Assignment One: A Critique

Puck Daddy is a hockey blog hosted by Yahoo! Sports.  It’s a blog that I read daily, and that I truly enjoy.  I picked out this particular article, NCAA Hockey 101: Oh boy, it's Beanpot time in Boston, because I found it particularly interesting.  I don’t know much about college hockey or the Beanpot, and I found that this article explained it in a way that was perfect for its intended audience.  It was neither demeaning nor condescending; instead, it took on a lighthearted and even sarcastic tone to explain the tournament.  I feel like this approach, while maybe not acceptable in print form, it is definitely appropriate in a blog format.  I also enjoyed that the writer’s opinion was incorporated in a way in which it was distinguishable from the facts of the article.  I could easily discern the two.  Obviously, a tournament of such magnitude is bound to have a rich history.  The writer weaves the historical statistics into the article without making it feel overwhelming or like a history lesson.  The first part of this article is successful in accomplishing exactly what it set out to do: inform the audience about the Beanpot.  When I finished this segment I felt that I understood not only what the tournament was, but what it has been as well.



However, while I understand that this was intended to be an article about college hockey, I don’t think that the rest of the blog post worked well with the Beanpot segment.  The title of the post gives me the impression that the article’s main subject is the Beanpot, so when the writer began another segment, it threw me off.  I felt that the following two segments (Pop Quiz and Extra Credit) actually took away from the first part of the article.  Pop Quiz was entirely about Wisconsin Badger hockey this season and Extra Credit was about various college hockey teams.  That these segments followed a decent-sized article specifically on one tournament showed a poor journalistic choice.  I think that a better choice would have been to create two articles; one would be solely about the Beanpot, and the other including the Pop Quiz and Extra Credit Segments.  These elements would be more effective if they were separated.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this article.  As someone who knows little about college hockey, it was very informative and helpful.  I liked the writing style, which was extremely casual, but at the same time, grammatically correct and obviously informed.  Though this writer is not one of the main contributors to the Puck Daddy blog, I would certainly read more of his work.  He possesses a lot of knowledge and an interesting journalistic style, despite the fact that this article wasn’t as successful as it could have been.