I was almost completely ignored by the media for the first three months of the trip.  A few blogs gave me some love, and a couple of posts on reddit got a bit of traction, but that was pretty much it. (There was a tentative TV interview request, but I’ll get to that in a future post.)

Everything changed two weeks weeks ago.  My trip has now been on major blogs, newspapers, radio shows, and TV shows.

I’ve often wondered how stories like this get noticed in the media.  I don’t know if my experience is representative of the general case, but perhaps it can shed some light on the process.

Before the start of the trip, and a few times in the early weeks of it, I sent overtures to travel writers at various newspapers.  I played up the “every state, every province” aspect of the journey and barely mentioned the hockey.  I got no responses at all, not even “no thank you”; I might as well have been trying to communicate with black holes.

Part of the problem might have been that I was trying too soon.  It’s one thing to plan a trip like this, and it’s quite another to show evidence of substantial progress.  The other component of the problem was the subject matter.

The more I talked with people, the more I realized that the real hook of the story was the hockey.  Driving a lot? Yawn.  Playing hockey everywhere? Cool!  I had to use that angle.

An overture to a blog seemed like the best approach. Major blogs are very influential these days, and the cost structure of the medium makes them more inclined to take risks on unproven stories.  Some searching around showed that the Yahoo Sports hockey blog Puck Daddy was one of the biggest players in the sector, so they became my initial target.

Thus, three weeks ago on September 21, I sent an email to Puck Daddy using the address on their site.  In it, I wrote:

Hi Greg,

You know those guys who make a pilgrimage to see their team play in
every NHL arena?  That’s simple.  I’m taking the hockey-trek thing to
the next level by actually playing in every American state.  Plus
every Canadian province (eh!).  All as a goalie.  It’s the ultimate
hockey road trip.

That probably sounds crazy or awesome, but either way, I’m 17,000
miles into it, and there’s more info on the blog I set up for the
trip: http://www.stoppingineverystate.com

Any interest in this as a story for Puck Daddy?

Thanks!

Jeff Keacher

Almost a week went by, and I heard nothing.  I figured they weren’t interested, so I wrote it off.

Then, on September 26, I got a short note from Sean Leahy, one of the bloggers on Puck Daddy.  Did I have time for a phone interview, he asked?  Of course I did!

We had a nice conversation on the phone on September 27 while I was in Columbus, Ohio, and two days later, the 1,150-word story he wrote about me hit the intertubes.

The surge was immediate.  Thousands of new visitors made their way to my blog.  My number of Twitter followers rose dramatically.  And the best part: dozens of offers and invitations for playing hockey!  I was thrilled.

The story on Puck Daddy

Later that day, I got emails, blog comments, and tweets from several additional journalists.  They had seen the Puck Daddy piece, and they were interested in doing stories of their own.  Would I mind some phone interviews, they asked?

Here’s the thing about media interviews:  always grant the the interviews.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a major TV show or a little blog you’ve never heard of.  Do it, and genuinely treat the interviewer like their publication is the most important, most influential news source in the world.  It just might be; you never know who reads what or who knows who.  If nothing else, be excited: somebody out there actually thinks that you’re interesting enough to tell other people about you — amazing!  Or, just do them for the sake of practice. The only cost is time.

I spent several hours that day talking on the phone with journalists, and a few days after that, their stories started to be published.

The most influential of those turned out to be a 750-word feature article by Ken Warren in the Ottawa Citizen.  That ended up getting syndicated to a variety of other papers across Canada, including the National Post and Vancouver Sun, for a total daily print circulation in excess of 500,000.  The article, in turn, led to more contacts and served as a bridge into TV and radio.

The Ottawa Citizen article, which was widely syndicated. I'm amused by the photo the editors chose. Certainly catches the eye!

I’ve found the timing of the print articles interesting.  At first, I expected any articles published to be done only after I had visited the papers’ respective cities.  However, the Ottawa Citizen article was published before I reached Ottawa, and the recent article in the Western Star (Corner Brook, Newfoundland) was published on Wednesday, two days before my arrival on the island.  I’m not sure why.  I do know that the early coverage has proved useful in finding hockey games, so I’m not complaining.

What’s next?  The big challenge will be making the jump from the Canadian media to the American media.

Puck Daddy is written mostly by Americans, but the only coverage I’ve had in the traditional media in the States was in a column by Charley Walters in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.  It seems like hockey is popular enough at least in the northeastern US to make my trip a compelling story, so the question will be how to sell that south of the border.

