It’s harder to imagine now, but there was a time when blogs were considered a lower form of sports media, an insult to the mores of old-school journalism. Crazily, that was only about a decade ago. The idea that even reputable news outlets would find themselves hosting blogs was pretty widely panned by the establishment. The idea that blogs could join and even surpass traditional media seemed absurd.
Yet here we are in 2016, and Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy remains among the most influential hockey news outlets in the world.
Much of the credit for that success belongs to editor Greg Wyshynski. Wysh has been with Puck Daddy since its inception, and his blend of traditional and modern journalistic sensibilities — not to mention his myriad and well-documented non-hockey interests — have been instrumental. Pucks and Recreation caught up with Greg to get his thoughts on hockey media, his love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and, of course, booze.
Jesse Connolly: You’re entering your ninth full NHL season with Yahoo. Perfect Strangers and Diagnosis: Murder only made it eight seasons, so this has to be a pretty special time for you.
Greg Wyshynski: True, but I’d counter that by saying that JAG lasted 10 seasons, even though it had the benefit of airing on two networks during its run, while Puck Daddy has been on Yahoo the entire time. So I’d say it’s a fairly special time, but we’re all looking forward to getting over that milestone, and finally seeing JAG off.
JC: In all seriousness, the Internet has changed a ton since Puck Daddy first began, but the blog’s popularity has never wavered. What’s been the key to keeping up with the times?
Obviously it starts with the readership that’s stuck with us through various incarnations of Yahoo’s site design and the increasing competition in the market space. Some love us, some hate us, but the important thing is that they read us every day. The other side of that is giving them something to read, and we’re constantly offering an off-kilter, American-centric view of the game with a group of writers – myself, Sean Leahy, Jen Neale, Josh Cooper and Ryan Lambert – I consider to be the best in the business.
I’m also thankful that Yahoo has allowed us to carve out a little piece of heaven and create something special. I’m not sure if our voice would ever have been as robust and unbridled anywhere else.
JC: You’ve done a lot for the little guys throughout the blogosphere, introducing Yahoo readers to some really great writers throughout the web. Naming the blog Puck Daddy seems fitting, in retrospect, doesn’t it?
The irony of course being it was originally called the NHL Experts Blog, which is as snooty and elitist as one could imagine.
We’ve done all we can to bring as many voices into the conversation, and to use our platform to bring our audience to new places. There’s nothing more gratifying than hearing, to this day, someone with a random blog that emails us as a ‘thank you’ for a traffic bump due to a Puck Headlines link.
There are so many people doing great work, and so many voices that deserve a chance to be heard, we do all we can to share the mic. Because we came up with people telling us our voices weren’t important because of where we grew up or our (lack of) talent for “playing the game” or because we had “blogger” affixed to our bylines. There’s a lot of bullshit you have to fight through to get heard, and we do what we can to help others get amplified.
JC: For as long as I’ve followed you on Twitter, you’ve had one profile picture: Joel Hodgson and the Mystery Science Theater gang. Was there ever a point where you considered pulling the trigger and swapping that out, or perhaps a memorable point-of-no-return moment?
Nah. Maybe as part of a bet or something. But having MST3K as the avatar is important to me, because there are a few things that made me want to marry comedy and writing – Roger Ebert and my father among them – and MST3K is near the top of that list. It’s a show that taught me that you don’t have to slow down and explain the reference if you’re confident the audience is going to take it upon themselves to figure out the joke on its own, and it taught me that silliness is the antidote for pretension.
JC: Describe someone who doesn’t appreciate MST3K in five words or less.
Guy, puppets make shit better.
JC: There are a handful of episodes that are etched on my list of “the funniest god damn things you’ll ever see.” One of my absolute favorites is Santa Claus, a 1959 “Mexican fantasy film.” Santa lives in the clouds, enslaves children from across the globe to play festive music all day, he allies with Merlin, and his nemesis is a devil named Pitch who looks like the inspiration for that “Pickle Surprise” video. Was the sole purpose of that movie to just completely shatter childhoods? Can you make any sense of it?
No. Nobody can, and that’s why it aligns nicely with other cultural curios like “The Day the Earth Froze.”
I still think “Time of the Apes” probably shattered more childhoods. Scary monkeys and short pants.
JC: We got treated to two Joe Estevez “gems” later in the series with Soultaker and Werewolf. How is a guy that looks like Martin Sheen, sounds like Martin Sheen and is the biological brother of Martin Sheen, the king of god-awful horror flicks?
