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The Athletic

zeke said:
I'm honestly surprised that you guys have been reading any of those guys anymore. I can't remember the last time I read a star/sun/tsn/sportsnet article. They're just all so useless. They don't give me anything worthwhile at all.
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Yeah, off the top of my head, I honestly couldn't recall the last time I took the time to read an article written by one of the Star/Sun/TSN/Sportsnet beat reporters.

What those guys are mostly useful for is twitter updates from Leaf practice when it comes to line combinations & injuries.
 
heh. yep. their actual reporting on twitter of things that happen that I can't see is useful.
 
Bleedsblue&white said:
I have not looked at the Toronto Sun since the Kadri pacifier pic.
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The Sun was only ever useful for sports coverage and bird cage liner. Online sources have far surpassed the Suns sports coverage now, so yeah...bird cage liner is it's primary utility now.
 
Crazy to think that for the better part of 20 years, the Toronto Sun's two lead hockey columnists were Al Strachan and Steve Simmons.

You'd be hard pressed to find two bigger axe-grinding, bitter, misinformation-peddling, ill-informed, unintelligent blowhards.
 
LeafGm said:
Yeah, off the top of my head, I honestly couldn't recall the last time I took the time to read an article written by one of the Star/Sun/TSN/Sportsnet beat reporters.

What those guys are mostly useful for is twitter updates from Leaf practice when it comes to line combinations & injuries.
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Some guys are decent, like Yost.
 
LeafGm said:
Crazy to think that for the better part of 20 years, the Toronto Sun's two lead hockey columnists were Al Strachan and Steve Simmons.

You'd be hard pressed to find two bigger axe-grinding, bitter, misinformation-peddling, ill-informed, unintelligent blowhards.
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When you consider that fact, so much about the relationship between the team and it's fans starts to make sense. I do love that legacy media companies aren't the gatekeepers to information anymore.
 
MindzEye said:
When you consider that fact, so much about the relationship between the team and it's fans starts to make sense. I do love that legacy media companies aren't the gatekeepers to information anymore.
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Yep. And while Simmons & Strachan were/are two of the worst, there were plenty of other people in the Toronto media cut from the same cloth in radio, print & TV.

Luckily though, those dinosaurs seem to be headed towards extinction now that, like you mention, sports radio, newspapers & sports programs on TV aren't your only sources of information on your favourite sports team. In Toronto, the only remaining complete hacks I can think of that cover the Leafs are Simmons for the Sun, and McGran & Feschuk for the Star.

I guess Damien Cox also occasionally pops his head up with a dollop of stupidity, but his writing gigs seem to be few and far between these days.
 
Hey, my father was economics(business) editor of the Star for 30 years, and I couldn't read his articles, they were so boring. But he is hailed as the most "athletic" of all media journalists, in Canadian history. Every business and political leader feared him and pandered to him. Was hilarious to watch as his only son.

All the "top" Canadian sports writers were pretty wary of him.
 
There's a distinct satisfaction in seeing the two worst anti-Quinn miscreants, Cox and Berger, toiling in obscrurity.

In terms of old school media, I don't mind Chris Johnson for the Leafs, though only occassionally. My main sources of article reading on the Leafs are the Athletic and pensionplanpuppets (KatyaKnappe is very good usually).
 
BeLeafer said:
There's a distinct satisfaction in seeing the two worst anti-Quinn miscreants, Cox and Berger, toiling in obscrurity.

In terms of old school media, I don't mind Chris Johnson for the Leafs, though only occassionally. My main sources of article reading on the Leafs are the Athletic and pensionplanpuppets (KatyaKnappe is very good usually).
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Berger in particular provides some pretty amazing schadenfreude. Not only did he get shit-canned by the Fan590 due to popular demand, but in the seven years since then, he's apparently blown through his severance package and a good deal of his personal savings by making his one-man, poorly-trafficked, click-baity Leaf blog into his full-time job.

He even spent a couple of years after getting fired following the Leafs around North America on his own dime, before the money ran short.
 
I almost feel bad until I realize what a twat these guys were when they were the gatekeepers of all things Maple Leaf in the city.

Was being an actual journalist like Mirtle et all, that ****ing difficult?
 
MindzEye said:
I almost feel bad until I realize what a twat these guys were when they were the gatekeepers of all things Maple Leaf in the city.

Was being an actual journalist like Mirtle et all, that ****ing difficult?
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Gotta give a ton of credit to Mirtle. Getting the Globe gig was a sea change for Leafs coverage in Toronto.
 
BeLeafer said:
Gotta give a ton of credit to Mirtle. Getting the Globe gig was a sea change for Leafs coverage in Toronto.
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Also credit to the guys like Bobo, Lebrun, etc who maintained professional appearances through the entire era of horseshit. I know they were more league focused, so not having to swim in the same pool as the mental midgets was a bonus, but they're still based out of Toronto and it would have been easy to let that arena poison your outlook. Kind of like it did to Dreger.
 
The Toronto sports media could be best described as low effort trolling for most of the last 30 years.
 
Volcanologist said:
Just look at Jonas Siegel's recent article on Matthews and the powerplay.

https://theathletic.com/298024/2018...it-is-heating-up-at-the-right-time-for-leafs/

Steve Simmons to my recollection has never written an article with that much analysis in it in his entire career. ever. And I'm not even trying to say this article is anything more than solid by our standards.
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...and he never will.

Simmons is one of the leading "eye test" proponents out there, and shits all over any advanced stats whenever he gets the opportunity. Which is a convenient stance for him, because it means he doesn't have to put in any effort learning and understanding new concepts, or growing as a person. And it also gives him an excuse to not back up any of his hot takes with any hard evidence.

So yeah, "low effort troll" really is a great description of Simmons and his ilk.

Berger is another great example of that. Instead of putting in the effort of cultivating real connections and sources in the hockey world, he spent his entire career as a Leaf reporter peddling false rumours that he made up in his own head. And instead of well thought-out, substantive analysis, he specialized in producing click-bait designed to provoke an emotional response from Leaf fans.
 
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