The debate rages on around the blogs. What would happen to the blogosphere if NHL teams issued some backstage passes. The answers seem to range from improved blogging to the end of the universe as we know it. Most seem to agree they can live without the access.

What matters is what you would do with the access privileges if you had them. Myself? Glad you asked. Really, I don’t care to interview players, or recap a game. Straight reportage can be found in the papers or at sports sites. I am nowhere near journalistic integrity, and have no desire to be associated with it. I would rather tell a story, or talk about the experience. Like getting to spend a night as a press member, what would that be like? What is the experience like for a fan rather than the jaded writers and broadcasters who do it all the time? What is a day like, start to finish, for some of the more background people on game day.

I want my writing to be somewhere between Travelogue vs. George Plimpton vs. Average fan. I want to see something a little different, have a different take on things, and tell people what happened. I want to talk about the places and people, the experience and feeling of it all. If hockey doesn’t make you feel something, why bother writing about it at all?

While we’re at it, I love the fact that this is my blog. I get to talk about what I want to, and hopefully, with the people who haunt it. I like the fact that I don’t have to suck up to my team, and can be critical when I feel like it. I can pay the price by not having access, or be granted access, and do what I want within that. I am not the mainstream, and that makes me happy. Hockey doesn’t have to be about what the NHL tells you it is. You get to make up your own stories, and so do I. I get to tell you, in my own words, about my first game, or my first time skating since I was 6 years old, or about the time I first skated backwards on purpose.

So, if you come by here, consider what you read pure me. And if I get to tell the story I want, more power to you. Because you get to come along for the ride. I hope it takes us somewhere pretty cool.

BTW: Spent my time tonight in a Czech hockey bar. Here in Denver. Something I didn’t even know was there. More info later.

Technorati : Credentials, Hockey