Wings/Avs Coverage

Today, a look at the Denver Post's post-game coverage from the Avalanche/Red Wings match on November 8th, which the Avalanche lost 5-2, despite playing the game in somebody else's home arena. First off, the newspaper recap of the game:

Turnaroud needed by Avalanche after loss to hated Red Wings

Franzen is often caught daydreaming of playing the Avs.

In this article, Adrian Dater recaps the Avs/Wings game. In it, AD describes the Avs' effort as "Washington Generals-style road performance," which pretty well sums this game up, actually. He points out that the Avs' lousy PK led to two goals by Johan Franzen, who probably experiences nocturnal emission when he dreams about facing the Avalanche. Dater includes quotes from David Jones and Daniel Winnik, as well as coach Sacco... mostly standard "we've got to turn this thing around" sort of thing, but Winnik's quote about "peaks and valleys" in particular was a good one. This is a pretty well-done article overall.

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.

Disposing of indispensable goalies.

http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_17654103

This is an article by Adrian Dater that starts off badly if you're a fan of the English language. Right in the title is the non-word "indisposable." It looks like it ought to be a real word, but it isn't. "Disposable" refers to something meant to be used and then thrown away, such as a plastic razor, a tissue, or a (non-cloth) baby diaper. The antonym of this word is "non-disposable." So even if Dater meant to write that goalies are unlike Huggies -- cheaply-made, single-use items which stink more often than not -- the word he'd want there is non-disposable, not indisposable.

Based on the context of the article, however, I assume Dater meant indispensable rather than non-disposable, as that word describes something that is absolutely necessary, that cannot be done without (such as oxygen, or beer). So not only does he use the wrong word, he's used a wrong word that doesn't even exist. But, headlines are not often written by the authors themselves, so we can't necessarily pin the blame on Dater here... but somebody at the Post (either Dater, his headline writer, or his editor) gets a big fat "F" right off the bat for grammar and spelling. It's one of the fifty largest newspapers in North America... there's got to be a dictionary lying around there somewhere.

This article deals with goaltending, so to be honest, before I even start reading, I'm skeptical. Dater, as do many novice hockey fans, spends a lot of time talking about goaltending without really knowing what he is talking about. It's like overhearing middle school kids talk about sex... they've heard most of the terms, and have a general idea on what's taking place, but as far as the details that matter are concerned they have no clue, so they just keep repeating loudly the few things they do know in an attempt to sound like experts, to the amusement of those who are actually getting some.

However, Dater avoids the nuts and bolts of the subject of goaltending here, which is both appropriate and wise. Instead, he starts off using the voice of Joe Fan, wondering about the Avalanche's goaltending situation:

 What are the Avs going to do about their goaltending? After all, it's the most important position in hockey, right? It's the one position you have to spend the most money on and devote the most attention to if you're a general manager, right?

  

Dater then points out that the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup with a goalie who wasn't their starter last year, and whom they did not bring back this year. This leads to the central theme of the piece: that goaltenders are not as vital to a team as many fans believe.

To boost this claim, Dater uses both the Blackhawk example and the fact that none of the other "final four" from last season are on the same team now as then. This is not entirely accurate, as Michael Leighton is still with the Flyers, but playing for their AHL affiliate. Dater also neglects to mention that the Blackhawks' decision to not re-sign Niemi, as well as the Sharks' decision to not re-sign Nabokov, were at least as much due to those teams' substantial salary-cap issues as they were to performance.

Still, the point is valid: teams do not seem to be placing a lot of importance (or money) towards their goaltending. The issue I have with this story, however, is that this is hardly a new development. Every Cup winner since the lockout of 2004-05 has featured a goalie who could hardly be called a superstar, while during that same stretch of time, the league's elite goalies (Luongo, Miller, Lundqvist, Brodeur, Nabokov, Vokoun, etc.) have had a dry spell as far as deep runs into the playoffs are concerned. Going back even further, The Red Wings have built a dynasty going back to the early 90s with what many would call average goaltending. As Dater points out in the article, the one time they spent a ton on goalies (Hasek, Joseph, and Legace), they were a disappointment in the playoffs.