See also: Daniel Baldwin.
JC: Have you gotten to any of the Mystery Science Theater/Rifftrax live shows? If so, what movie was featured, and what was the experience like?
I’ve been to two: Rifftrax doing “The Room,” which was interesting because my fiancé hadn’t seen “The Room” before so this was perhaps the best way to debut it to her. And then I went to the MST3K anniversary show broadcast at a theater in NYC, and laughed into tears.
Since you didn’t ask, I’ll just offer it: My pantheon of MST3K episodes, from oldest to newest:
- Pod People
- The Mr. B. Natural Short
- Manos: The Hands of Fate
- Warrior of the Lost World (the most underrated episode of all-time)
- Mitchell
- Teenage Strangler
- Prince of Space
- Space Mutiny
- Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
- The Final Sacrifice
JC: Speaking of great experiences (super segue!), let’s talk about liquor. I’m now handing the imaginary microphone over to Joe St. Germain.
Joe St. Germain: First of all: It goes without saying this interview would be best enjoyed with a cold beverage nearby. What’s Greg Wyshynski’s adult beverage of choice these days?
Hudson Baby Bourbon, rocks. It’s a small batch distillery in upstate New York we discovered on a whiskey cruise, which are things that exist. The best part about them – think a wine tasting, except whiskey, and on a boat – is the giant pile of mashed potatoes they give you for dinner to build a base.
Photo credit: Whisky Informative
JSG: My first exposure to you and your work was the wildly underrated NHL Closer on Deadspin. When you were writing those, did you imagine you’d end up where you are today? What’s been the most pleasant surprise about the last decade or so?
I wrote for Deadspin under Will Leitch, at a time when they wanted a sports “review” every morning. JE Skeets of “The Starters” did the basketball one, and the Kurtenbloggers from NBC’s Pro Hockey Talk did work on the NHL side after I finished my run.
It remains to this day the most challenging gig I ever had because you know, inherently, that the readers are funnier than you are. So I’m happy had cut my teeth there before getting Puck Daddy. It made me better.
Honestly, I had no designs on making hockey writing a full-time job. When Yahoo offered it to me, I was working at a local newspaper and was content to grind it out there, because I truly love the “hey kids, let’s put on a show with the limited cast and no money” aspect of community journalism. I thought I’d still be doing that and writing hockey on the side, as I did with AOL FanHouse and Deadspin. But it worked out that I was able to make it a career focus.
And working at the paper was a huge, huge asset for me as an online editor. Not only because it taught me to write quickly, and in mass quantities, but because it gave me the journalistic background to do the “respectable” work on Puck Daddy that balanced out, say, art contests with Gary Bettman dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
JSG: I happen to share a surname with an herbal liqueur. If “Wyshynski” were the name of a liqueur, what would it taste like? What would it pair best with?
Based on the obvious ethnicity, vodka. Based on my own tastes, bacon.
JSG: On the subject of Rifftrax and MST: I’ve always said that I’d pay extra money to watch unfiltered, improvisational sports broadcasts instead of the standard cable ones – no rules, no limits, just a few people having a blast and talking shit like you’d do with your friends. I guess that isn’t a question so: Any interest in being part of a booth like that at some point?
I’d say it’s something in the works in my part of the world.
JSG: This year saw the return of the World Cup of Hockey. If all eight teams competed in a World Cup of Hockey of Booze, who’s your favorite to win it all? Who’s your darkhorse? Who’s the most overrated?
The Russians would win, the Americans would be overrated and Team Europe is, as always, the darkhorse.
JSG: Let’s say you can spend a night at the bar with any three people, alive or dead, from hockey history. Who makes your list?
Andre The Giant, just because of the sheer number of stories involving him drinking BARRELS of booze. A hyper-caffeinated Quentin Tarantino. And my wife Rubie, who is my favorite drinking buddy.
JSG: Speaking of drinking: Las Vegas will have an NHL team next year. What do you make of the NHL being the first team in Sin City? Did the NHL push too hard or did they get in on the ground floor of something big?
I think the team is going to be a success. First in the market. A sturdy, if not all that massive, fan base. I think people underestimate how much the gaming industry and tourism industry will help fill that building, and how much players are going to love living there because it’s dirt cheap. And despite what my podcasting partner Dave Lozo says, I think they’re competitive really quickly.
JSG: Lastly: What one thing about Greg Wyshynski would most people be surprised to learn?
That I’m nothing like my Twitter persona IRL.
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