Local Reporter Surprised, Upset over Extremely Commonplace and Reasonable Event.

The Avalanche season opener is fast approaching, and the team has finalized its roster. This has led Adrian Dater to climb up onto his stump and declare that the Avalanche have made a "very...very, very bad decision" in sending Stefan Elliott to Lake Erie:

Stefan Elliott to the minors? Bad decision

In this All Things Avs blog post, Dater makes it abundantly clear that he thinks Stefan Elliott should have made the Avs' NHL roster and that the Avalanche front office is a bunch of nincompoops. He makes it equally clear that he would much rather sit around and gripe about the Avalanche with his fellow fans than to report on it like a... well, a reporter.

Elliott, pictured moments after the Avalanche began the plot to destroy his life.

Having predicted that Elliott would make the Avs roster ("take it to the bank"), Dater reacts with surprise here that he didn't, and takes his embarrassment out on the Avs mangement. Dater got caught in the same trap when he predicted that Vokoun would be the Avs next goalie... he makes a prediction, ends up being wrong about it, and then reacts (and reports) emotionally rather than objectively. An objective view of this situation reveals many very good reasons for Elliott to start the year in the AHL.

Dater took the same approach a couple days ago with the decision to send Tyson Barrie to the AHL... and just as he was then, he's just wrong, plain and simple. As good as these guys may have been, it's pretty clear they aren't going to break into the Avs' top four without an injury or two occurring, so why bury a talented young kid at the bottom of the NHL roster, rather than send him to the minors where he will get gobs of ice time playing against men instead of boys, and–just maybe–learn a thing or two?

All Things Avs blog: Dater wants to see emotion out there, damnit!

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/03/31/postgame-avs-predators-an-all-too-typical-performance-of-late/6819/

In this blog entry, Adrian Dater offers his thoughts after another Avs loss, this one to the playoff-bound Nashville Predators. Dater mentions that Erik Johnson was upset after the game, and then states that he believes that the team needs a lot more angry guys playing angrily.

While I think it's great that Johnson was pissed off after the game, Dater doesn't seem to realize that not everybody is like that. There was a movie a few years ago, a chick flick disguised as a baseball movie, which worked in that it tricked me into watching nearly the entire thing (it had Drew Barrymore in it, for chrissake, but it still managed to get me). It wasn't bad, but I can't remember the name. Fever Pitch, maybe? Anyway, this Red Sox fan was living and dying with the team, like they do, and after a particularly tough BoSox loss they guy was just heartbroken, fuming and furious. And what did he see that night? Three members of the Red Sox, eating dinner after the game, laughing and having a good time as if the loss was no big deal at all.

The fan was upset and pretty much offended at this, but eventually it led to a bit of an epiphany for the guy about priorities, and he ended up running out onto the field in the middle of a game to give Drew a grope in front of everybody before Pedro told them to get a room. I can't really remember how it ended, to be honest, so I just made that last bit up, but it's probably a pretty safe bet.

Ranting Homer? Yeah, that sums it up nicely.

Dater needs to learn this: it's the fan's job to get all emotional about this game. The players see it differently, because they're not fans... and it isn't Dater's place (or ours) to question their desire to win just based on their demeanor after the game. Dater here is writing like a fan, not a journalist... which is perhaps his biggest fault (among many).

Ironically, Dater steps into journalist mode long enough to call out Cody Mcleod for taking a stupid penalty that hurt his team. The irony there, of course, is that McLeod's angry, hit-anything-that-moves attitude on the ice is pretty much exactly what Dater just said the team "needs A LOT more of." Make up your mind, Dater... you want them playing angry and with plenty of emotion, but when they do, you criticize the inevitable result? Doesn't sound like a very clear line of thinking to me.

Dater goes on to criticize management for trading away Shattenkirk and Stewart in the trade that brought Erik Johnson to the Avs... but wait, isn't Johnson the very same player that not three paragraphs earlier, Dater said was bringing exactly the right attitude to the team? Oh, I'm so confused...

