The collection of hockey sticks was impressive, there was no denying that.  There must have been thousands of them.  Modern composite sticks from last year, ancient hand-carved tree branches from the dawn of ice hockey, and everything in between.  Almost all of them showed signs of extensive use.

I walked along the racks and stopped in front of a huge number of red-and-white Titans.  I found the repetition appealing.

“Do you know why we have those?” Craig asked.

I thought about it for a moment, but my knowledge about the history of hockey was narrow at best.  I shook my head no. I am not the person you want on your hockey trivia team.

“Take a look at the labels,” said Steve.

I chose one of the sticks at random and leaned in close.  “Gretzky, Wayne” read the tag.  They were Wayne Gretzky’s old sticks.  Scores of them.

Just a few of Gretzky's record-setting sticks

“Every one of these sticks was used by Gretzky to break a record,” Craig explained. “Sometimes he broke records that he himself had previously set.”

I was impressed, much as I had been throughout the previous hour.  Craig and Steve were giving me a rare behind-the-scenes tour of the Hockey Hall of Fame Resource Centre in Toronto.  Tucked away in a rink complex west of downtown Toronto, the Resource Centre housed the Hockey Hall of Fame’s artifacts and archives.

I had been to the main Hockey Hall of Fame in downtown Toronto earlier in the day, and while it was neat to see things like the Stanley Cup, the Vezina trophy, and the recreation of the Habs dressing room, I found the tour at the archives to be much more interesting.  For one thing, the relics were right there in front of me rather than behind glass, so they felt far more real. For another, I got to see the passion of the people behind the hall of fame and the archive — they seemed genuinely passionate about their jobs.

I came to be at the Resource Centre via Steve.  Steve had read about my trip on Puck Daddy and, in addition to setting me up with a game in Toronto, he arranged a meeting with Craig, the manager of the Resource Centre.  Steve had that connection because of his role as sports editor at Firefly Books, which does the Hockey Hall of Fame books.  Conveniently, both Steve and Craig were goalies, something evidenced by Steve’s recent book, the Hockey Hall of Fame Book of Goalies, in which you can see his passion for the history and development of the position.

Those big movable shelves are full of hockey history. Steve is on the left, and Craig is on the right.

At the end of the tour, I chatted for a little while with Craig.  He reminded me that the Hockey Hall of Fame Resource Centre aims to document the game as a whole, not just the exploits of NHL stars.  Notability, Craig said, can come in many forms.

Had he ever heard of a trip like mine, I asked?  No, he replied, to the best of his knowledge, an such a journey has never been done before at any level of play.  I would likely be the first.

I had never been interviewed on television before, and I was going to dive in to the deep end: a national show on a major network.  Fortunately, the setting was anything but adversarial.

A man … needs to be recognized. To be questioned, and listened to, and quoted just once. This is very important.

— Juror #9 from “Twelve Angry Men”

I’m not sure how Canada AM found out about the trip, but Kristen, a producer of the show, contacted me via email almost a month before the Puck Daddy story.  My best guess, based on an analysis of server logs, is that either reddit or StumbleUpon was the source.  Regardless, Kristen invited me to talk about my trip on Canada’s most-watched national morning show.

Initially, the interview was supposed to be live, but at the last minute it got bumped to being taped.  That was fine.  Less pressure.  My only concern was that it would never air if it didn’t turn out to be interesting.

I showed up at the main CTV studios in Toronto at about 8:30 a.m, about 20 minutes earlier than needed.  My interview was scheduled to taped at 9:10 a.m. — just after the conclusion of the live show — and I didn’t want to be late.  A young woman (a production assistant, maybe?) met me in the lobby and let me back to the makeup room.  As the world learned in the Nixon-Kennedy debate, even guys were makeup on TV.  Fine by me.  It’s no secret that I don’t have the best skin in the world, but HD cameras are brutal.

After the ladies in the makeup room cut a few years off my face, I went to the green room where Iron Chef Cat Cora’s entourage was watching her live cooking segment.  Or at least, it was nominally about cooking; most of her groupies were actually there to make sure that she pushed a particular line of cookware.

In time, the cooking was done, and with it, the show.  The green room cleared out, and a different PA came in with a wireless lavaliere mic, the better for me to be heard.  A few minutes after that, the first PA came back in and brought me to the Canada AM set.

“Bring your mug,” she told me, gesturing towards my cup full of water. “It will look better if you have one in front of you.”

“Ok.”  Trust the expert, I guess.

I took a seat, and Seamus O’Regan, one of the Canada AM hosts, sat down across from me.  We made small talk for a bit.  I was a bit surprised when he noticed that my brown sweater was an Icebreaker shirt.  “Great shirts,” he said, going on to mention how he had worn them when he went to Antarctica and was impressed by their ability to stay stink-free.  I nodded my agreement, hoping that it wasn’t a subtle message that my shirt was starting to smell; it had been weeks since it had last been washed, such was its anti-stink power.

On Canada AM (like Good Morning America, but in Canada) being interviewed by Seamus O'Regan in Toronto

A producer said, “Ten seconds,” the set went quiet, and the interview began.  Almost immediately a teleprompter problem caused it to stop, and after a quick reset, we began the second attempt.

The interview was about as low-pressure as interviews get, but I still managed to get off into the weeds a bit.  Oh well. Not too bad for my first time on TV.

After a few minutes, the interview wrapped up.  I thanked Seamus, he wished me best of luck on my travels.

I went back to the makeup room to clean off my face.  The PA gave me a different mug as a souvenir, and I went out the door and onto the road.

