Another Monthly Award; Blogger Debate

Congratulations to Tobias Enstrom, who was recognized by the league as rookie of the month.

He led all rookie blue-liners in scoring with 10 points (two goals, eight assists) in 12 games. Enstrom had a career-high three assists in a 5-1 victory at Washington on Nov. 21. He also played an average of 25 minutes per game.

Atlanta forward Ilya Kovalchuk was named the NHL’s first star of the month on Monday. The Thrashers are the first club since the 1996-97 Ottawa Senators to have swept the monthly honours, the league said.

Craig Custance has started a discussion on the Thrashers’ policy on independent bloggers:

They have reached out to the Thrashers bloggers, like The Falconer and the folks at Southeast Shootout, through nights like Blogger Night where they credential the bloggers and let them write about the experience. And I think they’re looking to expand on events like that.

But, for now, that’s as far as it will go. If the Capitals, and their blogger-friendly credential policy are one end of the spectrum, the Thrashers are at the other end. To be fair, they are probably still in the majority with the rest of the league.

Their official stance comes from the PR department: “Our policy is only to allow bloggers from accredited news agencies.”

I put up my response in the comment section, which can be seen here.

HNIC on Blogging

How do you know that blogging in the hockey world is quickly gaining notoriety? Hockey Night in Canada ran an 8 minute segment covering the topic. It is a interesting clip, and does a great job.

Week’s Top Plays, NHL’s Stupidity

Update: The blogosphere has power. Within about a day or two many bloggers pointed out the videos that didn’t allow embedding. The NHL noticed, and released the following: “We’re trying to determine why this happened…it wasn’t at our request. We have a call into YouTube and should be able to tell you more later today.”

That’s good. It was nothing more than a glitch or a mistake, but the league noticed the quick response by bloggers and fixed the problem. I guess the league isn’t quite as stupid as I thought.

You know that cool feature of YouTube that allows you to embed a video into another site? Isn’t the reason the NHL made a brilliant deal with the company was so that videos like the one above would make their way around the internet and expose more people to hockey?

Well, thanks to the league, that is all over. The NHL has announced that it will no longer allow embedding of YouTube videos.

What a horrible mistake. The NHL embraced a new technology and successfully spread the league’s image on the internet. Now, that apparently is all over.

Eric from Off Wing Opinion sums it up well:

The whole point of YouTube isn’t just putting video online, it’s putting online in such a format that allows it to be shared as widely as possible, gaining the league exposure it otherwise wouldn’t have and perhaps driving folks to arena or to their televisions to get some more.

But there’s one community that’s going to get hurt worse than anybody else, and that’s the fans — like bloggers — who have been embedding the content in their sites for the past couple of months.

Why choose YouTube if you aren’t going to allow embedding? (also from Off Wing)

If you wanted to drive folks to a place to watch highlights, why in the world would you want to drive them to YouTube or Google Video?

The quality of the clips is generally poor. The real value in them comes with being able to embed and share those clips freely. But without that ability, you might as well just go to TSN.ca, click Broadband, and watch your highlights there.

No one really knows when all the videos will not allow embedding. Some clips still work (see above), while others don’t. Hopefully the league makes the right choice and realizes the huge mistake they are making.