No Suspension for Brad Stuart

Hello! Today we will be taking a look at a recent All Things Avs blog by Adrian Dater. This blog deals with the lack of disciplinary action taken by the league over the hit by San Jose's Brad Stuart that knocked Avs captain Gabe Landeskog briefly out of that game, and caused him to miss the following game in Edmonton. Not only will we take a look at the blog entry, but we will have a little discussion about NHL rules and the Laws of Physics, to boot!

No Suspension for Brad Stuart

There is very little to this blog. Short and sweet, it's basically a quick update on the situation in which Dater informs his reader that the league has elected to take no action against Stuart for the hit, which also received no in-game penalty. My take (which will be evident by the time you finish reading the blog) is that while an in-game minor wouldn't have been out of order (Stuart's elbow made contact, but it wasn't extended, it was in the follow-through... so in my view that aspect is borderline), this was a fairly clean hit. The reason Landeskog got hurt was not a dirty play by Stuart, but because Landy skated head-first into a monster open-ice hit, the sort we Avs fans would love to see somebody in maroon -- say, Erik Johnson, for example -- dishing out to people.

Brad Stuart explains to reporters about how his strict diet
of infants and kittens has helped prolong his NHL career.

Things like this are when the All Things Avs blog is at its best: delivering little bits of information that are either too small or too trivial to create an entire column for them. So in theory, this is a good blog entry. Dater writes that he's not surprised there was no suspension because "Landeskog emerged OK." Fair enough, I guess... although I think it's more because it was a legal hit AND Landeskog emerged OK (or so we thought). It goes off the tracks, however, when Dater chooses to add in this sentence.

The head was the initial point of contact and Stuart left his feet delivering the hit – which Todd McLellan and the laughably homer-ish Sharks TV announcers said didn’t happen (might want to get your eyes examined boys, cuz he clearly left his feet)

To discuss the problems with this sentence and this blog, we can first look at the video of the hit. Landeskog approaches the collision with his body held much lower than Stuart's, there isn't enough height difference to cause this so it's either invisible stilts for Stewart, or Landy is crouching, having reached out a bit for the puck. It appears (although this is difficult to discern with 100% certainty) that Landeskog's head and shoulder are actually the initial point of contact with Stuart's shoulder, immediately followed by pretty much every part of Landeskog's body north of his shins (as opposed to the last time Landeskog got clobbered at the blueline, in which Andy Sutton hit almost nothing but his head).

Avs/Penguins coverage

Hello! Today on Grading Dater, we will look at the Post's coverage of the Avs-Pens game, in which the Avs lost the game 6-3, after the Penguins scored four goals in the third period. The Avs started strong while the Pens looked flat, and thanks in no small part to a magnificent goal from Duchene, the Avalanche had a 3-1 lead at the end of the first period. The Penguins then decided that they would play some hockey, and the second period was a dogfight, and by the third period the Pens' four lines had worn down the Avs' 2.5. Even though the Avs still played a tough game, the Penguins displayed why they're one of the top teams in the NHL.

First off, let's take a quick look at the "Live Chat" thing that Dater has been doing for the games he covers. Basically, it's a chat room where Avs fans can sign in and all type "damnit..." and/or "FIRE SACCO!!!!!!" at the same time whenever the opponent scores a goal. This is a chance to see Dater at his most negative and pessimistic, surrounded by others who are often just as bad. Although there do seem to be a handful of folks there who are genuinely interested in, and appreciative of, smart hockey conversation, it's still a very, very depressing way to spend one's time during a hockey game, and I'd strongly advise against it. It does provide a window on Dater's coverage of the Avs, though, and since it's on the Denver Post web page and it counts as DP coverage, Grading Dater is going to comment on the Live Chat this time, but we'll leave it alone after this.

Catching Up

Since the last Grading Dater post, the Avs have completed a great five-game road winning streak, and then come back to Pepsi Center where they have failed to win. At a somewhat surprising 6-4-0, they are in second place in the division behind the somewhat more surprising Oilers. When the Avs were winning, Dater's coverage was fairly good and upbeat, and once they came home and began to struggle, Dater Downer has been creeping back into the spotlight.

A pattern has emerged: Dater's "human interest" stories - often-brief articles about a specific player - have been pretty good, as seen here, here, and here. With these stories, Dater uses a detached, third-person voice to relay interesting (if somewhat low-density) information about a player or the team, and his gloom-and-doom persona seems to be locked far away where it belongs. 
A- (cumulative)

This game's over, folks!

When Dater is charged with a game write-up, things get a little dicey... that pessimist that dwells within him often takes over, with predictably Eeyore-ish results. In this article, for instance, Dater had already written a Sloppy Avalanche lose to Blackhawks article, but the pesky Avs went and won the game in a shootout and Dater had to start over. Problem is that he left bits of the original article in there (since edited out), making for a very confusing read. I know that mistakes happen, and I don't doubt that AD either a) has a deadline, or b) just wants to get home... but there is absolutely no excuse for submitting a sports article, clearly written before the game is over, reporting that the wrong team won.

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.