He goes on to touch on just about every hot topic he can think of: the Anderson trade (shock!), the coaching, the ownership, Jay McClement... since when is a 4th-line center at the heart of a team's problems? Dater has himself so twisted around here, it's rather funny.

Basically, this is just another of Dater's fuming, unfocused complaints about the team not having enough fire and focus out there. Blogs like this occur about once every three losses, and they rarely say anything that the previous 50 did not. It's another cliche-filled rant about anything and everything, designed just to entice readers to click on the blog, without any real attempt to report, educate, debate, or analyze.

Dater substitutes cliches for knowledge of the game... which is why we get so many of them. It's just a bit uncommon for him to shoot as many holes in the bottom of his boat in such a short time as he does in this blog entry.


D+

Avs Mailbag: Draft questions and more!

http://www.denverpost.com/avsmailbag/ci_17622457

Dater's workload seems to be light this week... other than this Mailbag, an Adam Foote retirement article, and a couple blogs, most of the game writeups have been from outside sources... which has been a refreshing change. So without much actually coming from the Denver Post (and with a car needing a new transmission put in this week), I've allowed myself to get a bit behind. Hope to play catchup today on both the blog and the transmission, and I will start with this Mailbag.

Larsson sports my high school hairstyle.

The first question deals with the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. The Avs' freefall makes it more and more likely that they will be in line for a very high pick, and this question asks about the players who might be selected with one of those high picks. Dater offers two names, both Swedes (and both, coincidentally, the same two he discussed in an All Things Avs blog entry): Landeskog and Larsson, and gives a very small bit of information for both of them.

I'd like to have seen a more thorough answer here... first of all, while Larsson is pretty much universally ranked #1 or #2, and Landeskog appears to be a top-five pick, there are a couple others whom Dater fails to mention, but should have. Sean Courtier and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are both ranked ahead of Landeskog by the Hockey News, and Nugent-Hopkins us currently ranked first overall by ISS. Dater could have done a bit more research and provided a much better answer, but he didn't. He does, however, admit that he doesn't really know anything about the players in the draft to begin with, and even teases himself about it... saving me the trouble.
C

The second question concerns the draft itself. I've been critical of Dater's apparent lack of understanding of how the draft works in previous entries... not that I figure he's responding directly to me, but I think he included this question to make sure people know he understands the process.

After reading the answer, though, I'm still not sure. He acknowledges that, rather than teams picking in reverse order of their regular season finish, there is a draft lottery, but when he writes "here are the odds of teams getting the top pick," he's 100% wrong. The odds he lists are the odds that each team will win the lottery, but only the top (or bottom) five teams can actually move up enough to claim the top pick... the 14th ranked team does NOT have a 0.5% chance of getting the top pick, they have a 0.5% chance of moving up to pick 10th, in the first round only.

So nice try on this one, Dater, but you're still offering incorrect information to your readers on this subject. Either do your homework, or stay silent on subjects you don't understand.
D

The third question is a kind of fun question, asking if a team made up of ex-Avs could beat the team made up of current Avs. Frankly, I think a more balanced question is whether a team made up of retired Avs could beat the current squad, because a team of ex-Avs-but-current-NHLers would wipe the floor with them, as pretty much every NHL team has done the last two months.

This question does link up to one of Dater's common complaints: how often players the Avalanche have gotten rid of have scored against them. And of course, it gives Dater yet another opportunity to repeat his opinion of the Craig Anderson trade, which at this point is starting to resemble nails on a chalkboard.

