Olympics Reporting: Pennsylvanians Andrew Sherk, Jayson Terdiman seek Olympic luge glory (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Imagine flying down a winding track of solid ice while wearing next to nothing. At over a hundred miles an hour. There are metal blades involved, too. And in some cases, you can’t see the track you’re barreling down.

It’s safe to say that it takes a special kind of person to be a luger.

Not only do Andrew Sherk and Jayson Terdiman fit the bill, but they also do it at the most advanced level at tracks across the world. But before they were doubles members on separate sleds representing Team USA at the 2018 Winter Olympics, they sought out thrills at home in eastern Pennsylvania — Sherk in Fort Washington, and Terdiman in Berwick.

“The two of them have always been the ‘get-the-skateboards-going’ guys and [did] gymnastics, [flipped] on the trampoline,” Kathryn Terdiman, Jayson’s mother, recalled. “Where a lot of kids would just spend their time video gaming, Jayson and Andrew were not those two kids.”

“I didn’t know this,” Ellen Sherk, Andrew’s mother, said to Kathryn. “I didn’t know it was a Jayson thing that instigated the fun stuff!”

Olympics Reporting: Family pushes Glen Rock's Summer Britcher in Olympic luge medal quest (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Long before she took on such German luge juggernauts as two-time Olympic gold medalist Natalie Geisenberger, Summer Britcher faced the daunting trio of Will Jr., Alex and Meredith Britcher.

From hopscotch to Monopoly — Carrie and Bill Britcher, their parents, said they still can’t find all of the pieces after a flipped board incident — the Britcher kids were consumed with competition. In 2007, the siblings took their business to a free USA Luge Challenge event, which is designed to expose children to the sport, at Ski Liberty in Fairfield, Pa. Summer Britcher, 11 at the time, refused to let her three older siblings beat her, this time down a snow-covered hill resembling a luge track.

“It was just an innocent sled ride,” Bill Britcher said.

Not quite.

Olympics Reporting: Olympian John Daly, competing in skeleton, is son of retired FDNY medic (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Courage and resilience are in John Daly’s blood. After all, he’s the son of a retired FDNY medic.

Four years ago at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, American skeleton slider Daly glided across the finish line with his head in his hands. Coming into the fourth heat, the last one of the event, he was in third place. At the start of the final his runners popped out of the track’s grooves, slowing down his speed and dropping him to a 15th-place finish.

A devastated Daly retired from skeleton for three years. While on a date during his hiatus, Daly faced a question he didn’t know how to answer: “What are you passionate about?” That’s when he knew it was time to revive his career — and he did it in time to qualify for the Pyeongchang Olympics in a quest for redemption.

Olympics Reporting: Brooklyn alpine skier Besnik Sokoli soaks in Olympic experience (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Besnik Sokoli didn’t let a lack of money, time to train or even the inability to qualify for the Winter Olympics keep him from coming to Pyeongchang.

The 36-year-old alpine skier and Kosovo War refugee who has lived in Brooklyn since 1999 still found a way to make it to the games — just not the way he initially hoped.

Sokoli, a building superintendent who trained using a ski machine in the basement of the DUMBO apartment building where he works, aspired to compete in men’s downhill for Kosovo, his native country. He started preparing for the Olympics only eight months ago, after not skiing since childhood, and his story of grit and determination went viral. Although he didn’t qualify for the team, the Kosovo Ski Federation invited him and his wife, Flutura, to South Korea as guests.

“I’m not feeling down,” Sokoli told amNewYork. “I’m not feeling blue at all that I didn’t get to walk in [at the opening ceremony] or race. I’m extremely motivated.”

Olympics Reporting: Caroline Park, Columbia med student, an Olympic hockey player for Korea (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — For Caroline Park, the Winter Olympics are part athletic competition, part real-world job training experience.

As a medical student at Columbia University, the 28-year-old Park has spent plenty of time around needles while she worked as a clinical research assistant at the Hospital for Special Surgery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and completed clinical rotations for school.

Now, she’s on the receiving end of medical attention during her first Olympic experience in Pyeongchang. Before games and between periods, the Korean women’s ice hockey player received shots to numb the pain of a high-ankle sprain sustained during a pre-Olympics training camp.

“It’s funny because my trainer, every time I might get a little down or disappointed because of my injury, he’s always just like, ‘Well, this will be a great experience that you can relate with your patients later,’ ” said Park, an aspiring orthopedic surgeon.

Olympics Reporting: Amanda Kessel, U.S. women eye ice hockey redemption against Canada (am New York)

GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA — When Amanda Kessel came back from her first Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, she was forced to carry two burdens that would define the next four years: a silver medal and concussion symptoms.

