FROM THE EDITOR MIHOCKEYMAG EDITOR Michael Caples
mcaples@mihockeynow.com
ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION Lucia Zuzga lucia@mihockeynow.com
DESIGN Emily Huston Chuck Stevens CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Darren Eliot Ben Fleck Brian Kalisher Stefan Kubus Matt Mackinder Dave Waddell Ryan Zuke ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTORS Amy Jones Anne Ellis
BY MICHAEL CAPLES LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: MICHIGAN HOCKEY® welcomes Letters to the Editor. E-mail mcaples@mihockeynow.com
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PHOTOS AT LEFT: ‘Hockey’s Biggest Questions’ graphic designed by Chuck Stevens/MiHockey based on Shepard Fairey’s Vote, Yost Ice Arena’s scoreboard (Michael Caples/MiHockey), Ken Holland and Budd Lynch (Dave Reginek/DRW) COVER: Design by Chuck Stevens/MiHockey
Cover reprints available e-mail: mcaples@mihockeynow.com
Ocotber 22, 2012 V.23 : I.4
@michaelcaples
THE JOYS OF DEADLINES So here we were, the MiHockey staff, cruising along through our latest issue of the magazine. In fact, things were going very well, in this editor’s opinion (knock on wood, since we still have a couple of things to get done before we send the magazine to press). And then, the NHL comes out with a landmark proposal that could dramatically change where negotiations are heading. I had held the unfortunate opinion that we wouldn’t be seeing NHL hockey for a long time to come, but what the NHL announced yesterday (Oct. 17) brought hope to counteract my negative viewpoint on the subject. Now, we wait for the NHLPA’s response. With the owners putting a presumably 50/50 offer on the table, it’s going to be hard for the players to simply say ‘no’ and ask for it to be scrapped. Hopefully this is what the two sides needed to finally get their act in gear, and finally start talking about the issues at hand – instead of presenting ‘proposals’ that do nothing but upset the people on the other side of the table. I’m not going to lie; we got a little caught up in the excitement. We’re fans, too, and we want to see this resolved. There was chatter around the office, there were theories passed around, and there was a general optimism around the K-Cup machine. Yet you’re not going to see that in this issue of the magazine. The following 35 pages, and the ones you previously flipped through, take hours of work to organize, collect, and create. The editorial has
MiHockeyNow.com
been planned, cultivated, and placed in its selected location by our talented graphic design team. For us to simply scrap some of those pages to cover the latest in the NHL proceedings would not lend kindly to deadlines. Nor to the hard work of our staff. Instead, we made the last-second decision to plow forward with the hockey that is actually being played, the stories and features that we decided to compile while we waited for the NHL and NHLPA to take action. After all, there’s far too much hockey in this state for us to try to cover it all – NHL included. Ironically, this is the first issue where we let you - the players, coaches, parents and fans – literally fill our editorial pages with your opinions. In the spirit of this election season, we came up with a ballot of our own, with some of the questions we debate on a daily basis, and asked you to answer them. Considering the majority of the votes came in 24 hours before the 50/50 proposal by the NHL, a few of the questions would probably be answered very differently now. But alas, that’s the joy of deadlines, in both the media, and the world as a whole. We don’t have time to keep going back and forth, back and forth, deciding on what we want to do next. And neither does the NHL and NHLPA. End this lockout, and give us back our hockey. See you at a rink soon,
MiHockeyMag
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