Around the League - 2022-23 season thread part I

[Blackjack]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

 

[Oneiro]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

Yeah, you're right about the VC money. Interest rates going up, no more cheap capital to pump into The Athletic and probably things like Uber, DoorDash, etc who now need to show cash flow. A lot of the "nice" amenities of the last decade are about to reverse hard unfortunately. Could see it getting even worse from here with a lot of writers getting fired.

It's a shame, it was a nice idea, and I was never a fan of local papers for the most part. Guys like TG were rare, guys like Chere far more common. We've lucked out with Novo but I hope he gets exit velocity to do his own thing with team access one day.

 

[Its Always Sundstrom]

Go into your kitchen

Take out two pieces of bread (assuming you have bread)

Put them in the toaster

Turn that f***er up as high as it can go

Just make sure you don't start a fire or anything, I'm not telling you to do that

And then when the two pieces of bread pop up, take a good look at those black, charred, crunchy, messy things. Take in the aroma that is now permeating your kitchen and entire first floor (or your entire apartment if you live in one or basically the whole house if you only have one story like I do) and just take in that moment.

That is John Gibson. Burnt toast. Not just burnt toast, but WELL DONE toast.

Not all art hangs in a museum.

 

[JrFischer54]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

i mentioned in another post about wishing espn/tnt had the package instead of nbcsn oln vs mainly for stuff like this. hockey has a long way to catch up in relevance being stuck on the backwater channels for so long. its great stuff that the chicklets podcast love it or hate it is becoming more popular and interest in the game is growing. people might bash espn/tnt production or whatever but the key is exposure getting people into the game makes other sites/publications publish hockey stories coverage increases. bottom line espn/tnt getting the games is going to do wonders for the game. what would also help is if mcdavid and lesser extent matthews moved to either an american market or an east coast time zone.

 

[JrFischer54]

Jakob Chychrun expected back next week, those sweepstakes will be interesting to watch from afar. From last month:



LA, Ottawa, and Toronto seem to be the most frequently mentioned suitors. LA makes the most sense off hand since they have a surplus of prospects especially at RD. Ottawa might be a little skittish to dangle their 1st after their bad start. Toronto has Phoenix native Matthew Knies who they resisted trading for a rental last year but maybe they'd consider it for Chychrun.

LA
F: Alex Turcotte, Rasmus Kupari, Samuel Fagemo
D: Jordan Spence, Helge Grans

OTT:
F: Ridly Greig, Tyler Boucher, Roby Jarventie, Zach Ostapchuk
D: Lassi Thomson, Tyler Kleven

TOR:
F: Matthew Knies, LW Nick Robertson, C Alex Steeves
D: Topi Niemela

hes got two years after this one until ufa the return will never be as high as the yotes hope for esp considering they know the player wants out. a middle/late first and a former first round pick thats toiling around in the minors is what they will realistically get as their two firsts

 

[HBK27]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

Yeah, the amount of NHL articles are way down and there are quite a few teams without beat writers.

But where else are you going to get such great content like this:

NHL style power rankings: Can Patrik Laine really take the top spot again?

There were eye-catching ties, and even more head-turning suits worn the last two weeks of the NHL season.

theathletic.com

 

[JrFischer54]

IMO if we don’t stop cherry picking situations where we don’t think the rule should apply - “the defending team had possession!” “The goal happened long after the zone entry!” “The player was a millimeter offside!” “The other team took too long to challenge!” - because that’s the specific situation that made us mad this week, we will never get rid of the rule.

It’s f***ing awful every time it’s used. Full throated disgust every time it erases a gorgeous goal like Zegras’s or just a merely nice like Tatar’s. It’s the only way we’ll ever get rid of it.

its really stupid a review for shooting puck over glass? the stupid kicking motion debate. they want to expand reviewable calls but then mention about incentivizing coaches NOT to challenge for fear of a penalty?

simple

ditch the challenges and the offsides for reviews get rid of the kicking motion rule and a personal hate of mine allow hand passes outside of d zone. why are they allowed in the d zone but not offensive? we want to create more goals more offense. keep closing hand on puck so players aren't throwing the puck

 

[njdevil26]

Re: The Athletic

It was cool when it came out. The initial concept of making people pay for information that was traditionally available either for free or for a cheap newspaper subscription seemed like it would be doomed to fail. However they acquired some great writing talent and the pieces that were being put out were really cool.

That definitely died down recently. Teams are losing their coverage. We lost a full time writer and were given someone who was to cover the Rangers AND Devils... and she pays almost no attention to the Devils and hardly pumps out Rangers content anyway.

