The Tribune’s Erik Erlendsson chats with assistant coach Steve Thomas.
BY HILLARY TERHUNE
NNB Student Reporter
TAMPA – Hockey is a grind, and not just for the players.
The sport is often called the “fastest game on Earth,” and with players who can reach speeds of 20 mph on skates and hit slap shots that travel at more than 100 mph, it’s easy to understand the nickname.
For every hockey player drawing a penalty or burying a one-timer, there is someone watching and documenting it.
Beat reporters are a lifeline that connects hockey fans to the sport they love. They are the reason fans can keep up with everything from trades and injuries to which goalie will start the game.
But it’s not always a glamourous job. Hockey writers face obstacles every day in order to stay informed about their beat.
Erik Erlendsson and Joe Smith know the role well. They are beat writers for the two major newspapers in the Tampa Bay area. Erlendsson has been the beat writer for the Tampa Tribune since 2001. Smith, who has been with the Tampa Bay Times since 2006, took over the beat this year.
Erlendsson, 43, is from Gloucester, Mass. An alumnus of the University of South Florida in Tampa, he began his career wanting to be a broadcast journalist. After an internship his sophomore year with a broadcast new organization, he found out that just wasn’t for him.
“I actually had an adviser who kept pushing me to do newspapers,” Erlendsson said.
So Erlendsson went into print journalism. He had been passionate about sports since he was a kid, and it felt like fate for him to become a beat writer. He covered high school sports from 1996 until 2000.
“I would have been perfectly happy doing that,” he said.
Than an opportunity to cover the Lightning came up. Erlendsson, who already had a background and an interest in hockey, went for it.
And for someone who doesn’t have a favorite hockey team, this opportunity was the perfect fit.
“One of the big keys, you have to take any emotion out of it,” he said. “You’re supposed to be a neutral observer, and you can’t do that if you have any sort of rooting interest in it.”
Times beat writer Joe Smith writes in the media room inside Amalie Arena.
Smith, 33, followed a similar route. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he first heard the call of journalism when he noticed a fellow student had an article on the front page of the school newspaper. He knew he could do that same.
After Smith graduated from Michigan, he started working for the Modesto Bee in California. He covered high school sports, which he said he would be perfectly happy covering today. His passion for sports led him to the Times.
When Smith started at the paper in 2006, he helped cover the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Lightning – a chance to dip a toe into everything before he became the hockey beat writer this year.
Hockey writers are constantly observing and reporting. Erlendsson and Smith attend almost every practice, even optional ones, and they travel with the team.
“I can go three months without a day off,” Erlendsson said.
It’s easy to see why. The Lightning have played eight games in 15 days, four of them away games. It’s not unheard of to have a five-game road trip with back-to-back games in two cities, but it’s something that reporters have to endure.
In the 2001-2002 NHL season, Erlendsson took his first trip to Toronto for what he calls his “introduction to a major media market.”
Cory Cross, a Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman, had been cleared for contact after an injury. The Toronto news media wanted inside information, and “they literally almost knocked me over” to get to Cross, said Erlendsson.
Hip checks aren’t just for hockey players.
Reporting on hockey is almost as fast-paced and grueling as the sport itself, just in a very different way. Writers are up against deadlines and a constantly changing game, and it can be a challenge to be accurate.
On a normal day, Erlendsson arrives at the Amalie Arena in Tampa at 10:15 for a 10:30 skate practice. He sets up his equipment in the media room down a chilly corridor. Then he makes his way out to the stands, where he sits and waits.
When the players start to make their way onto the ice, he looks for anything out of the ordinary.
“One thing right there,” he said. “Victor Hedman is skating in a normal colored jersey.”
Hedman, a defenseman for the Lightning, fractured his finger early in the season. When he participated in team practices, he wore a red, no-contact jersey. Since he has been cleared for contact he is now in a regular colored jersey.
“It doesn’t mean he’ll play; it just means he’s cleared for contact,” Erlendsson said.
He immediately posted the information to Twitter, a must-do in a situation like this.
“Social media has changed the way we do our job in so many different ways,” he said.
There are other things that reporters look for at practices. Line rushes and who is on the power play unit are just a few key elements, all of them important information when writers consider their articles.
“You’ll see the same drills a million times in a season,” said Smith. “It’s my job to keep it interesting for the readers.”
As players start to leave the ice, the reporters make their way to the locker room to interview players. They have to snag them when they get an opportunity.
If they have an idea for an article, they go into the locker room knowing whom they want to interview.
Smith went into an off-day practice with an idea for an article about faceoff percentages. He immediately talked to Tyler Johnson, Steven Stamkos, Valterri Filppula and Brian Boyle – the center men on the team and the ones who take the faceoffs.
“Not the most exciting topic, but it’s something people need to know about,” Smith said.
Reporters often have some kind of idea of what they are going to write about when they go into practices.
On an off day, it could be just about anything.
“It’s usually about trends or a player feature,” said Smith.
For game days, it’s a little different and the deadlines are a little tighter. Writers have to have story notes – short articles about injuries, upcoming games, tidbits about other teams – sent in immediately after the game-day practice. For someone who has been covering sports for years, like Smith and Erlendsson, that’s a breeze.
It’s the game article that is challenging.
“You’ll have most of your article written by the end of the second period, and the other team will get a power play goal and you’ll have to re-evaluate the whole thing,” Smith said.
The deadlines for game stories are different for every game but tend to be around 10:30 or 11 p.m., Erlendsson said. Reporters work on their articles between periods, but in a frequently changing game it’s hard to get a complete story in the first intermission.
You’ll hear no complaints from either him or Smith.
“At the end of the day I get paid to watch hockey,” Erlendsson said. “That’s a job a lot of people would love to have.”
Follow their coverage
“Lightning Strikes,” Joe Smith’s blog, is at:
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/lightning/
“Bolts Report,” Erik Erlendsson’s blog, is at:
http://tbo.com/sports/blogs/bolts-report/home/