I’ll write up more about the NHL’s presentation and overall conference later (I am in charge of technical support for a new student orientation this week, so time is tight), but there was one ironic and timely point in it that I must share. DiLorenzo mentioned that one of the things they have struggled with is responding via their NHL Twitter account in the wake of disciplinary news: “No matter what the discipline department decides, we’re going to get tons of tweets that say ‘You’re wrong.”

He mentioned that at 2:40. By 8:40, the NHL had another massive disciplinary situation on their hands: Vancouver Canucks Aaron Rome’s hit on puck-less Boston Bruin Nathan Horton that resulted in a severe concussion.

Rome was suspended four games by the league for the incident, effectively removing him for the remainder of the Stanley Cup Finals. On Twitter the reaction to the NHL’s decision varied immediately, ranging on the Goldilocks scale: some fans thought it was too much, some thought it was too little, and some thought it was just right.

Assume you are one of the two folks who man the @NHL Twitter account (yes, there are only two, mentioned DiLorenzo Monday.) How would you effectively use your Twitter account to respond to each type of fan? Do you not respond to one group? Do you respond to all? Because of the mass of Tweets, do you just not even try to respond to them at all? Do you focus on the negative ones first, where it sounds like you’re losing a fan?

And if you are a fan who Tweeted at @NHL about today’s disciplinary decision, what response were you hoping to get?

Vinny Saponari in a March 2010 game against Merrimack College. Photo: Flickr user seriouslysilly (Some Rights Reserved)

The story of the day amongst BU hockey fans was the reported Boston College transfer application rejection by dismissed Terrier forward Vinny Saponari. The rumor had been lurking amongst those close to Boston area college hockey for a few weeks, and the story broke for good when US Hockey Report (aka, USHR, a subscription site that reports on junior, youth and college hockey) posted a piece this morning quoting Saponari’s USHL head coach.

Saponari’s current coach with the USHL Dubuque Fighting Saints, Jim Montgomery, is the only interview in USHR’s brief report, which then spurred on reports by the Eagle Tribune’s Mike McMahon, BostonSportsU18 and the Daily Free Press’s Boston Hockey Blog. The Boston Hockey Blog tried to get a quote with Saponari, but “a call and text were not returned.” Word had spread outside of the USHR report – two individuals mentioned to me that area coaches had just started being open about the news last evening, and the news spread like wild fire through the expanding, but still very small, world of hockey.

As the news was circulating on Twitter, a few folks asked within social media, “Well, who are we all to be talking about a pretty embarrassing and private matter for this hockey player? Why is Saponari’s rejection news?”

There is no question to me that this is news – Saponari’s initial dismissal from BU was very public, as the Terrier program had to give reason for his absence in the then upcoming season, and he decided to engage on interviews on the subject. His decision to subsequently transfer to BC, BU’s biggest hockey rival, was made public on his own Facebook page and a few media sources.

So Saponari’s rejection by BC was going to become public whether he liked it or not. For better or worse, his own statements on the matter earlier this fall made us all expect to see him on the Conte Forum ice come next September. Because of the level of expectation already prepared, the college hockey watching public would find out about the rejection eventually. In hindsight, Saponari, his family and his “family advisors” should have kept word of his desire to transfer down Comm Ave quiet until all the i’s were dotted, t’s were crossed, and transcripts approved.

But where the critics of the publicity of Saponari’s denial may have a legitimate point is that the only on-the-record source through this entire story has been the player’s own USHL coach. Was it really appropriate for Montgomery to be so forthcoming with this news with USHR in the first place? Was it his place to do so? Was he representing the family, and if so, should he or the USHR author been more explicit in saying so?

On a much larger level, if a coach is part educator, part advisor, part mentor, and part counselor, shouldn’t he uphold a certain level of confidentiality?

I’m not defending Saponari in any way (if I don’t have anything nice to say, I’m not going to say anything at all), but didn’t he deserve a tad more from Montgomery? Should USHR have looked for a quote from Saponari or his family? If Montgomery was acting on their behalf, shouldn’t that have been more explicit?

What do you think?

———–

I have had thoughts swimming around in my head over the past week regarding the Wall Street Journal article surrounding the growth of college hockey, as well as national hockey commentator and CBS College Sports on-air personality Dave Starman’s USCHO “rebuttal” (to an article that was overwhelmingly positive, I might add.) As my Twitter followers know, my month long battle with bronchitis came to a head as both articles were posted – I ended up in the hospital with a far worse infection – and thus, I wasn’t able to write a response in a timely manner. I was going to leave the issue be.

Then on Wednesday morning, USCHO posted a further Starman commentary where he responds to the many comments he received on his rebuttal. But I, and many other college hockey fans couldn’t read it. It is posted behind USCHO‘s pay wall, called “USCHO Extra”, which costs $14.99 a year.