Me being interviewed on CTV Ottawa Morning Live by Kurt Stoodley in Ottawa

As luck would have it, I got a second chance with TV the next day in Ottawa.  Erin, a producer with CTV Ottawa Morning Live, tweeted me an invitation to appear on that show.  It turned out that CTV stations in certain markets made their own morning shows instead of playing the national Canada AM feed, and Ottawa was one such place.

They had found out about my journey from the Ottawa Citizen story, which was published before I actually made it to Ottawa.  They were unaware of Canada AM’s segment until I told them.

I was struck by how different the local approach was compared to the national program.  There was no makeup room, the lighting was much simpler, and the entire operation seemed more laid back.  That’s not meant to be pejorative — it was really easy to relax on the Morning Live set.

I parked outside the studio, walked in, found that the couch set for the morning show was right next to the door, and sat down on a nearby different couch to wait.  No green room this time.  There was an extensive spread of donuts, muffins, and coffee set out, and I was told to help myself, but I decided to hold off until after the interview lest I spilled on myself.  Speaking of which, I was wearing the same shirt as for the Canada AM interview.

Why did I go with my brown long-sleeved shirt instead of my black long-sleeved shirt?  I did some research ahead of time, and I learned that black isn’t a good color to wear on television.  Earth tones are best.  Brown is an earth tone.

After about 15 minutes, Kurt Stoodley, one of the morning hosts, came over and started talking to me about the trip.  It was a mock interview of sorts, in that he seemed to be testing lines of questioning and probing for interesting anecdotes.  After a little bit of this, we went up on the set and sat down. Less than a minute after that, the interview began. Live. (Posted on YouTube, too.)

Honestly, I find it excruciatingly painful to watch video of myself doing anything.  I’ve mentioned this before with regard to video of me playing hockey, and the same feeling seems to apply to interviews.  I have a very hard time seeing irrefutable proof that my execution in something is flawed.  Still, as with hockey, I know that my interviewing skills will not get better unless I face my errors head-on.

I think the Morning Live interview went much better than my Canada AM interview, mostly because I had the practice of the Canada AM interview behind me.  About four minutes after it started, the interview came to a close.

I grabbed a muffin and some coffee and got myself caffeinated enough to head upstairs to the studios of The Team 1200, a popular Ottawa sports talk radio station.  There, the “3 Guys on the Radio” J.R., Steve, and Jungle Jim talked with me for almost 10 minutes about my trip.  I know that because they posted the recording; in real life, it felt like only a couple of minutes.  Even though it was recorded for posterity, the broadcast itself happened live.

It was my first radio interview (ignoring a token book report back in grade school), and I think it went well.  I haven’t quite found my radio voice yet, but that’s something I can work on.

That left me wondering when the Canada AM interview would air.  It was taped on a Wednesday.  The interview didn’t air Thursday, and it didn’t air Friday.  Monday was a holiday (Canadian Thanksgiving), so the show was reruns.  I gave up hope and figured that somebody had decided the interview wasn’t worthy of broadcast.  Tuesday afternoon, I wrote a short email to Kristen, the Canada AM producer:

Hi Kristen,

Even though it’s looking like my interview is not going to air, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity. I enjoyed being at the studio and seeing how the show is done. If nothing else, I now have a souvenir mug. 🙂

Thanks!

Jeff

To my great surprise, she quickly responded (in part):

Your interview actually aired this morning in the 800 half hour – and it looked great!

Wow!  I had slept through it, but fortunately the CTV News site posted my segment.

So, will that be the last of my TV and radio appearances?  No.  I taped another radio interview a few days ago (not sure when it will air), and I’ve received some indications of interest from a TV station that’s still a bit distant on my path.

Eventually, the attention will die down, but that’s okay.  If I’m ever interviewed again on radio or TV for some reason, I’ll be that much more experienced.

I went to a QMJHL game this evening, my first one ever. The “Q” is known for producing good goalies, so I hoped to learn a thing or two, or at least be entertained for a couple of hours.

(For those unfamiliar, the QMJHL is part of the CHL, the highest level of junior hockey in Canada.  The level of competition is roughly equivalent to that in D-I of the NCAA.   It’s a stepping stone for many players on their journeys to the NHL.)

I arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia Thursday afternoon in preparation for the ferry ride to Newfoundland on Friday.  The nearby city of Sydney, NS happens to be home to the Cape Breton Eagles, and they were playing a home game against the Drummondville Voltigeurs.

There were only 2,281 fans in attendance, but the production values of the game were high, and the overall feeling was polished.  The Eagles are the biggest team in town, and the town loves them.  Fortunately, popularity did not translate to high prices: I had a great view of the action from my $15.50 on-the-glass seat.

One player in particular caught my eye.  Domenic Graham, the starting goalie for the visiting Volts, put in a spectacular performance leading his team to victory.  He turned aside 32 of 33 shots, and he looked solid doing it.  His positioning and reactions were stellar, but his athleticism really set him apart.

He was quick, sharp, and confident in his movements.  He read the play like an expert.  He played the puck with force and accuracy.

I don’t think he made any bad or marginal saves the entire evening, and there was none of the flopping around that was happening in the other crease.

Domenic Graham: amazing goalie, and only 17 years old. (From my P&S. Wish I had brought my DSLRs to the game.)

Based solely on his play in that game, I got the feeling that I was watching a future NHL star.  It wasn’t just me; others have felt the same way.

The catch is that he’ll have to wait at least a couple of years for The Show: he just turned 17 last month. Amazing.  I wish I had been that good at something when I was 17.

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.