The Red Bulls had a full time writer and that disappeared pretty quick. Their podcasts are free on Spotify so why would I bother to spend any money on the Athletic? I pay the $10 per month for Novo's content at NJ.com but honestly I never even read it.

Any information we need about this team is available for free on Twitter... and we can come places like this where posters are going to make us aware of anything important as it happens.

 

[Ripshot 43]

Go into your kitchen

Take out two pieces of bread (assuming you have bread)

Put them in the toaster

Turn that f***er up as high as it can go

Just make sure you don't start a fire or anything, I'm not telling you to do that

And then when the two pieces of bread pop up, take a good look at those black, charred, crunchy, messy things. Take in the aroma that is now permeating your kitchen and entire first floor (or your entire apartment if you live in one or basically the whole house if you only have one story like I do) and just take in that moment.

That is John Gibson. Burnt toast. Not just burnt toast, but WELL DONE toast.

Bleed, when you told him to take out 2 pieces of bread, I swore this is where you were headed…

 

[OmNomNom]

Re: The Athletic

It was cool when it came out. The initial concept of making people pay for information that was traditionally available either for free or for a cheap newspaper subscription seemed like it would be doomed to fail. However they acquired some great writing talent and the pieces that were being put out were really cool.

That definitely died down recently. Teams are losing their coverage. We lost a full time writer and were given someone who was to cover the Rangers AND Devils... and she pays almost no attention to the Devils and hardly pumps out Rangers content anyway.

The Red Bulls had a full time writer and that disappeared pretty quick. Their podcasts are free on Spotify so why would I bother to spend any money on the Athletic? I pay the $10 per month for Novo's content at NJ.com but honestly I never even read it.

Any information we need about this team is available for free on Twitter... and we can come places like this where posters are going to make us aware of anything important as it happens.

this -- my thoughts entirely. I think in hindsight, The Athletic was a fad that spurred writers on Twitter, Podcasts, etc to step up their game. There's so much more available to us in terms of opinions, and I also think that teams decided to open up a bit more themselves in response to The Athletic (to drive traffic to their own pages) -- hence why someone like Amanda ends up being important (team-controlled reporting)

 

[Triumph]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

To be fair, while The Athletic's brand is slowly being unwound by the New York Times, the site was never about game recaps and I don't think you would've found a lot of them even at the site's peak.

 

[HBK27]

Re: The Athletic

It was cool when it came out. The initial concept of making people pay for information that was traditionally available either for free or for a cheap newspaper subscription seemed like it would be doomed to fail. However they acquired some great writing talent and the pieces that were being put out were really cool.

That definitely died down recently. Teams are losing their coverage. We lost a full time writer and were given someone who was to cover the Rangers AND Devils... and she pays almost no attention to the Devils and hardly pumps out Rangers content anyway.

The Red Bulls had a full time writer and that disappeared pretty quick. Their podcasts are free on Spotify so why would I bother to spend any money on the Athletic? I pay the $10 per month for Novo's content at NJ.com but honestly I never even read it.

Any information we need about this team is available for free on Twitter... and we can come places like this where posters are going to make us aware of anything important as it happens.

I had no problem paying full price for The Athletic initially either, as I wanted to see them succeed and I enjoyed the Devils/NHL content. A lot of that has dried up though. I think my current $1/month plan runs out in February at which point maybe I'll renew again if it's ridiculously cheap, but there's no way I'd pay the regular rate anymore.

They still do have some occasionally really good articles, such as this one:

The story of how the Matthew Tkachuk-Jonathan Huberdeau sign-and-trade was completed

The Athletic looks back at the biggest trade of the NHL offseason, featuring Matthew Tkachuk, Jonathan Huberdeau and more.

theathletic.com

Cool to hear all sides involved in the trade.

Interesting comment from Huberdeau - seems like he felt the Panthers were set on trading him one way or another...

Huberdeau: I think Allan and Bill talked at the draft. (Bill) said he was going to offer something, an extension. Obviously, he never did. But that’s business. I think they had it in their mind that they were going to trade me. That’s what I think.

 

[Blackjack]

To be fair, while The Athletic's brand is slowly being unwound by the New York Times, the site was never about game recaps and I don't think you would've found a lot of them even at the site's peak.

Not always, but usually after 2-3 games there was some kind of write up about recent games. The Rangers in particular used to get write ups after almost every game.

 

[glenwo2]

Ty Smith is a nice guy :



Not so nice D-man when he was with us.

Thanks again for Marino, Pittsburgh!

 

[JrFischer54]

Re: The Athletic

It was cool when it came out. The initial concept of making people pay for information that was traditionally available either for free or for a cheap newspaper subscription seemed like it would be doomed to fail. However they acquired some great writing talent and the pieces that were being put out were really cool.