Isn’t the fact that USCHO hid this rebuttal-of-a-rebuttal behind a pay wall essentially one of the things inhibiting the growth of college hockey? College hockey is a growing sport with a feverous fan base, with message board posters and lurkers galore, with hundreds of Twitter users wanting to be the next Starman or Jim Connolly or Adam Wodon or Bernie Corbett. How can you inhibit this fan base from reading your pieces? Isn’t hiding your content, especially content about an important conversation about the future of the game, behind a pay wall almost an oxymoron?

That a prominent online media source is making their readers pay to access an author’s response to comments, is both traditional and online journalisticly misguided. A good journalist should respond to his or her critics, as long as they are not personally attacking them, in the same forum in which he or she posted the original piece and/or an easily accessible, preferably free, forum. Starman’s original piece last week was free for all to read on USCHO.com. His response to the comments and emails is behind a pay wall, thereby reducing his readership on a popular topic, and shutting out most likely over half of his original readers. I am not saying he had to respond to every commenter or emailer, or even do so on USCHO itself. His feedback just needs to be accessible to the majority of his readers. Take Sports Illustrated’s Peter King or the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’s Sal Marjorana – they are two polarizing football journalists who respond to their critics via Twitter, a free-of-charge social media tool. It may not be in the original comment section of their pieces, but you can easily find the two and challenge their controversial sentiments (even if their response may be snarky or not you wanted to hear.)

I am not blind to the costs of hosting and maintaining a large-scale website – frankly, it is becoming more than half of my full-time job in higher education and is what I do for various other sites on my home computer after dinner every evening. I understand that ad revenue alone rarely covers the payment of journalists, the hosting, the design, the forum moderation – all the tools that make USCHO one of the big three sites in college hockey. But is college hockey in a place within the American sports landscape that any site can justify having a pay wall?

Isn’t that, after all, the larger question that Starman – and the Wall Street Journal before him – asking with last week’s pieces? Is college hockey a sport that can sustain past the gimmicky nature of the annual outdoor game? And if both the WSJ and Starman are correct and the sport is still growing in popularity with a much higher future ahead of it, why cut off access to any information, discussion or features that may grow the fan base?

We had penalty shots, penalties that made no sense, goals scored mere seconds apart from each other, a change in goaltender for BU, BU players diving, BC players elbowing, shorthanded goals, power play goals – at one point, my husband said, “I think CBS College Sports ordered a smorgasbord of hockey activity for tonight’s game.”

And yes, BC’s Patch Alber has an old-timey physician’s name, BU needs to shoot the puck and realize that goals aren’t scored unless the puck physically enters the net, and BC’s goalie John Muse resembles a penguin attempting to launch off the ground when he’s making a save or counting off the last seconds of a penalty.

So if you’re BU, what do you do for Saturday night’s game at BC? What do you do for next week’s games against Northeastern and RPI? Who do you start at goaltender? Who is your first line? There is bound to be shake ups – and if there were not, fans would have the right to be livid – but how exactly does one reassemble this Terrier team?

Since I don’t even know where to begin, I leave it to you – if you were Jack Parker and Mike Bavis, what would you do?

As one of the only Boston Bruins fans on the planet who doesn’t hate Phil Kessel, I’m beginning to understand my father’s sentiment.

You may hate Phil Kessel all you want – sports fandom thrives on hatred, as sad as it may sound. Intense fandom means hating particular teams and defector players. As a Buffalo Bills fan, I hate the Dallas Cowboys. I hate the Dallas Stars for making my Buffalo Sabres fan mother sob in 1999. I understand the dislike of those dreaded dirty Habs. I get it. Fans hate players. Fans boo players. Fans go on rants about players.

But after a year, isn’t it enough?

What did Phil Kessel do besides recognize that the current system of the Boston Bruins has no place for college-built players (aka, why Blake Wheeler is always a subject of trade rumors, and why Chuck Kobasew was trade bait, why the player who showed the most in training camp, Matt Bartkowski, was sent down, and why it’s an absolute long shot that David Warsofsky will ever see the Garden ice)?

Kessel didn’t hang with the guys? Well, he wasn’t 21 for most of his time in Boston, and many of his friends were college hockey players in the area. Who are you going to hang out with – a guy you know from the National Development Team that is your age, or a guy with a family, kids, who may be 10 years older than you? Kessel may have hung out with guys outside of the team a bit more than others, but when you have existing friends here (of which he did on many of the area college hockey teams), you’re going to spend time with them. That never made him any less of a Boston Bruin.

Kessel didn’t want to be a Boston Bruin? The NHL is a business, and hockey players are trying to make a living. If you’re offered a job with a pay increase, aren’t you going to consider it? And if you don’t have strong ties to an area, office, or business, money becomes that overwhelming factor in that decision. A young kid, with a relatively short career to spend making a living from playing hockey in comparison to the length of the career of us desk jockeys, decided to make more money while he could.

