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What Bugs Me About the Ryan O’Reilly Situation: No One Is Spared Edition

February 14, 2013 By 1 Comment

The Ryan O’Reilly situation is coming to a head in Colorado. Reports, and I use that term as loosely as possible, are that the Avalanche are looking to get some value from him in a trade, and negotiations have broken off. One side wants one thing, and the other wants two different things, take your pick.

As a fan of the Avalanche, the entire situation is frustrating, but the frustration comes from every angle. So let us break this down in this week’s breakdown:

The Avalanche:

- The Avs have a draconian negotiating style, boiling down to “take it or leave it.” They don’t negotiate, and the process has been, at times, brutal. They ship off players who don’t dance to the dollars management wants them to. When you treat your players like terrorists (we don’t negotiate with terrorists, right?), you don’t get a favorable return.

- Information about the situation is rare, and everything comes via leaks and reports. This wouldn’t be a big deal, as negotiations should be happening outside the scope of the public. But when it comes to the Avalanche, everything happens outside the scope of the public. There is a corporate message – that everything is going fine, we are fine, and hard work is all that’s needed – and we fans don’t get anything else. While we shouldn’t know much about what is going on in this situation, the fans never know what is happening in ANY situation. The frustration compounds, and the fans are left wondering if the team even cares about them. Pro Tip: They don’t.

- The team is spiraling, and with the mounting injuries, O’Reilly would be a big help. He won’t be the solution for everything, but he would be something. The problems with the Avalanche exist in just about every department other than goaltending – it’s been a while since I was able to say that – and the banged up defensive corp is probably the most glaring. This is simply weighing the sort term value of the player vs. the long term implications of the contract, and seeing if it’s worth it.

O’Reilly and his camp:

- O’Reilly might not want to play with the Avs. It could be that simple. If so, ask for a trade and move forward. Please.

- If O’Reilly wants to play for the Avs, take something short and work on the rest later. Get that trade in the next contract, or if things work out, hold out then. Coming straight off an entry level contact into a big payday is not something the Avalanche is keen on.

- Honestly, is he worth what he is asking for?  Probably not, but the scale salaries right now are so out of whack, there is very little to base this on.  You compare him to players of equal production and age, and the range is all over the place.  This is how a more open market works, but still, I don’t think he is worth everything he wants.

Media:

- There is no shortage of pot-stirring in the Denver hockey media. This is a provocative group, and they know how to push all the right buttons with the fans. The thinking seems to go, no matter how much anger there is from the fans, at least they are talking about the Avs, and therefore are looking to the media for information. The main beat writer, Adrian Dater, is pretty provocative in his tone (I’m being diplomatic here), and the rest of the group seems to follow suit. A few blog posts, a column or two, and the fans are sufficiently whipped up. Even though nothing has really changed, even though the process is moving along as expected, there is a sudden surge of angry fans NOW. I know where it comes from.

- The media here don’t care for the Avalanche and its management, and the feeling seems mutual. Again, toeing the corporate line is one thing the Avs do have some consistency with, so it makes it hard for the local newspaper reporters to get much to work with; the relationship is strained and possibly beyond repair (if that is even a consideration). That doesn’t serve the audience (if that is even a consideration).

Fans:

- The fans generally want O’Reilly to take the deal, to shut up and play. If they think that the players, after losing half a season to get the CBA they got, are going to just shut up and play, they have another thing coming. And if all they want is for O’Reilly to shut up and play, then they are more interested in the asset of O’Reilly than the person. They didn’t actually like him, they liked his skill. That’s fair, but you can bring in skill with a trade. Or development in the minors. Is this about O’Reilly, or a diminishing situation?

- It’s important to know the difference.  Because the fans loved Joe Sakic for his play and for who he was.  They loved Patrick Roy for his play more than for who he was as a person.  Do they care about Ryan O’Reilly enough to respect his decision to think about his career as opposed to the team?  You can’t sacrifice what you think is right for everyone else every time it comes to crunch time.  It rubs up against our ideas of the myth of the hockey player in uncomfortable.  We think it should be team first, but that doesn’t make sense in every situation.

- It took this situation for the fans to finally come to the conclusion that the Avalanche are a management nightmare?  It took O’Reilly to make them realize the team is this cheap or mismanaged or out of sync with the rest of the league or any number of negative attributes that make the fans want to turn their backs on the team?  It wasn’t the firesale from a few years ago that saw Craig Anderson, Chris Stewart and Kevin Shattenkirk shipped out.  It wasn’t the other players that were ostracized for any number of offenses like wanting a raise.  It wasn’t the signing of Brad May (to me, the stupidest offense the Avs every committed).  Perhaps it’s the combination of the lockout and the O’Reilly situation that pushed people over the edge.  But the signs were there all along.  The issues have been with the team for years.  Fandom makes people blind to it.

 

So what now?  What happens next?  Who knows.  The ongoing drama doesn’t make things any better for anyone involved.  The team should move forward, in whatever way that means.  Trade, negotiate, whatever produces action.  This has been an organization driven by inaction and reaction for too long.  There is no initiative left.  We could be waiting a long time.

Filed Under: Avalanche Tagged With: , ,
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In Response

March 28, 2012 By 1 Comment

Dirk Hoag from the excellent Predators blog, On the Forecheck, left a comment in the previous post about bloggers credentials that I wanted to address. Please keep in mind that I know Dirk, like him a lot, think he’s an excellent blogger, and have met him in person. This isn’t snarking at him, and I asked if he minded me replying to his comments here. So this is all on the up and up.