That definitely died down recently. Teams are losing their coverage. We lost a full time writer and were given someone who was to cover the Rangers AND Devils... and she pays almost no attention to the Devils and hardly pumps out Rangers content anyway.

The Red Bulls had a full time writer and that disappeared pretty quick. Their podcasts are free on Spotify so why would I bother to spend any money on the Athletic? I pay the $10 per month for Novo's content at NJ.com but honestly I never even read it.

Any information we need about this team is available for free on Twitter... and we can come places like this where posters are going to make us aware of anything important as it happens.

i can only speak for myself but the older i got with kids now and stuff the less time i have to read up on hockey stuff which is why i'll cruise twitter and follow some people on there or read the stuff on here. really to me there isn't any information i need/want to change how i watch the game. if a player is hurt and hes out with the "lower body injury" ok hes out i don't need a beat writer to tell me that. think times are just changing

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m just late to the party, but The Athletic is barely publishing any hockey content at all anymore.

In my boredom I went browsing through the pages of each of the teams we played recently looking for a recap I could read, and… nothing. Not even the Canadiens had one up.

Not only that, I noticed the same stories were showing up on each of the teams’ pages. A couple of DGB articles, the Tkachuk/Huberdeau trade story, the revised predictions, and a few more.

How many hockey articles are they even publishing? It doesn’t feel like it can be much more than 4-5 per day across all 32 teams.

I guess it was inevitable since it was another money losing VC startup, and the financiers weren’t going to keep pouring money into it forever, but it’s a sad sight compared to the powerhouse from 3-4 years ago that would publish tons of great stories every day.

Yeah I canceled my subscription, traditional beat reporting can't survive as a product on its own, I think maybe it makes sense as an add-on to a TV subscription like ESPN plus, or even in front of a paywall like the sportsnet guys: reporting as advertising for the TV broadcasts.

The reality though is there's too many amateurs/fans doing great analysis/reporting and access to interviews/locker rooms/front offices just isn't really worth paying for, at least at a price point that is sustainable long term.

 

[HBK27]

i can only speak for myself but the older i got with kids now and stuff the less time i have to read up on hockey stuff which is why i'll cruise twitter and follow some people on there or read the stuff on here. really to me there isn't any information i need/want to change how i watch the game. if a player is hurt and hes out with the "lower body injury" ok hes out i don't need a beat writer to tell me that. think times are just changing

You're that old and still can't be bothered with capital letters and punctuation? I just figured it was a lazy Gen Z thing.

 

[JrFischer54]

You're that old and still can't be bothered with capital letters and punctuation? I just figured it was a lazy Gen Z thing.

nah just dont really care i type you read

 

[Triumph]

Yeah I canceled my subscription, traditional beat reporting can't survive as a product on its own, I think maybe it makes sense as an add-on to a TV subscription like ESPN plus, or even in front of a paywall like the sportsnet guys: reporting as advertising for the TV broadcasts.

The reality though is there's too many amateurs/fans doing great analysis/reporting and access to interviews/locker rooms/front offices just isn't really worth paying for, at least at a price point that is sustainable long term.

The Athletic wasn't about beat reporting. I don't get this. The whole idea of The Athletic was that you were going to get stories that traditional reporting simply didn't do - it's a mix of Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated. So Masisak rarely wrote gamers but he would write a breakdown of the Devils' PK with video clips or he'd do a long feature on Blake Coleman.

I think the model was flawed because it was started by VCs whose obvious end goal was to sell this off to traditional media and let them deal with it, the whole thing was about goosing subscriptions and running at a loss until that point. So yeah, spending four figures to send Masisak to Switzerland to interview people in Nico's hometown doesn't make financial sense, but there's something in between that and what we're getting that I think could be successful.

 

[JrFischer54]

Yeah I canceled my subscription, traditional beat reporting can't survive as a product on its own, I think maybe it makes sense as an add-on to a TV subscription like ESPN plus, or even in front of a paywall like the sportsnet guys: reporting as advertising for the TV broadcasts.

The reality though is there's too many amateurs/fans doing great analysis/reporting and access to interviews/locker rooms/front offices just isn't really worth paying for, at least at a price point that is sustainable long term.

when they do these press conferences after the game who/how many reporters are even there?

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

The Athletic wasn't about beat reporting. I don't get this. The whole idea of The Athletic was that you were going to get stories that traditional reporting simply didn't do - it's a mix of Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated. So Masisak rarely wrote gamers but he would write a breakdown of the Devils' PK with video clips or he'd do a long feature on Blake Coleman.

