Blogs With Balls reminder; NHL scares players about Internet

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October 12, 2009

It’s Blogs With Balls 2.0 week, as the cavalcade of alt-media fun hits the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Blog World New Media Expo on Thursday and Friday (Oct. 15-16).

I’ll be speaking on a panel about alt-media access to teams, games and athletes; as well as the concept of "barcalounge beat writers" who cover games every day through TV, Internet box scores and quotes available online.

Tickets to BWB are available here, including a steep discount via convention partner ESPN. Also, there’s a poker tournament I’m playing in for charity on Friday night. Perhaps my only chance to feel like a high-roller … like Nick Papageorgio from Yuma.

ATTENTION VEGAS-AREA/BOUND PUCK BUDDIES: We have one (1) free pass to Blogs With Balls to give away this week, and here’s how we’re going to do it. The first 25 readers who tweet us @wyshynski on Twitter with the phrase "I want my Balls" by midnight tonight (PST!) will be placed in the dirty Devils hat of doom with one winner selected. Good luck, and get tweetin’.

Coming up, two bloggy/social media items for your consideration, including how the NHL is trying to scare its players away from Twitter and Facebook.

1. Hockey From The Cheap Seats invited me for a Q&A that covered everything from what makes a good blog to the Los Angeles Kings‘ "beat blogger" experiment to the state of the hockey media. The usual mix of overwriting and dumb jokes you’ve come to cherish here on Puck Daddy.

2. If you’ve not seen it, Elliotte Friedman of CBC Sports had a segment on HNIC about the NHL and social media, including Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby (notes) speaking about his "sleeping with Stanley" photo going viral and a glimpse at the video the NHL showed its players about the dangers of Facebook and the camera phone.

The photo here is from said video, showing a player getting shaken down by criminal types over scandalous photos of bathroom stall sex. Must be some kind of HBO Original Programming mob, with Christopher Moltisanti and Kenny Powers as the muscle.

As usual, superb effort from Elliotte, especially the chat with Ryan Getzlaf (notes) of the Anaheim Ducks about how party photos can be re-appropriated to imply a player was drunk the night before a bad game.

But one gripe: It’s a Grand Canyon-sized leap from "identity theft" on Twitter to what happened with Keith Tkachuk (notes) of the St. Louis Blues, who explains in the video how thousands of dollars were taken from his family by someone using a false I.D.

Ted Leonsis tells CBC that after a fake page for defenseman Jeff Schultz (notes) was discovered on Twitter, he encouraged the Washington Capitals player to get his own verified one. That’s a proactive solution to what is, at worst, a public relations hassle; unless fans really believed Schultz was tweeting this:

"I don’t know why Nylander is complaining. This getting paid to sit around and look studly in a suit works for me."

Again: The social media pitfalls of Facebook and Twitter are important for players to understand, but a Twitter parody page or embarrassing party photos don’t belong under the same umbrella as criminal identity theft, like that MySpace scam involving Sidney Crosby.

New media is bringing fans and athletes closer together in unpredictable ways, for the better or for the worse. But I felt the Tkachuk segment in the NHL Security video, at least the way it was presented here, was a scare tactic that sought to place a wedge in that burgeoning relationship. That’s certainly for the worse.