So my question is not whether the days of the indispensable goalie is over, but rather if that day ever existed in the first place. The entire theme of the piece is flawed... but I will grant Dater a bit of a pass here, because the way he framed the question, he is simply addressing the perception that a team requires a top-notch goalie to be a contender, and in that respect, this piece effectively argues that this perception among fans may be incorrect.

This article then takes a detour from which it never returns, as AD discusses the Avalanche's options in net next season. He discusses a couple of free agent possibilities, the goalies the Avs have currently (without, I should add, any sort of slam directed towards his usual whipping boy, Peter Budaj), and prospects in the Avs system, ultimately deciding that a free agent signing or a trade seems to be the Avs' most likely answer to the goaltending question... an odd conclusion, after just having done a reasonable job convincing the reader that going out and getting a big-name goalie wasn't necessarily a step towards building a contending team.

All in all, this is a decent examination of the question of whether goalies really are "the most important position" on a hockey team, and whether spending a ton of money on a goalie is really a good investment. Dater includes quotes from a variety of sources, including Chicago GM Stan Bowman and Detroit GM Ken Holland, and refers to facts and previous results in order to solidify his point.

The issues with this article are the assumption that the "indispensable goalie" ever existed in the first place (sort-of negated by the way Dater framed the issue), and the fact that once again, Dater had a good thing going writing-wise, and derailed it midway through to go off on a tangent about the Avs' options in net, without really coming back to bring the article itself to a satisfying conclusion. This disjointed effort would have been better suited as two shorter, more self-contained articles, or as one larger article with an actual conclusion that would have tied together both the overall question of the importance of an elite goalie, and the specific issues facing the Avalanche in net.

B-

Article: "Avs' Duchene Aims to Battle Out Of Losing Ways."

http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_17560603

In this newspaper article, Adrian Dater takes a look at Avalanche center Matt Duchene's struggles of late (Duchene had scored one goal and three assists in the thirteen games after the all-star break).

The article is barely underway before Dater states something completely un-factual:

If the season had ended Monday, the Avs would have chosen fourth in the upcoming draft.

  
This is simply not a true statement; the NHL Entry Draft is not structured in the way that Dater indicates. Rather than strictly picking in reverse order of regular-season finish, the draft includes a lottery system for the first round of picks. Had the season ended Monday, the Avalanche would likely have picked fourth, but they could also have picked either first or fifth. These are the sorts of things that reporters should either know, or research, before writing about.

The article contains a number of good quotes from Duchene, and left me impressed with his attitude during both the team's and his own struggles on the ice. When given an opportunity to bad-mouth his coach a bit, Duchene declines, answering that things like that belong in the locker room. While I don't fault Dater for asking a tough question, I'm pretty happy with the way Duchene chose to answer it. 

Dater then uses a quote from Sacco about player's confidence during this prolonged skid, and establishes that Sacco was indeed referring to Duchene as one of the players he feels lacks confidence right now. It would have been a perfect way to lead into a final question of Duchene and what he thinks of what his coach said, but Dater does not go there. He throws in this Sacco quote, and then kind of just leaves it there unresolved.  

This is not the first time Dater has had something decent going writing-wise, failed to recognize it, and pretty much gobbed it up. He does not seem to recognize the flow present within every well-written piece -- introduction, body, conclusion -- but favors a ransom-note style of composition in which he cuts and pastes sentences together until he has the number of words ordered. I don't know if the fault lies in his ability, his effort, or his editor, but whatever it is, the end result is not good newswriting.

Since it's an article about Duchene and not Sacco, it would have been fitting to allow Duchene to respond to Sacco's comments on his confidence, and it would have made a very satisfying conclusion to this article, but that doesn't happen. Instead, it closes rather awkwardly with a brief quote about the arm injury that sidelined Duchene briefly in February. The subject of his arm injury would have fit much better in the body of the story rather than as the conclusion.


This article features some good quotes about the Avs' current and future star during his first major slump with the team, but the article itself is lacking. Errors reported as fact, and an overall bizarre structure with a decent start, a muddled middle, and a non-existent conclusion, combine to create a rather poorly-done story.


D+