A message of warning to Citizenship and Immigration Canada: your borders this Friday will be breached, and the sensibilities of your fair people assaulted, as a maker of new media mischief invades the Great White North to cover the NHL Entry Draft this weekend. I’d urge a thorough interrogation of him at the border before authorizing his admission, even temporarily. I’m reasonably sure Canada hasn’t seen the likes of puck daddy before.
“Glenn Healy leaves TSN to join the NHLPA as director of player affairs. Obviously, the director of pointless commentary position was already filled.”
Certainly Canucks haven’t seen his brand of covering hockey.
Need more of a warning sign? Your sacred Stanley Cup, you know what puck daddy’s asking about it these days? Is it taller than Mini Me?
Here’s arriving in your fair nation to tell you that it is . . . just barely.
In his earlier blogger iterations, at the AOL Fanhouse, the Fourth Period, and Deadspin, daddy went by Greg Wyshynski. Now he’s at Yahoo, having quit his northern Virginia newspaper job this spring to become a full-time, dedicated daddy blogger of puck and only puck. It’s a really, really big deal, an amazing and courageous move on Greg’s part, and in little more than a month there he’s made a gigantic impression that’s drawn millions of page views to what was largely an afterthought aspect of Yahoo’s sports blogging shop.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had — an amazing amount of creative freedom, and an amazing amount of success early on,” daddy told me on the eve of his departure for Ottawa. “It’s a bizarre, surreal situation. But I’m just thrilled with how much we’ve accomplished.”
The daddy gig is actually a bit of a collaborative — Greg’s ably assisted by contributing bloggers Jonathon Baum, Matt Roonig, Sean Leahy, and Ross McKeon — but Greg’s the unmistakable creative driving force, and his razor-sharp wit and spare no punches approach is gloriously stamped all over the enterprise. Daddy is erudite; daddy is seriously smart-alecky; daddy is mischievous; daddy is bawdy. Daddy is just beautiful.
” . . . the National Post expects TV ratings to tumble if there’s a Stanley Cup final between “the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Phoenix Coyotes.” We actually think the curiosity factor for that series would be incredible, seeing as how it’s currently impossible for those two teams to meet for the Cup.”
[Interviewing Columbus Blue Jackets' Rick Nash] “What are you watching on TV? The Brett Michaels dating show?”
On the NHL’s biggest party night, puck daddy was there zinging away:
“Full disclosure: I ducked out of the show for some barbequing right around when Gary Bettman reached a new level of incompetence by somehow sucking the nobility out of Gordie Howe receiving a lifetime achievement award. I know Bettman gets the flop sweats every time he’s standing near a trophy in front of hockey fans; maybe when the boos didn’t echo through the theater, he lost his bearings. But isn’t giving Gordie Howe a lifetime achievement honor, like, the ultimate empty netter on an awards show? And yet Bettman totally Patrick Stefan’d it.
“From what I saw, it was less an awards show than a high-school assembly. Peers honoring peers. Alumni returning to warm receptions. Awkward speeches. Some montages from the A.V. club. And Principal Ron MacLean, your amiable but completely humor-deprived host (just a hunch, but Gene Kelly references don’t really fly with the younger demos these days). The only things missing were a performance by the Glee Club and some cat-calls when the smoking hot Math teacher makes her appearance on stage (every school had one).”
Two principal reason’s for daddy’s gigantic success early on are Greg’s well-exercised creativity but also his devotion to making Jamie Mottram, Greg’s inspired Yahoo blogging boss who advocated for Greg’s full-time hiring, proud of the experiment. I asked daddy if he felt chained to his computer these days.
“Bleep yea! I haven’t figured out how to have a functional life outside of this.
“But Jamie fought for the full-time blog, and it’s important to me to broaden the scope of voices, to bring other people into the conversation.” Meaning, in his commitment to getting others involved in the brand he’s building, he’s behind on his showering. One of daddy’s early trademarks is a highly commendable habit of linking to hockey blogs that pre-daddy published well under the search engine radar.
I asked daddy what his plans were for covering the draft in Ottawa, with a strong wind solidly at his blogging back.
“I’m not reporting on the draft in any traditional way — you can find that elsewhere. I’m looking for atmosphere, for quirky angles, to interact with guys drafted in later rounds and have some fun with them.
“I will try and capture a sense of breaking news . . . but I want to have some fun.
“The draft is an event, but 99 percent of hockey fans don’t know the players drafted cause they haven’t watched them play.” But new media, daddy was quick to point out, is playing an enormous role in engaging hockey fans with an event like the draft.
“Look at what Tampa did with what was clearly user-created video, on YouTube, of Steve Stamkos just days after they won the first pick,” he pointed out. The ‘Bolts had it up on their site. The league is doing the same thing. It all adds up to a wild party in real time chock full of connectedness, which daddy adores.
“You tell me if you think I’m wrong,” daddy solicits, “but I think hockey fans want to know what cars players are driving, what they’re eating, what movies they’re watching . . . who they’re bleeping.”
Puck daddy has arrived, in the nick of time, to allay our fears of a returned Glo-puck, to remind us of Evel Knieval’s brief hockey career, to make fun of Ron Tugnutt’s name, and to keep a close eye on Elisha Cuthbert.
Daddy, I am so a part of your posse.
