Behind the Blog: Boltsmag

For today's Behind the Blog, BtJ heads south to the warm state of Florida to catch up with John Fontana at Boltsmag. This blog covers everything you need to know about the Tampa Bay Lightning including other local hockey teams. Always a great read. Whenever I have a free moment this week, I'll be sending out my next batch of Behind the Blog email interviews out to various hockey bloggers. I have two in mind specifically, but if you're interested in participating please drop me an email. I'm planning on sending out four total this batch so I need two more blogs. Thanks! Q.1 – You’ve been blogging consistently since February 2004. Why did you create Boltsmag? As a Lightning fan, I’d been active on the Internet in various places and in various amounts from 1999 onward, discussing the Bolts on FanHome.com, ESPN’s message boards, and the old Rivals.com network site named Boltsmag. I’d discuss the team with a clique of other fans who were optimistic despite the team’s dismal performance and held out hope that things would improve in the future. And over the course of the years – they did improve for the Lightning. The Dot-com bubble burst and Rivals and Boltsmag disappeared. FanHome has become part of the Scout.com network and the few places I could talk about the Lightning, I was treated as an outcast because I wasn’t part of another clique of posters, or I wasn’t a fan who shared a certain opinion that the Lightning needed to do this-and-that in order to contend. It really started to bother me that my opinion amounted to nothing because I wasn’t agreeing with a certain message board member, or I wasn’t articulating my argument with certain information that another message board member seemed to make vital to all their posts. With a chorus of nay-sayers, I ducked out of the message board communities and started following things on my own, talking about the team with only a few close friends. 2003-04’s preseason rolled around and I got curious looking for Lightning fan site. I took a look at some web pages that were devoted to the Lightning and was taken aback by it all. Most sites were non-updated entities that were relics of years gone by and the glory period that was the 1995-96 season. I felt sorta ashamed because it looked like there were no fans for the Lightning on the Internet. What fans you could find were on wayward message boards like Sun Sports TV.com and were that closed clique group (aforementioned) that wouldn’t even address general hockey issues or opinions from certain NHL fans that the team doesn’t have a fan base and should relocate. It was the constant misperception by closed-minded fans that suggested Tampa Bay didn’t really like the Lightning, that the Ice Palace / St. Pete Times Forum was a waste of money to build and so-on and so forth. There was no one defending the Lightning and the fan-base through all of this. So I simply said “The heck with it” and decided to build my own blog to report on the Bolts, to show that there are fans in the south and in Tampa Bay. I might not be a season ticket holder, I might not be the most in-the-know guy on the Internet with regards to the team or the NHL but I do follow and support the Lightning. Q.2 – What do you hope to achieve over the next few years with your blog? I’m hoping to improve coverage of the Lightning organization and local hockey in general…I had tried to obtain media credentials earlier this year in an effort to expand coverage of the team and was shot down for it. Q.3 – Do you have any advice for fellow hockey bloggers, especially the newcomers? K.I.S.S. – keep it simple, stupid. There are a lot of great in depth blogs out there and sometimes less is more. There are several official NHL blogs at current that rarely post and when they do – they write long stuff that rambles in several areas before coming to a halt. These are looked at as “blogs” but they really are just columns with comments. Shakespeare also had a good line which needs to be remembered by anyone writing daily – “This above all, to thine own self, be true.” You’ll hear other's opinions and other's comments and beliefs wherever you go on the Internet, just don’t get caught up in it. Q.4 – When did you attend your first hockey game and who was playing? This is sort of sad but I think it was 1998… I’ve been a fan for a while but it’s hard for me to get to the games or talk people into going to games with me. I don’t drive and the arena is a ways off – always has been. Tampa Bay also offers few or no mass transit options to get around – so I was at the mercy of family or friends to go to any sporting event. At any rate, it was the Lightning versus the Ottawa Senators. I think the thing that stands out most in that game is Cory Cross giving away a goal and me screaming “CROSS, YOU SUCK!” at the top of my lungs. To which I must say, thank you Toronto Maple Leafs for Fredrik Modin in exchange for Cory “Sieve” Cross. Q.5 – Any final thoughts on Tampa Bay’s Stanley Cup win in 2003-2004? James Mirtle had told me to savor the Cup – because it may be the only one the Lightning ever experience. That wasn’t James trying to discourage me or discredit the team – that was speaking with history in mind. How many teams in the NHL have won the Cup? How many years tend to pass between Cup wins? I mean, the Rangers had a 54-year drought, the Leafs haven’t won the cup since 1967, and there are teams that have NEVER won the cup. I guess my final thought is that even if the Lightning never play for the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s cup again, the 2003-04 season will be mine to savor for the rest of my days – and that’s the same for Lightning fans everywhere. The Bolts might look like a fluke right now in certain people’s eyes, or they look nothing like thy did last season – but that doesn’t make the Ring’s any less shiny or the memory of the Players with the Cup any less sweet. Q.6 – Which player has had the biggest impact on the Lightning this season? John Grahame – and the impact hasn’t been for the better. I could also say “Jassen Cullimore” as someone having the biggest impact on the Lightning this season. Jassen departed the team for Chicago during the 2004 off-season before the strike. Without him on defense, things feel a lot weaker...But I believe Grahame has had a bigger (negative) impact on the team. John's Comment on 2/6/06: Just a sidenote, Christy sent me this interview request and I compiled my responses at the beginings of the Lightning's current hot streak, if not before