Introducing the Newest Member of Our Staff

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
For a while now, ladies and gents, the Chronicle has been tiring of the "Link to an Article and Ramble Semi-Coherently About It" model of blogging that we've adhered to for most of our existence. Oh sure, we've landed some first-hand scoops in our time, like our report on the blogging summit with John Anderson, or on various season ticket holders' town-hall meetings, or all those games we attend (in person), not to mention that time Jason Smith's agent left a message on my phone (I could have called him back and scored an Important Interview, but I terrified myself with fantasies of tongue-tiedness and stood in my small kitchen urinating myself instead).

But generally, we do what most bloggers do: link to second-hand sources and comment on them. For original material, we mostly just fantasize about trades and acquisitions and write commentaries on Truck Nutz.

Well, sirs and mesdames, that ends today.

Actually, it doesn't end. We'll still do what we've always done, with the linking and commenting and second-hand sources, but today marks the start of a new era: We've hired a wire service!

Yes indeed, the Blueland Chronicle has added the proprietor and sole reporter for Short-Handed Mole Reports, the Short-Handed Mole, to its staff. From now on we'll be getting our hockey reports fresh from our star reporter, right off the wire, and we'll often be the very first publication ANYWHERE to comment on certain hockey news stories.

In addition to the direct reporting and wire service Mr. Mole will provide, he'll add another huge innovation to both the Chronicle and the hockey blogosphere as a whole: he happens to be, to my knowledge, the very first Animal American to write about hockey online or in print. The Blueland Chronicle is proud to be advancing the causes and careers of an often-excluded minority like Animal Hockey Writers.

Without further ado, I hand the proceedings over to the Short Handed Mole.

Sincerely,
Mortimer J. Peacock
Editor

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Well, that was quite an introduction. I'm pleased to be writing for such a distinguished hockey blog! My reports will appear fairly regularly, though perhaps not quite with the same frequency as Mortimer's fan fiction about Ilya Kovalchuk and Joe Thornton. The Chronicle's readers can expect first-hand, I-was-there reports from all around the war zones of the hockey world, including but not limited to Sweden, Russia, the Balkans, Canada, and Gary Bettman's office in New York.

Perhaps I should tell you just a bit about my background. I was born in the heavily-forested mountains on the Croatian-Serbian border. During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, I fled my home burrow and moved to Zurich, where I learned French and German (my first two human languages) and found a low-level reporting job at a rodent-specific business journal. They were seeking out moles in those days, so I managed to squeak in with very little training or credentials. Eventually this journal assigned me to cover the Zurich Jaguars hockey club, where I came to be quite interested in the sport. I became so enamored of hockey that I eventually moved to Stockholm and started my own news agency/wire service, Short-Handed Mole Reports, which in those days specialized in reports on young Swedish players with NHL potential. I had only recently mastered English (I learned it by reading British tabloids), but NHL scouts found these reports quite useful, as it often meant their clubs didn't have to spend money on transatlantic flights.

Two years later I moved to Toronto and ran the Stockholm bureau from there while also writing and reporting on North American hockey. At some point I got an email from Blueland Chronicle editor Mortimer Peacock, telling me he'd just received a large tax refund from the new American President and intended to spend it on glamorous things like a wire service. He made a handsome offer; I accepted; now I'm an employee of Blueland Chronicle LLC! My American citizenship just came through (it's expedited for moles), so I suppose that makes me an Animal American, and I'm proud to be the first non-human creature to write about hockey.

I look forward to reporting for you. I can promise some interesting stories that you'll read here long before anyone else picks them up. Cheers!