Both were devastating. Both were motivational.

An iconic gold medal hockey game against Canada ended in anguish for the United States, losing in overtime. It wasn’t until Kessel returned to the University of Minnesota for her senior season that she started feeling concussion symptoms sustained after crashing into the boards headfirst during a pre-Olympics scrimmage. She had no choice but to sit out for the entire year.

Long past her lost year, Kessel, who most recently played for the National Women’s Hockey League Riveters franchise when it was based in Brooklyn, has worked to make a gold-plated comeback in Pyeongchang.

Excerpt of From the Hearth: Veteran Homelessness (Podcast)

Prospect Profile: Michael Dal Colle (Originally from TRLHockey.com)

Hands like Kane. Height like Malkin. Vision like Getzlaf. Are you salivating yet?

It’s hard to go wrong with Michael Dal Colle, left-winger and points leader for the Oshawa Generals. Dal Colle racked up 95 points over the course of 67 games (39 G, 56 A) for Oshawa this season, a huge jump from his 48-point 2012-2013 gig.

Michael Dal Colle may evolve into some sort of Kane-Malkin-Getzlaf mutant somewhere down the road. Scouts have touted his hands and his playmaking skills over the course of this past season, deeming them reminiscent of current NHL greats.

When teammates Boone Jenner and Tyler Biggs aged out of junior last season, the Richmond Hill, ON native assumed greater responsibilities with the Generals. One of those added tasks came on the man advantage, where Dal Colle led his team with 16 PPG.

The numbers are pretty, but players drafted in Rounds 2 or 3 might have comparable stats. Dal Colle stands out as a top five draft pick not only because of an attractive stat sheet, but also due to the proverbial “on-ice talent” that numbers cannot quantify.

The phrase is vague, but Dal Colle’s seven-minute highlight reel will clear up any sort of confusion or skepticism regarding his knack for goal scoring.

The tape is riddled with laser beam-esque wrist shots, the tip-toppiest of top cheddar backhands, and plenty of game-winning goals. Flyers prospect Scott Laughton makes a number of appearances, and while the two have undeniable offensive chemistry, Laughton’s defensive skills have slowly begun to rub off on Dal Colle as well.

Dal Colle ranks in at #5 overall with CSS, Bob McKenzie, and Craig Button. The New York Islanders possess the fifth pick at the 2014 Draft in Philadelphia, and Dal Colle would make an excellent companion for John Tavares.

Every talented player has his shortcomings, and Dal Colle is no exception. While he may have Malkin-like height, his weight is still not totally up to par. At 6’2”, 183 lbs., Dal Colle could afford to bulk up, but his lack of an ideal size is not an overwhelmingly deterring factor.

18-year-old boys will grow, especially with the proper monitoring by the ever-involved personal trainers of the NHL. But forechecking doesn’t come as naturally as weight gain, and Dal Colle will need to make the extra effort to develop his skills without the puck if he wants to contend for a spot on an NHL roster.

From Puck Luck to Big Data: The Advanced Analytics Revolution in the NHL (Undergraduate Journalism)

Ron Hextall (far left), the general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, is among several NHL bigwigs that hired advanced statistics analysts over the summer to work for their organizations. Other teams that hopped on board include the Toronto Maple Leafs, the New Jersey Devils, the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes.

When it came to creating a user-friendly website and vibrant graphs detailing win expectancy in any given game, nobody did it better than Darryl Metcalf, founder of Extra Skater, a popular watering hole for the hockey fan community.

Metcalf had such a highly regarded hockey analytics blog that he was forced to shut down operations for good. Metcalf wasn’t sent to the penalty box for unbloggerlike conduct; he was scooped up by the Toronto Maple Leafs to work his analytic magic for the wealthiest franchise in the NHL.

“Extra Skater was a godsend for those of us that liked this stuff,” said Mark Lazerus, the Chicago Blackhawks beat writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. “Extra Skater was so easy to use that [writers] kind of depended on it.”

For Lazerus, advanced statistics enhance the stories he writes for the Sun-Times. While he avoids using technical units of measurement like “Corsi” and “Fenwick,” he assesses their meanings in simpler terms to illustrate a dynamic game in stagnant print. Corsi, which measures the sum of shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots, and Fenwick, the same quantifications as Corsi minus blocked shots, helps Lazerus explain the importance of puck possession in a given game. Since Extra Skater’s termination, he has to look elsewhere for his data.

The Big Data revolution in professional ice hockey started as a grassroots movement among a niche group of curious fans with a knack for calculations. Each particular measurement evaluates a number of factors to help predict future success of individual players and teams or assesses what affects a win. Over the summer, several NHL organizations saw the value of this data and created official advanced statistician positions, often filling those roles with former bloggers.