The Bruins brass enjoys a certain type of player, and that isn’t the nuanced non-fighter that college hockey and US junior hockey currently produces. And that’s the Bruins’ choice, and it’s working for them. Kessel wasn’t going to fit into that system, and is flourishing in the Toronto Maple Leafs system, a team run by Brian Burke, an executive that might understand the training and style of a player like Kessel better than anyone else in the NHL. A player like Milan Lucic thrives in the Bruins system – a junior hockey bred bruiser whose defensive mentality is as welcome as his offensive play-making. A player like Kessel, the exact opposite, was not going to last long term, despite his early success, because he plays a different style of hockey.

Both organizations seem to be reaping the benefits of the trade. Tyler Seguin, obtained with the first rounder received in the Kessel deal, is a steady player whose presence offensively has been very helpful to a Sturm and Savard-less Bruins. Kessel has brought direly needed goal scoring and excitement to a much-maligned Maple Leafs franchise. It’s worked out well on both ends – a quality many trades do not amount to in the long-run.

And personally, I find it a bit disingenuous that Bruins fans, an entire year post-trade, take delight in the hits to and booing of a young man who once had cancer, who never sad anything awful towards them, and who, while he was in Boston, contributed substantially to his team.

So fellow Bruins fans, find another joke. To use my dad’s saying, last night was the third time, and it’s not funny anymore.

While watching Fuse (a channel I’m always fond of because it’s across from Madison Square Garden), I saw the video for Mike Posner’s Cooler Than Me. Wasn’t I shocked when I saw the Duke University graduate sing on my television in the following jacket:

Mike Posner, a Red Wings fan?

A Detroit Red Wings logo on the rapper/singer’s leather jacket. After some quick Wikipedia-ing, I realized this wasn’t a random placement, but a shout-out to his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. I guess when your only consistently high-performing sports team is your town’s NHL team, you rep it all over in your debut music video.

I wasn’t a giant fan of the guy before, but Mike Posner just became that much cooler…than me. (Ooh! Punny!) But no, really, he became cooler than me because I followed his video up with a DVRed Toddler and Tiaras marathon.

While I seriously lack any unique knowledge or insights, I wanted to share some of the story lines, Twitters and blogs I’m following as the draft unfolds this weekend.

- Are the NHL scouts as high on Charlie Coyle as we all are?

Could BU bound Charlie Coyle be the first college player taken in the draft? the most optimistic of projections have him going in the late first round, and even the college-player-shy Boston Bruins have worked out and dined the Massachusetts local. Will Coyle be the sixth BU player to be the first college player picked in the draft in history? (Fun facts provided by these interesting-to-college-hockey-geek-me College Hockey News charts.)

Not so fast, says SB Nation’s In Lou We Trust. While the rest of the media have been touting Coyle’s upside, this New Jersey Devils blog is a great summation of some realistic reviews of his ability. Will his offensive playmaking translate over from his EJHL days? While I believe the dismissal of the EJHL as a “weak league” is incorrect, I may agree with In Lou We Trust that Coyle’s talent on bigger stages may not be easily predictable.

I did speak with one person deep in the know in the EJHL last Friday who says that BU fans won’t be disappointed in Coyle, and that he is quite fun to watch. Could it be that Coyle is one great college hockey player – one BU fans sorely need after having all the fun sucked out of their 2009-10 season – but not first or second round draft pick worthy?

- Joe Pereira’s brother could be really good/UMass-BU games will be interesting…

UMass Amherst bound Mike Pereira, little brother of BU captain Joe, is being brandied about as one of the best New England nurtured players in this draft. His strong individual performances leading Avon Old Farms to a championship has scouts interested. According to New England Hockey Journal’s analysis, the younger Pereira sounds like the selfish, more competitive, big-playmaking version of his older brother. Both brothers have serious speed, but similar size doubts.

While I had heard snippets about Pereira here and there for the past year, I hadn’t yet found any great analysis of his abilities until this week. Most of this is thanks to @fearthetriangle, a UMass Amherst hockey blogger/Twitterer, who has been all up on the UMass Amherst player draft coverage. Two thumbs up.

- Why this Bruins fan is watching the Thrashers and Panthers this weekend?

Both the Atlanta Thrashers and Florida Panthers have new leadership – Thrashers with former Boston Bruins assistant Craig Ramsay as their head coach, and the Panthers with former Chicago Blackhawks General Manager Dale Tallon now serving as their GM.

As a Rochester Amerks fan, I want to see what talent the Panthers could send up to my hometown to develop next season. With the Amerks fan base hanging on a thread, will the 2010-11 edition of the team have enough talent to follow a great start all the way through the playoffs?