Journalists: there’s an opportunity for somebody in the traditional American press to “break” this story.  Contact me.  🙂

I had just let in a second breakaway goal.  The other bench at the Columbia Icefields arena in Waterloo, Ontario was cheering, and I found myself fishing the puck out of the back of the net.  I didn’t look at my bench.

As a goalie, I hate every goal I let in.  I subscribe to the theory that every shot on net can be saved; some are merely more difficult than others.  Better positioning, better reaction, better reading of the play — there was always something that could have been done to make a goal into a save.  Of course, if such perfection were easy, it would be no fun.  The odds that I’ll be able execute well enough to stop a shot go down as the level of competition I face goes up, and with the game in Waterloo, I was facing an uphill battle.  I hated the thought of letting down the team in general or Matt in particular.

Holy crap, a save! (Photo: Sarah)

Matt was 23 and a student at the University of Waterloo nearing the end of his studies, prior to which he had played goalie as high as the Junior B level.  Matt was the usual goaltender on the team I was playing for.  He gave up his net and skated out so that I could be in the game.

About a week earlier, before the Puck Daddy piece and before the Ottawa Citizen article, Matt contacted me with an offer to play in Waterloo, Ontario.  According to him, he’d been following the blog ever since I posted a lonely request for a game in Calgary way back in June on the Goalie Store Bulletin Board.  He’d been waiting for me to wind my way around the country and get close to Ontario, and when that happened, he posted an overture as a comment: “I know you’re traveling through my home province of Ontario soon and I wondered if you might be interested in playing a league game?”

Well, of course I would!  I hadn’t planned to stop in Waterloo, but a hockey game was a good reason for a change of plans.

Oh, the game.

In addition to providing a hockey game, Matt provided a great suggestion for a brewery tour: Steam Whistle in Toronto.

I took a drink of water and looked around as the players mulled around prior to the post-goal faceoff.  The arena had wonderful laminated wood beams holding up its roof.  The warmth of the wood was unusual for an ice arena; cold gray steel and concrete are the norm for arena construction.

The puck dropped, and play resumed.  I tried to focus on the game, but I kept getting distracted by a girl taking photos with a DSLR near our bench.  I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but she seemed to be taking an unusual number of photos of me in particular.

The photos made me nervous.  I thought they were being taken as evidence of my presence.  I fully expected to get thrown out of the game at any moment.  Why? Well… I had to be a student at the University to be eligible to play, so I kind of just ran onto the ice while the lady checking ID cards wasn’t looking.

Matt and me (Photo: Sarah)

I figured that the only reason I hadn’t been booted yet was because my team wasn’t winning.  We weren’t even on the board at that point.

Still, the score wasn’t as lopsided as it could have been.  Breakaways aside, I was coming up with decent saves.  I had worried that I would be totally dominated based on the team’s skill division.  Fortunately, the fear of humiliation, or perhaps sheer luck, was preventing that from happening.

Matt’s team was in the “Advanced” division, above the “Beginner” and “Intermediate” divisions but one notch below the “All Star” category.  Most of the guys had played while growing up, some to reasonably high levels.   I had nothing approaching their Canadian hockey pedigree, and on top of that, I was the oldest guy there by at least five years.

We finally got on the board, and I held off a few more third-period assaults.  Unfortunately, we didn’t come up with the win at the end, but the mood was still upbeat in the dressing room after the game.

Even better, the photographer turned out to be Sarah, Matt’s girlfriend, not somebody out to spoil good hockey.   The photos documented my being at the game, but the goal was nothing but good.

Toronto hockey round #1: Success.

I walked the narrow cobblestone streets, looked at the signs in French, and smelled the aromas of delicious cooking.  The sky above was pink from the setting sun. The temperature couldn’t have been more perfect: about 72 degrees, matched to my light t-shirt.

I sipped some coffee, not because I needed the warmth, but simply because it seemed the right thing to do.  Drinking coffee is a time-honored tradition in Paris.

Except I wasn’t in Paris.

No, I was in Quebec, the city that is the capital of the province of the same name.

I strolled to the edge of the city wall and gazed out across the wide St. Lawrence River, 100 ft or so below.  I watched the flocks of birds in the sky.  I watched the ferries go back and forth and the freighters chug towards the Great Lakes. I relaxed as I saw many others relaxing on the benches, quietly taking in the spectacularly beautiful night.

A view from Quebec City at sunset

Not even the memory of the huge backlog of hockey-related writing I needed to do could spoil my content with the moment.