Dater doesn't really give an answer to this question, but because it was one of those "sitting at the bar making up hypothetical stuff to argue about" questions, I suppose his lack of answer doesn't really matter, so I won't knock him down for it.
B-

The next question addresses the Avalanche penalty kill, and why players like Duchene are not on the PK unit. Asking Dater an Xs and Os hockey question is always an iffy idea. I think Dater knows that a detailed answer to this question is beyond his depth, so he keeps his answer very basic here. Dater basically explains that most coaches don't often have their best players kill penalties because it's tiring, and that McClement may be a decent PKer next season once he gets used to the Avs system. This is a pretty good -- although brief -- answer to this question.
A

The penultimate question here is about Craig Anderson's play in Ottawa since he was traded from the Avalanche. Does anybody else get the feeling that if somebody didn't write in with this question, Dater would have created a fake name and just asked it himself, so he could answer it? AD is completely hung up on the Anderson trade... he has clearly lost the perspective of a reporter (if he ever had it to begin with) and is just ranting like a fan.

I'm not sure why Dater dwells so much on goaltending, which is the position in hockey he obviously understands the least. His mancrush on Anderson, running concurrent with his hatred of Peter Budaj, despite the fact that they had essentially the same stats playing for the same team, is proof that Dater judges goalies emotionally rather than empirically, and that's kind of the opposite of what a reporter is asked to do.

Dater's answer to this question isn't really that important, because he's just using this question as an excuse to once again say "Anderson was great last year, I don't think he gave up on the Avs, blah blah blah." Enough already!
F

The final question today deals with Sheldon Souray, and whether AD would have liked to see the Avs pick him up. Dater answers that last year he would have liked to see them get Souray, but he did not think that this year, and leaves it at that. That answer alone raises some questions: what changed between last year and this year? Why did you change your opinion? Why would he have helped last season, but not this season? ...but Dater doesn't go there. So while he did, in fact, answer the question, it still seems very rushed and incomplete.
C

All Things Avs blog: Liles stays, yipeee! Dater knew it all along, of course...

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/28/trade-deadline-day-2011-forget-it/6615/

This recap of the trade deadline -- in which the Avs did nothing interesting, all their big trades occurring earlier in the year -- starts off with Dater attempting to tell us that he "didn't trust his instincts enough [to] report what he really thought," namely, that Liles would not be traded... despite this on his twitter account:

If I had to bet on Liles being traded, I'd say 80-20 yes. We'll see

That doesn't sound like a guy who's unsure of his instincts. Dater just can't stand to be wrong... you think he'd be used to it by now. But it would be nice to see him just admit he was wrong, rather than trying the "I know what I reported was wrong, but what I thought was going to happen was actually right!" nonsense. He tries so hard to show that he knows a lot about hockey, it's just pitiful sometimes. This is one of those times.

At least he pokes a bit of fun at himself by sending that weakness to "the judges," who treated it more kindly than I would have.


Dater moves on to suggest that Liles will be captain of the Avalanche. I can only assume that when it ends up being Duchene, Dater will then write that he knew it would be Duchene all along, but because he had temporarily been taken over by some sort of brain slug, he accidentally reported that it would be Liles.

As far as I know, Liles has never worn the "A" other than for one- or two-game stints. The team's full-time alternates are Hejduk and Stastny, and I haven't heard of too many veterans getting appointed captain unless they've worn the "A" for a while. I don't really see Hejduk as a captain, and so the smart money is on Stastny. However, I think the Avs will try the "name the exciting young star captain" thing, as many teams have done recently, and go with Duchene.


Of course, "smart money" is also quite often on the exact opposite of whatever Dater says, so I wouldn't put much money on Liles as the next Avs captain if I were you. Just doesn't make a lot of sense, except in the mancrush world in which Dater spends much of his time, where all sorts of ridiculous things apparently make perfect sense.


Dater continues with a bunch of little travel stories. Honestly, these don't really bug me all that much. I know it's an Avs blog, but hearing what the guy's up to as he covers the team isn't bad, and sometimes it's even entertaining. I have to wonder, though, about the hotels the Post is putting the guy up in... no wireless? You'd think that by now, the Post would know what hotel to send their reporters to give them the tools to do their job. 


Dater's silly attempts to backtrack on his Liles prediction just come across as desperate attempt to hide the fact that he doesn't know everything about the NHL, Don't worry, AD... that secret's been out for a while. Nobody's going to hold it against you.


C+