The Hockey News: Adam Proteau on Dany Heatley
by Jonathan Willis on Jul 7, 2009 7:30 PM MDT
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Every so often, I eat Honey Nut Cheerios. Recently, they had an offer for a free magazine subscription; being who I am I naturally subscribed to The Hockey News, a magazine that I'd written off some time ago because it's dated well before I get it and frankly the analysis isn't that great.
Case in point - this interchange between columnist Adam Proteau and Edmontonian Dylan Kelly, from the July 6th issue, which I received today:
DK: Hey Adam, just curious to hear your thoughts on the Dany Heatley speculation. Do you think Edmonton could pull off a trade with the Senators? If so, do you think he would fit in with the Oilers?
AP: Hey Dylan. The Oilers have cap-friendly prospects and young players which might interest Ottawa. But like a lot of GMs, Oilers boss Steve Tambellini understands the danger of bringing in a guy with a salary cap hit of $7.5 million a year until 2014 and who as earned the label of a multi-time, multi-team malcontent. Regardless of where he lands, Heatley will have almost as much to prove as former teammate Ray Emery. But it almost assuredly won't be in Edmonton.
(bolding mine)
Not to pick on Proteau too much (I'm sure things looked very different a week or two ago) but this is precisely the sort of problem THN faces. To overcome it, they need to offer fresh, cutting-edge content and analysis that other sources don't provide - and they simply don't do it enough. I buy their Future Watch and Draft Preview issues every year, but outside of that I have almost no use for the magazine - and even those issues aren't particularly good, they're just relatively unique.
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Unless they start hiring the right people, it’s not happening. I don’t know that there is anyone on their staff capable of pulling off what you’re talking about.
They’ve got Rand Simon, Mike Macpherson and Mark Seidel writing insider blogs. I’d love to get CBA tips from actual NHL agents, and a scouting profile on different draft eligible players every month. It wouldn’t bother me at all if they could get Mike Smith and Jay Feaster to expand a little more on what being an NHL G.M. actually means rather than writing puff pieces (although Smith’s usually pretty interesting, but Feaster… wow – here’s a guy who worked his way up and knows the organizational structure of everything and instead we get puff pieces about his day with the Stanley Cup).
The writers they’ve got aren’t bad, but they suffer from writing things nobody will see until a week later and while Campbell is often worth the read anyway, the rest simply aren’t that much better than your average newspaper columnist.
A posse ad esse.
Writer for The Copper & Blue and OilersNation.
by Jonathan Willis on Jul 7, 2009 10:26 PM MDT up reply actions
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… os basically what your saying is that you wasted your free mag subsription. Shoulda picked Readers Digest… at least it has some good humor sections.
Seriously, this is also the reason I stopped buying the Hockey News… always old news. Not much interest in that.
I’ve always thought Proteau was kind of a twat, anyway, ever since he crowed about being “right” about the Oilers finishing 12th in 2007, even though the way they finished 12th was utterly impossible to predict. Congratulations, Adam: you were this close to looking like a fool, then the team shot itself in the foot and made you look good.
SNN Sports - A theoretical Oilers blog (i.e. theoretically, I write stuff there)
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