockey fan. Luckily, we have baseball to get us through these tough months... unless you are a Rockies fan, when this season will henceforth be known as The Time of Great Drinking. Sigh.

There will likely be very few articles in the Denver Post about the Avalanche in the upcoming months, which might make it easier for Grading Dater to keep up with them, but seeing as how we've already established the next few months will be some sort of vicious bender waiting for hockey to return, I wouldn't count on it. But anyway, on with the show...

When you're an assistant coach for a hockey team,
you give up your right to privacy. Read the constitution! 

Today's entry is a curiosity: a blog entry that no longer exists. The reasons WHY it no longer exists we can only speculate, but it very likely indicates that Dater has stepped over the line of journalistic integrity and ethics once again. Not long after writing a blog in which he flirted with shady journalism by essentially reporting what he was (apparently) told off-the-record about Deadmarsh and Lefebvre returning to the Avalanche coaching staff, Dater posted an article explaining that Adam Deadmarsh had, in fact, stepped down from his position "for personal reasons" and accepted another, behind-the-scenes position with the team (Dater ended up oh-for-two on his "Deadmarsh and Lefebvre set to return" prediction, as this blog indicates that Lefebvre has accepted a head coaching position for the Canadiens' AHL affiliate).

When somebody says that they are doing something for personal reasons, I think 99% of the population realizes that what they're saying is that they do not really want those reasons discussed publicly. That doesn't mean that those 99% of people aren't curious about it and won't gossip and speculate, but it's a pretty safe bet that those people aren't newspaper journalists with the power to completely ruin that person's wishes to remain private just by tapping a few buttons. Adrian Dater IS a newspaper journalist, and even on his blog he has a greater responsibility to the privacy of those he covers than you and I do when we're sitting at the bar discussing hockey rumors and stuff.

Odds and Ends

Hello! Here are a few brief (we can only hope) grades for some recent work found on the Denver Post. Enjoy!

Deadmarsh, Lefebvre looking set to return

Few people remember what
great, great hair this guy had

In this blog, Adrian Dater uses some very odd logic to explain why he believes that Avalanche assistant coaches Adam Deadmarsh and Sylvain Lefebvre will be with the team next season. He begins by explaining that the Avalanche do not allow their assistants to speak to the press, nor do they announce any upcoming coaching changes. "For instance, if an assistant coach is not coming back, they will not release that information publicly." With him so far? He then tells us that when he asked somebody (he doesn't say whom) about Deader and Lefebvre, he was met with silence. His conclusion from that is, oddly enough, that they are coming back... despite the fact that he just wrote that when the Avs say nothing, it usually means a coach isn't coming back.

Confused? You're not the only one. When a few commenters questioned this very issue and raised a couple very good points about it, the response was the tired-out "It's a blog, he can write whatever he wants." Even Dater (or somebody using his name, anyway) himself chimed in, writing "I just love getting lectures on "accountability" from people who don't use their real name." Well, even though a blog can be used to inject some more opinion into things than would be proper in a regular article, a blog is not an excuse for amateurish journalism from a professional journalist, whether he uses his real name or not.

OFFSEASON STUFF: Draft

Since the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup last month, there hasn't been much going on in hockey. And of course, there hasn't been much going on with the Avalanche for a couple months before that, so it's been understandably quiet around here at Grading Dater. But with both the NHL Entry draft and the start of free agent signings both within the last two weeks, I think it's time to crank out an update. So to all the readers who are not my brother, welcome back! And to my brother: stop kicking pucks into my net!

DRAFT STUFF

As we know, the Avalanche selected forward Gabriel Landeskog with the second pick of the draft. I like the pick a lot... he fits the Avs' needs (a huge part of the Avs' defensive problems is that their forwards are way too easy to get the puck away from), and by all accounts is a kid of great character who's not afraid to step up into a leadership role. Plenty of people are still griping about trading away Chris Stewart, but I think Landeskog's combination of skill plus desire & character could make him a much more valuable player for the Avalanche than Stewart ever could have been.

I had hoped that the Avs would pick Adam Larsson, the big Swedish defenseman, with their lottery pick. As I said, I like Landeskog, but I see Larsson as being a much rarer type of player. He's a big, fast, skilled defenseman who's been playing in an elite pro league for a couple years. My view is that with a top-five pick, you want to grab a superstar-type player, and I see Larsson as much more of that type of player than Landeskog.