I’ve filled up Sam’s tank about 50 times so far on this trip, so I’ve spent a good chunk of time at gas stations.  As a result, I’ve seen a lot of gas prices.  No matter what, gas prices in the United States always end in 9/10 of a cent on the price per gallon.  I have yet to hear a satisfying explanation for why that is the case.

Not so in Canada. I have noticed something during my recent time north of the border: prices per liter in Canada end in all sorts of tenth-of-cent values.

See how the price per liter ends in 7/10 of a cent? You'd never see a gasoline price end in anything other than 9/10 of a cent in the states. (Toronto, Ontario)

I don’t think it’s the different units of measure.  My best guess is that it has something to do with taxes.  Gasoline taxes in the US are all a fixed number of cents per gallon, but when HST is applied to gasoline in Canada, it is done on a percentage basis.  Since the prices are shown with taxes included, perhaps there is something about the way the taxes are calculated that makes it difficult to get the total price to end in 9/10.

All of this presumes that a price ending in $0.009 is desirable for the retailer, which, as mentioned earlier, is not a sure thing.

Google doesn’t seem to have an explanation, at least not with the searches I’ve tried  Somebody must.  What’s the answer?

It’s no surprise that Minneapolis has a vibrant hockey community.  Even Huntsville, Alabama has long been known as a hockey enclave of sorts.  But would you expect to find the same enthusiasm in Louisville, Kentucky or Charleston, West Virginia?  I didn’t.  I was pleasantly surprised.

My first hint of hockey’s popularity down there came several months ago after I posted a link to my Saskatoon sub goalie story to reddit.  A redditor named Phil read the story and invited me to play in Louisville.  He explained that the Louisville Adult Hockey Players Association was the center of an enthusiastic group of adult hockey players. “Sure,” I thought, “how many enthusiastic adult hockey players could there be in Louisville?  I bet they’re Minnesota transplants working for UPS.”

Not so, I later discovered: native Kentuckians play hockey, too.  It turned out that the LAHPA has run a “never ever” hockey program for adults who have never played hockey (or even skated).  The “never ever” program is so popular that it is run multiple times per year, often selling out the 40 or so slots.

Think about that.  The closest NHL team to Louisville is in Nashville, 175 miles away.  There are just a few indoor rinks in the Louisville area, and kids are more likely to grow up playing football than hockey.  Despite those challenges, the hockey community in Louisville is thriving and growing: in the past decade, the number of registered hockey players in Kentucky has increased 58%.

The day I arrived in Louisville happened to be the second night of the current Never Ever session, so I stuck around to offer moral support and take photos.  Two things struck me: everybody seemed to be having a really good time, and most (but not all) of the participants were relatively young (maybe mid-20s or so).  Back in 2004 when I did the AHA’s beginner hockey program in Minnesota, it seemed like the average age was much older, perhaps mid-30s or so.

Participants in the LAHPA's Never Ever program practice stickhandling. Phil is the coach in the gray shirt.

A couple days later, I subbed for Phil’s team, and while I wish I could tell a different story, the reality is that this goalie lost the game.  I was a split-second behind the play, a bit off on my angles, and a hair short of closing up the holes.  Sorry about that one, guys.

Unfortunately, this was the story of my game in Kentucky: not stopping pucks.

Nonetheless, I shook it off and pressed on with the trip.  After an interlude in Indiana, I found myself in Charleston, West Virginia.

West Virginia is beautiful in the fall.  I’d been there a few times in the past to go rafting on the upper Gauley River, always in the autumn, and the sights of the changing leaves covering the rolling hills were spectacular.  I’d never thought of it as a hockey state, and with good reason.

From a decade ago: one of my rafting experiences in WV

There were just two rinks in West Virginia with ice in late September.  One, used by the University of West Virginia club hockey team, was in Morgantown, and the other was in Charleston.  I considered trying to finagle my way into one of the club team’s practices in Morgantown, but after a conversation with a man at the Charleston arena, I decided to go there instead.

I was surprised by two things at the Sunday night drop-in session.  First, a lot of people showed up.  I was the only goalie, at least until one of the skaters decided to give net a try for the first time ever, but there were plenty of skaters.  Second, everybody in attendance seemed to be quite enthusiastic about playing and watching hockey.  The rink manager even mentioned that he was a big Gophers fan.

Sure, some of those present were transplants from elsewhere in the country, but a good number were raised in the area.

Playing hockey in Charleston, WV

Was the hockey at the highest levels?  No, but that’s not the point.  It was just a drop-in game, after all.  The goal was to have a good time, and everybody was.