it. Grahame has become an entirely different animal in his last 4 starts (3 shut outs) and the entire team has found emotion again. Q.7 – How long have you been a Lightning fan and where do you see the organization going over the next 5 years? I’ve been a fan of the Bolts since their inception. I was a kid at the time and while hockey was a novelty at first to me, we had a hockey ref who owned a baseball card shop near where I lived and we would spend hours hanging out with this guy and talking about the team and hockey along with other sports. As for where the Bolts go in five years – I haven’t a clue to be honest. If they get there bearings back, it’s possible they make another Cup run or more than one. If the team tries too hard to become competitive this season or next season – the next five years could be a mess. Q.8 – Which Lightning player, if any, do you believe will win an end of the year NHL award like the Selke or Hart? As of right now, Brad Richards for the Lady Byng...besides that, the Bolts don’t really boast anyone worthy of an award this season. Q.9 – What did you do to pass the time during the lockout? Channel surfed a lot more. Spent more time watching TV shows such as “House MD”, “The Daily Show” and stuff on the Discovery channel. I also – and please don’t laugh at me! – watched NASCAR races more than I used to...Meaning I went from never watching NASCAR to catching a race occasionally. It’s sad, really... Q.10 – Who is your favorite hockey player? Why? Brad Richards. He’s the most consistent player on the Lightning and has been since he joined the NHL roster. This was a guy who was overlooked at Rimouski Oceanic as being a by-product of teaming with Vincent Lecavalier. He went on and starred on his own after Vincent joined the Bolts… Still taking knocks from critics because he played in the softer QMJHL… He signs with the Lightning and ends up runner up to Evgeny Nabakov for the Calder and later goes on to win Conn Smyth. Vincent Lecavalier is the boy wonder but Richards is the Dynamo that makes this team go. Q.11 – What are your thoughts on Tampa Bay’s slump of late and where do you see the team finishing this season (ie. what seed in the conference, making it to the Stanley Cup finals, etc.)? In a word – blah. Things just haven’t gone the way they should and the team has not responded to “rule changes” (these are mostly subjective and interpreted differently by the officials – see above Referee thoughts). Then factor in the losses behind the blue line (Jassen Cullimore, Brad Lukowich) as well as the departure of their #1 goaltender and bestowing goalie duties on a career backup and you’ve got problems. I’ve also made comments on Boltsmag that the Olympics may be a detrimental factor this year as players (league wide) aren’t focusing fully on the games at hand and are thinking of the forthcoming Olympic tournament… This affects the Lightning pretty well as Richards, Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, Fredrik Modin, Grahame, Vaclav Prospal and Pavel Kubina – the top 2 lines and a top D man. If the Lightning turn it around – it’ll be after the Olympics and that gives them very little time to do it. I can see them making the Playoffs as a low seed – 7th or 8th – but it’s almost a stretch at this point. Q. 12 – If you could change on thing about the NHL, what would it be? The entire referee system. How rules are enforced, how refs are trained, disciplined and all the like. It’s been a long-standing complaint of mine that Referees need to call penalties and not just pick and choose which penalties to call. At the start fo the season – actually beginning during pre-season games – I thought that they were finally going to show that rules were meant to be enforced…. Then by mid November, the penalties stopped coming though infractions kept on occurring. Refs started to pick and chose what penalties to enforce and the league hasn’t stepped up and complained about this. Systems of rules are there to be enforced, not selectively enforced. Power plays can disrupt the flow of the game – I realize that – but it’s not a refs fault for initializing a power play – it’s the fault of the player who committed the infraction that got him the penalty. You can blame definitions of penalties ro the refs themselves for their interpretations of what constitutes a penalty… Just don’t give me the “hindering the flow fo the game” crap that justifies a ref not calling a penalty.. A Referee’s job is not to manage flow fo the game specifically – it’s to enforce the rules. Q.13 – Have you heard that the NHL is close to a deal with Apple regarding the iPod? If so, what are your thoughts on that? The NHL? Trying to innovate? A pox on them! What’s next?! Glowing pucks?!?!? Seriously – I think it’s good, especially if they can get into personal electronics faster than the other major sports. Q. 14 – 61% of your readers who responded to your Boltsmag’s poll said they were not satisfied with OLN’s broadcasts of the NHL. What are your thoughts on the issue? You know, it’s odd. I ran that poll the night before the last OLN broadcast (Tampa Bay versus The New York Islanders). I had written the poll thinking about how I had abhorred the OLN broadcasts early on. I watched that game and enjoyed the broadcast more than the locally aired Lightning broadcasts on Sun Sports TV. It might have been camera positions at Nassau Coliseum or other technical issues with the building itself that made the broadcast better, or it could just very well be that OLN has improved that greatly over the first few months of the season. Lightning fans also end up complaining with anyone besides Bobby Taylor and Rick Peckham calling Lightning games. That’s got to be a factor with some people voting against OLN’s broadcasts Q. 15 – Is there a hockey blog or website that you look up to for inspiration? Definitely Eric McErlain and Off Wing Opinion, PJ Swenson and Sharkspage. Eric covers the world of sports like no other and PJ is just an incredible hockey blogger. Others that I admire are James Mirtle and Tom Benjamin – play nice boys. :) Any additional comments? This season has been tough for me to blog at Boltsmag. My posts are coming less frequent as one can see… Part of it’s being taken aback by the team and not knowing how to articulate what I feel is a problem. There are other factors like hand surgery I had in November (which I am fully recovered from) that have just had me off the ball this season. Yet Boltsmag will be around for a while. I have no plans to give it up any time soon.