Quote:
Originally Posted by Metro Gnome
My guess is I watch far hockey than you.
I played hockey for eight years as a kid. I coached hockey as a young man. I scouted it. My brother played for the Alberta Selects. My father ran the Bow Valley Hockey Association. I've met with teams regarding my work. I have contemporaries now working for teams in their analytics departments. I built an entire online Flames publication from practically nothing.
I have a particular niche I fill in the hockey publishing/analysis world, so that's the angle I write from. I built that niche from on my own time through more than decade of work, often after or between other jobs I work to pay the bills. I don't think it's unfair to say that the way hockey is talked about and analyzed now in the media in general has changed, in part because of my work.
I'm okay with people not liking the stats angle. Charts and standard deviations aren't for everyone. I accept that I am more about criticism than optimism as well. But I'll be damned if people sitting on a message board who have never meaningfully contributed to hockey thought or analysis get to sneer that I don't watch hockey or that I "don't understand the game."
I'm not perfect but I'll stand behind my long body of work, including many of the predictions I've made over the years. And if anyone would like to engage me in debate over the specifics of my efforts or a particular conclusion, that's great. But the potshots at my effort level, or general knowledge...I put a lot into who I am and what I've built. I'm also proud of it and I do the best work I can.
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i'm glad to see you say this, it irks me to read critical thinkers write critical pieces all the time and i can appreciate your self awareness.
i'm grateful that you still read the forum and i respect your candor here, although explaining that you write like the smartest guy in the room because you are in fact the smartest guy in the room doesn't exactly win me over either.
i subscribe to the athletic and i will continue to read your work but you do sort of wear the black hat as far as die hards like me see you. i can certainly tell how hard you work and don't mean to be discouraging, but you probably shouldn't engage reader criticism head on anymore, the big journos don't and you're one of them now.