Sunday, September 2, 2007

Save Your $$$!!!

DO NOT, repeat DO NOT buy this magazine!!!

The Sporting News Hockey Yearbook this year is a disgrace. Easily the worse one I have ever read, this year's edition is garbage. It is incredibly poorly written, has astoundingly vague statements backed up by nothing and misinformation. Second or third-hand opinions masquerade as generalities. It was clearly written by people who do not watch hockey, and talked to some who did before looking at some year-end numbers in an effort to sum up last season and predict the next.

The front of the book articles are almost as poor and outdated. They run a story on the Staal brothers that was news six, seven months ago. They, of course, have a piece on television ratings and Versus but hey, here is an idea on how to drum up interest - don't put out shitty magazines! Big glossy pictures are nice but people who want to learn more about the game aren't fooled no matter how many nonsensical factoids you crush onto a page. Utter trash.

So far I have only read through one other yearbook for the coming season: the Hockey News' and it (of course) is top notch. The articles were well-written, the team-by-team previews/previews were done by beat writers who know what's going on ... it is an all around good read. My only complaint is that they had such an early deadline to get it done and on the newsstand that some moves are missed. But usually they account for them in the writing so I had no problem with it; after all, its September and we still don't know if Teemu or Scott Niedermayer are coming back ...

I have yet to read the Hockey News' fantasy guide or any other books but will check in if they prove worthy. Just don't bother with TSN, its trash ... well, unless you are in a fantasy league with me. I could use the advantage!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Please sign me up for a subscription to your hockey yearbook, it clearly must be the best, most professionally written book on the market.

Wait, that's right, you don't have one...