from Jewels From The Crown,

...The lockout is going on, and the players are pretty much talking to any and every reporter that comes their way. Kevin Westgarth was no different, and so Rich Hammond talked with him about the lockout and posted it on his blog.

The NHL saw that interview and told the Kings to take it down immediately. You see, since Rich Hammond was technically a Kings employee, the NHL considered him to be a League employee. And League employees are not allowed to have any contact with players. It didn’t matter that Hammond was simply a beat writer that happened to be employed by a team rather than a newspaper, he was still employed by the Kings.

Both the Kings and Hammond fought this decision. They tried to figure out a way around it so that Hammond could continue to interview the locked out players, like every other hockey writer out there. They even considered shutting the blog down. But if we’ve learned anything from the past decade, it’s that the NHL is pretty stubborn. He could not talk to players.

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