10/26/2011 at 11:24am EDT
The Puck Stops Here is one of the bloggers who has been with the site for a long time. His posts are often pieces that are designed to take a statistical look at the world of hockey and make sense of the confusion. Sometimes he jumps to erroneous conclusions (like when he angrily typed up a missive in his own comments stating that he feels he would make a better GM than Steve Yzerman... to quote him \“I watch games regularly. I have a far better background in statistics than Steve Yzerman does and can make much more sense of the numbers behind the game than he would ever hope to.\”) and sometimes he comes up with very thought-provoking material. Unfortunately, woe be to the poor soul who disagrees with a conclusion brought about by TPSH.
A recent example of this happened just yesterday, as TPSH posted a blog called \‘Early Top Defenseman\’. In this writeup, he names Dion Phaneuf as the front-runner for the Norris Trophy after only eight games. This is one post in a series he\‘s done in the past and will likely continue to do where he tracks trophy candidates from the beginning of the season right up until it\‘s time to explain what broken reasoning the PHWA used when disagreeing with his picks for the various pieces of postseason hardware.
As usual, there are people who disagree that one should be going so far as to say \“Norris Front Runner\” on this side of Halloween. When faced with this criticism, TPSH responded as such:
Some of the commenters here must not be interested in hockey as they would rather say its too early in the season than discuss hockey. That is a shame.
This is a tone often employed by this author when faced with criticism. He often becomes accusatory and patronizing. If you\‘re at all familiar with my history on that site, you\‘ll know what came in response:
Hooray logical progressions!
TPSH claims that commenters who do not wish to discuss end of season awards in October are not interested in hockey.
THEREFORE, it can be logically inferred that TPSH doesn’t consider hockey to be anything more than the sum of the postseason NHL awards given out.
Trying to fight fire with fire, TPSH responded with this:
It can be logically inferred that JJ is just here to be a smart ass. He obviously doesn\‘t want a serious conversation about anything.
To be honest, that\‘s a fairly good comeback from somebody who I feel has the emotional range of a toaster. Unfortunately, from here, the situation devolved. I made attempt after attempt to answer the charge that I don\‘t want a serious conversation about anything only to see my comments repeatedly deleted. TPSH\‘s reasoning for deleting my comments are numerous and varied, but they all come down to the same thing in the end: that my comments in response to this accusation are not sufficiently hockey-related to remain public.
This is to say nothing about how hockey-related the comment that I\‘m just here to be a smart ass and that I obviously don\‘t want a serious conversation about anything is, just that apparently, I\‘m not allowed to have a serious conversation about a topic that TPSH first brought up.
After several tries to get my comments accepted and several taunting emails from him about how he would not let that happen, I settled on posting \“I want a serious conversation, but you keep deleting my comments.\” The only reason I can think that he would delete this one is that he does not want people to know that he deletes comments of those who disagree with him. To TSPH, the concept of \“winning\” an argument is more important than having a discussion. What\‘s more on his blog, he is allowed to take personal shots at the intelligence or hockey-dedication of his commenters, but he will not accept similar responses, even if he\‘s the one to bring up the subject in the first place.
In my opinion, this is cowardly and childish behavior from a blogger. I, like many other commenters have found that his answer for persistence in asking that he follow the rules he sets for his commenters is to eventually start editing their comments in a way so as to put words on the screen that you did not type. I was warned via email that persisting to demand to be allowed to answer the accusation that I\‘m not interested in having a serious conversation about anything would lead to this and found that my last comment had been changed to this:
I would like to see Dion Phaneuf on the Detroit Red Wings.
edit necessary to make it a hockey comment.
As of this writing, I have still not received an answer from him about how calling me a smart ass and saying it\‘s obvious I don\‘t want to have a serious conversation is a hockey comment.
But I\‘m not going to worry about that… Instead, I\‘m going to take advantage of Kuklas Korner\‘s great blog-blocking feature. Thank you for making this a possibility, Paul. I only hope that being ignored doesn\‘t drive TPSH to troll others even louder so that he can use his tyrannical rule over his own little blog to make himself feel powerful.
Create an Account
In order to leave a comment, please create an account.