As a college hockey fan and one who is quite critical of the Bruins lack of development or interest in college players, I’m interested in seeing if Ramsay brings a similar disdain to the Thrashers. The Thrashers as a franchise keep continuing on the road to obscurity, but a team made up of dynamic young prospects is the only way their fate in the Atlanta area could change for the better.

Even as a Bruins fan, the Sequin-Hall debate is tired. Both are great players now, both with the real possibility of busting big time. Sequin didn’t make this year’s Canadian World Junior Team. While that allegedly motivated him to perform better, who is to say he won’t regress and or not be motivated to improve in the future? Hall has speed and has developed to a great all around player, but is used to making plays on his own and may struggle chemistry wise with older NHL players who won’t stand any twinge of selfishness or flashiness from a teenager. Then again, I’m not even a serviceable hockey scout, so what do I know?

What I do know is that when it is all said and done, the Edmonton Oilers effectively make two picks – their own and the Bruins’. Watching what a team’s new leadership does or what a team seeking a new identity does in a draft is more interesting to me. As a hockey fan, I’m more interested in picks that will paint the picture for an organization, not just add a stroke.

Source: BostonBruins.com

While making my first ever visit to the landmark Kowloon Restaurant this weekend, I happened upon information about the Ice & Dice Casino Night event happening this Wednesday night (June 23). Sponsored by the Boston Bruins, the event will benefit the Bruins Foundation Pan-Mass Bike Team, which in turn benefits Dana Farber Cancer Institute. (‘Tis the time of year for Pan-Mass fundraisers – I just attended a great one at The Bell in Hand last Thursday evening to help out my friend Chris Villiani’s Pan-Mass team.)

From 7-11pm Wednesday night, Bruins alums and Bruins Foundation volunteers will play blackjack, craps, roulette and poker while raffling and auctioning off sports memorabilia. I also imagine some PuPu Platters, Saugus Wings and Fog Cutters (my husband’s favorite Kowloon drink) might also be involved…

Tickets are $30, and are available by emailing foundationevents@bostonbruins.com or calling 617-624-1889.

Photo: BU Athletics

On June 20, Fox Sports Network will begin airing Season 2 of Replay The Series, a series focused on enabling rematches of games from participants’ younger years. This season will focus on a 1999 hockey game between Detroit Central Catholic and Trenton High School that was stopped mid-game when a Trenton player suffered a severe injury to his jugular vein.

While Central Catholic continued on that season to have a championship season, Trenton couldn’t rebound from the horrific injury. Gatorade, the series sponsor, set out to recreate the game to allow the two teams to finish – including the severely injured Trenton player.

The actual game and the rematch featured a former BU captain and his Providence College standout twin brother. Brad and Tony Zancanaro played for Trenton High in 1999, and are key players in the rematch. You’ll be able to spot them in the featured clips on the series’ website. Brad was captain of the Terriers in 2005-06, while his brother Tony was one of the key cogs of the Friars from 2003-07. Immediately following Trenton’s disappointing 1999 season, both brothers went on to play in the USHL and NAHL before beginning their collegiate careers.

Kevin Roeder won the ECHL Kelly Cup this weekend with the Cincinnati Cyclones. (Photo: Shawn Raecke \ Idaho Statesman)

- Former Miami defenseman Kevin Roeder would be getting absolutely sick by journalists reminding him that Colby Cohen’s winning shot in the 2009 National Championship game deflected off him, but he’s too busy winning the ECHL Kelly Cup with the Cincinnati Cyclones.

- Frozen Four participant Wisconsin announced their 2010-11 schedule on Thursday, including confirmation that they will face BU in the opening round of the Icebreaker Tournament on October 8th. This year’s Icebreaker takes place in St. Louis, MO at the Scottrade Center, and also includes Notre Dame and Holy Cross. BU won the Icebreaker in October 2008, when it was hosted at Agganis Arena; Wisconsin last participated in the Icebreaker in 2002.

- In other neutral game site news, Union will play Jerry D’Amigo and the RPI Engineers in Lake Placid on October 30th. Union will also be a part of the Dodge Holiday Classic, along with Ferris State, Bemidji State and Minnesota, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

- Denver joined Wisconsin and Union in releasing their schedule this week, and have already boasted/complained about how tough it is. Yes, if you lost as many players to the pros and were bounced in the first round of the NCAA Regionals after jockeying for the number 1 ranking all season, you would be complaining about everything possible as well.

- No, BU fans, you’re not seeing crazy things on future University of Minnesota-Duluth rosters. Their Adam Krause plays offense and adds a “e” at the end of Kraus. Krause will play for the USHL’s Chicago Steel next season, before reporting to Duluth in 2011.