Dirk’s comments are two-fold, so I’m addressing them as such:

1) Good luck on getting accreditation for bloggers. From what I understand, it was Colorado which led the charge to restrict credentialed bloggers in various cities from having access to visiting teams.

I don’t know if this is exactly the case or not. I know that I have heard the same things, and I know I have heard from people that have talked to the Avs that they don’t seem to keen on the idea. That said, I don’t know how it has been presented to the Avalanche, and I don’t know if there has been a group effort to do so. That said, it doesn’t hurt to try, and it might lead to all of the bloggers here upping their game. Which never hurts.

2) What would media credentials do for bloggers that would truly enhance their ability to counter what you see as failings of the Denver Post? Do they really need ‘we need to work hard and take it one game at a time” quotes to do that?

This is something I’ve heard from plenty of people, and I don’t buy it. Looking at the Washington Capitals experience, they have a rich field of content that goes beyond the stock quotes. I recently discovered the work done by Media Chameleon, and I would say their audio documentaries go beyond what most of the MSM would consider worth doing.

To address the specifics of the Denver Post, You would diversify the tone of the reporting,which is essential to any medium. We don’t just have Law and Order as the only crime drama on TV. We don’t just have on 24 hour news station. But in Denver, we have one newspaper, with two guys. That’s it. Terry Frei was the best of the hockey writers, but he doesn’t do as much Avs writing anymore. Just to spread the coverage out would help. How was the hockey media in Nashville before bloggers were introduced to the press box? That’s where Denver is right now.

I understand the concerns, but I would rather see the chance taken that things will change for the better than not at all.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,
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Time for the Avalanche to Open Up

March 27, 2012 By 8 Comments

Today on twitter, I went on a bit of a rant.  And hey, that’s what twitter is there for at times, a bit of a rant. But once you get to around 10 tweets on the same topic, it’s time to close twitter for a minute and open up the old blogging software, dusty though it may be.

I read yet another sour-puss post in the Denver Post today, which I usually avoid at all costs.

Aside – I want you to think about that for a moment.  I’m a  fan of the Colorado Avalanche, and we have one newspaper in town.  And I try to avoid reading it because of the content.  One source with press credentials, and I TRY not to read it.  Isn’t that kind of telling?

There were parts of the post that bugged me, but none more than this:

When push came to shove, the Avs couldn’t win the big ones – again. It was right there for them: two out of three wins against Phoenix, Vancouver and San Jose, and they would have been in good shape for the playoffs. But they got one out of six possible points. Let’s face it, the Avs choked away a win the other day against Vancouver, the one game that stood out to me as proving these guys still aren’t ready for prime time yet.

The number one thing that bugged me was not the word ‘choked,’ but the word ‘again.’  Yes, again the Avalanche were not good enough to make the post season (most likely, as there is the mathematical possibility that they could sneak in).  It isn’t the gloom and doom of that word or that sentence that bugs me.  It’s that we have seen this before.  We have seen this perspective over and over.  It’s copy / paste every few games.

It isn’t that the Denver Post (and to be honest about it, Adrian Dater, the most visual of the Post writers) needs to be fans of the team.  That isn’t their job, and isn’t the way their writing should be structured.  But at this point, the emo message is that you are a fool to think this team was anything but losers.  You would be a mook to be a fan of this team.  And it was all inevitable, and is going to continue.

The Post needs to do it’s job, and that is report the news.  And they need to be given the leeway to state their opinions in the appropriate places.  It isn’t that the Post needs to conform to us, the fans.  But we don’t need to conform to their output either.

The overall issue here is a lack of choice on the part of the fans.  The Denver Post is the only credentialed media outlet that consistently puts out Avalanche material.  They don’t have to do anything other than what they are doing, because they aren’t pushed to do so.  They are the only game in town, and that’s the choice made by the Avalanche themselves.  The Avs are traditionally very closed off to the media.

But tradition has a way of falling when confronted with new successes, and as the blogoshphere has proven, success is available.  Examples like the Capitals, Predators, and Islanders have shown that bloggers can be healthy additions to the media availability.  They can provide what the papers can’t, won’t or don’t have time for.  They can be a positive addition to the ranks of the press box.  And now, more than ever, it’s time.

This summer, I’m asking for an Avs blogger summit.  A meeting of the bloggers who want to be granted credentials or given access to the Avalanche.  This would be an initial first step in collectively seeking to work with the Avalanche to get in the door.  I’m asking for this in the spirit of inclusiveness, to get many perspectives.

This will not be an overnight process.  Bloggers of many stripes have been around for years waiting for the opportunity.  But if the mountain won’t come to us, it’s time for us to go to the mountain.

If you’re interested, please let me know in the “contact me” link up above, or click here.  Lets do this.

Filed Under: Avalanche Tagged With: , ,
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Open Post: What Media Outlets Do You Like

March 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hockey media lately. If you believe twitter, there isn’t much to like about the MSM hockey media. I don’t completely buy it, but sometimes I struggle to think about who I am drawn to in the media.

So I’m asking you for your thoughts and conversation. The comments are open. What mainstream media outlets do you like? Which ones do you have respect for? What reporters do you like, and what do you like about them?

Filed Under: Hockey Tagged With:
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