I think the model was flawed because it was started by VCs whose obvious end goal was to sell this off to traditional media and let them deal with it, the whole thing was about goosing subscriptions and running at a loss until that point. So yeah, spending four figures to send Masisak to Switzerland to interview people in Nico's hometown doesn't make financial sense, but there's something in between that and what we're getting that I think could be successful.

I don't really think they positioned themselves that way. They paid to have a beat reporter for every team, or almost every team, in their expansion phase to bring in customers and their selling point was "your favorite beat reporter is now writing here." I'm leaving to join the Athletic was almost a meme.

I do know my interest initially was because James Mirtle was at the start of it and he was basically the only good reporter covering the last NHL CBA fight, willing to get into the nitty gritty of stuff like escrow and actually make sense of WTF was going on. Then they brought in NJ Devils great Tyler Dellow who was writing good analytical stuff, and you've got people doing the type of reporting/analysis you mention that I am willing to pay for, but it's really hard to keep churning out content of that type to keep people interested. Dom has a good model and I enjoy his work but he's also competing with public models and self employed amateurs even, I assume he'll be one of the last to go if they continue to trim hockey reporting.

Maybe they should refocus their efforts and become like Baseball Prospectus, smaller target audience, willing to pay more.

 

[Triumph]

I don't really think they positioned themselves that way. They paid to have a beat reporter for every team, or almost every team, in their expansion phase to bring in customers and their selling point was "your favorite beat reporter is now writing here." I'm leaving to join the Athletic was almost a meme.

I do know my interest initially was because James Mirtle was at the start of it and he was basically the only good reporter covering the last NHL CBA fight, willing to get into the nitty gritty of stuff like escrow and actually make sense of WTF was going on. Then they brought in NJ Devils great Tyler Dellow who was writing good analytical stuff, and you've got people doing the type of reporting/analysis you mention that I am willing to pay for, but it's really hard to keep churning out content of that type to keep people interested. Dom has a good model and I enjoy his work but he's also competing with public models and self employed amateurs even, I assume he'll be one of the last to go if they continue to trim hockey reporting.

Maybe they should refocus their efforts and become like Baseball Prospectus, smaller target audience, willing to pay more.

I guess we're disagreeing about what 'beat reporting' means and I agree that The Athletic paid to have a reporter cover most teams, and much of what they were doing was traditional beat reporting - for hockey that means attending practices and games and getting quotes there. What was often not done were game recaps, some teams had these for every game, but most didn't. What was different was the rest - while in my experience, beat reporting meant what I said before, doing game recaps, plus maybe a weekend 'around the league' column, and then a midseason and end of season summary. Maybe there'd also be a feature article once a season but at least IME with The Record in the late 90s, this was usually written by their features reporter. The Athletic promised to be different, they were going to give you the newfangled numbers stuff, plus features. I just think it expanded too fast too quickly, plus the pandemic really, really hurt, those were four months with almost no sports at all.

 

[Brodeur]

I had no problem paying full price for The Athletic initially either, as I wanted to see them succeed and I enjoyed the Devils/NHL content. A lot of that has dried up though. I think my current $1/month plan runs out in February at which point maybe I'll renew again if it's ridiculously cheap, but there's no way I'd pay the regular rate anymore.

I'm a little bitter that I got autorenewed for full price this summer. Naturally that's on me for forgetting to cancel but I don't think they sent a reminder either.

 

[Ripshot 43]

Ty Smith is a nice guy :



Not so nice D-man when he was with us.

Thanks again for Marino, Pittsburgh!

Awe, I find it kindve cute that Ty is finally taking skating lessons.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

I guess we're disagreeing about what 'beat reporting' means and I agree that The Athletic paid to have a reporter cover most teams, and much of what they were doing was traditional beat reporting - for hockey that means attending practices and games and getting quotes there. What was often not done were game recaps, some teams had these for every game, but most didn't. What was different was the rest - while in my experience, beat reporting meant what I said before, doing game recaps, plus maybe a weekend 'around the league' column, and then a midseason and end of season summary. Maybe there'd also be a feature article once a season but at least IME with The Record in the late 90s, this was usually written by their features reporter. The Athletic promised to be different, they were going to give you the newfangled numbers stuff, plus features. I just think it expanded too fast too quickly, plus the pandemic really, really hurt, those were four months with almost no sports at all.

Yeah it was not just beat reporting for sure, thinking of guys like Pronman, Wheeler, Dom, Shayna etc. I don't know maybe they will trim the traditional beat reporting, pluck the best analysts/scouts and make a sustainable business there as a baseball prospectus site.

Kind of feel like Dom will maybe eventually leave and join some sports gambling type site, that's the other possible platform for analytics heavy content, which would suck imo, I hate the gambling ads everywhere, and don't love how this source of joy is being used to get people to put money into a venture with negative expected value, but that's another issue.