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Web good source for hockey news
Football season is almost over and local sports fans can now focus on the other major sport in the area: ice hockey. The National Hockey League (NHL) has changed a lot since the infamous lockout that erased the entire 2004-05 season—the holding and grabbing that slowed the game down is gone, the goalie equipment is smaller and games that end in a tie now go to a shootout. While fighting is still there, the "old time hockey," symbolized by the Hanson Brothers in the 1977 campy hockey classic "Slap Shot" (www.imdb.com/title/tt0076723/), is on the decline and the "new NHL" is faster, more exciting and there are more goals.
There are also some new ways to keep up with what's going on in the hockey world. The NHL is the first major sports league to sign a distribution agreement with YouTube. The short videos on the myNHL channel (www.youtube.com/NHL) include game highlights and special features like "Saves of the Week" and "Plays of the Week." The league's official site, NHL.com (www.nhl.com/), even posts videos of select NHL games in their entirety on Google Video (video.google.com/videosearch?q=nhl.com&so=1&start=0).
NHL Connect (fans.nhl.com/nhl_connect.html) is a hockey social networking site, sort of a MySpace on ice that provides NHL fans with the ability to create personal profile pages and post stories, photos, videos and podcasts. Additionally, the Internet is rife with hockey blogs, fast becoming the equivalent of sports talk radio on the Web. A couple of the more popular hockey blogs are Hockey Buzz (www.hockeybuzz.com) and NHL Digest (www.nhldigest.com).
The major sports sites all provide solid hockey coverage, but even at ESPN (sports.espn.go.com/nhl), the NHL comes behind the NFL, MLB, NBA and even NASCAR in the pecking order. The best hockey coverage is over at Canada's TSN.ca (www.tsn.ca), where even in summer the NHL is top dog. Many sport sites offer real-time updates of games and CBS Sportsline.com (www.sportsline.com/nhl) even provides "Glogs," or live game logs, that provide "expert color commentary" on games as they progress.
One of the best and funniest hockey writers is ESPN columnist John Buccigross, who recently wrote that "The Buffalo Sabres' new logo is Barney Rubble's hair. Actually, it's Barney Rubble with slight bed head. The Sabres' road whites look like Flintstone Adult Pajamas that you would buy at Wal-Mart." The Sabres new logo is more commonly called the "slug" or the "Buffaslug," and while it is continually criticized, the new Sabres jerseys are the most popular in the league. For the inside scoop on Sabres action (one of the best teams in the league this year), check out Sabres.com (www.sabres.com/), Let's Go Sabres (www.letsgosabres.com) or the Sabres Report (www.sabresreport.com).
The University Libraries also can be a source for die-hard hockey fans. "Red Line, Blue Line, Bottom Line," for example, is a book that analyzes the 2004-05 lockout and "Counsel in the Crease" is Robert Swados' account of his experiences in hockey, including his role in helping the Buffalo Sabres join the NHL. For more, try a keyword search on "National Hockey League" in BISON (bison.buffalo.edu:8991/F) or in one of the library's journal databases, like ABI Inform (ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/abi.html).
—Charles Lyons, University Libraries