“Four or five years ago, I stumbled onto an online community that was talking about hockey analytics and got myself interested,” said Eric Tulsky, who was a blogger prior to becoming an analytics consultant for the Carolina Hurricanes. “It’s a neat thing to go from just saying what I think teams ought to do to actually helping a team decide what they’re going to do.”

Although Tulsky’s articles on SB Nation’s Outnumbered are still online, the work and research of Metcalf and other former bloggers like Tyler Dellow, who now works for the Edmonton Oilers, have disappeared.

“The problem is a lot of this is proprietary information in proprietary systems,” said Paul Kennedy, a former media relations spokesman of the Chicago Blackhawks. “The really good statistics are not typically going to find their way into fans’ hands because teams believe that they give them a better chance to win.”

Taking away these brains from the public forum is troublesome for the community, according to Stephen Pettigrew, founder of Rink Stats and contributor to the Wall Street Journal, DeadSpin and FiveThirtyEight. Professional organizations stifle creativity when advanced analytics proponents lose an intelligent public voice.

“Most of the cutting edge stuff is going on at the team level,” said Pettigrew. “The problem is that because it’s being done by teams, we don’t really know what the cutting edge is. Teams don’t write research papers about what they’re doing. If they find something that works really well, they’re not going to write a blog post about it.”

However, websites like War on Ice and Hockey Analysis have popped up in the absence of shut down blogs to fill the public research void. In late February, the NHL launched an “enhanced statistics” page for public use in addition to the proliferation of new sources.

“If it comes from the NHL itself, you can assume that it’s correct because it’s their league, it’s their information,” said Lazerus. “I think it legitimizes the stats when those guys do get hired by teams because clearly they’re doing something right.”

Despite the vast quantity of blogs, Kennedy stresses the importance of quality of information. Dellow, he said, worked on innovative “thought experiments” by ruminating on what he observed in the game, using the online community to develop his ideas. That, according to Kennedy, is what the public analytics world currently lacks.

“Who is going to be the next person publicly to do some of that brainstorming out in the open that fans can participate in, that fans can be a part of, that they can see the process of where it comes from?” asked Kennedy. “There is always going to be someone else, I hope. I hope there will always be someone else.”

NHL Waits For First Openly Gay Athlete (Undergraduate Journalism)

With just a minute and fifty seconds left in the third period, Red Liners defenseman Andrew Sobotka, guilty of a minor penalty, skates to the sin bin. From there he watches anxiously as his team fights to sustain their 4-2 lead. Much to Sobotka’s delight, the Red Liners hold off their competitors and emerge victorious after a grinding third period. As usual, the Red Liners stand out from the competition with their highly skilled play – and their predominantly gay roster.

The Downtown Red Liners are the most competitive of five teams within the 70-member Chicago Gay Hockey Association. Though the organization features both gay and straight athletes, it was founded to provide a comfortable environment for gay hockey players, a community still seeking acceptance in professional sports. Unlike other professional sports leagues where gay athletes have come out to the public, no player within the National Hockey League has shown that same level of comfort.

“Are there gay hockey players in the NHL?” said David Stefanski, a gay defenseman on the Red Liners. “Absolutely, I think so, 100 percent. Couldn’t tell you who they are, don’t even want to speculate, but are there? Yes.”

Some hockey reporters and players believe that media scrutiny might keep a homosexual player from coming out. While public figures like Barack Obama praised openly gay NFL prospect Michael Sam for breaking ground, the media attention he received was overwhelming and intimidating, according to media personnel themselves. They add that often from small towns, players shy away from public attention and also fear that announcing their sexuality will distract from their on-ice performance.

As an institution, the NHL has been vocal in their efforts to keep homophobia out of the league. In 2005, The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association added article 7.2 to their Collective Bargaining Agreement, prohibiting discrimination against any player because of sexual orientation.

In April 2013, the NHL and the players’ union partnered with the You Can Play Project, an organization dedicated to pursuing equality and respect for athletes regardless of sexual orientation. This partnership called for a boost in education, training and resources for players and fans to improve LGBT inclusion.

“So many NHL players have done ads for You Can Play or lent their support to it,” said Matt Horner, 28, author of the hockey blog Five Minutes for Fighting. “It lends a more powerful voice that homophobia is wrong and that there are allies even in this hyper-masculine environment.”

Horner, a Toronto native, started playing ice hockey at the age of 5. In high school, Horner found that homophobic language within the locker room didn’t welcome someone like him who was struggling with his sexual identity. “I ended up quitting for a couple years,” Horner said. “At the time I wasn’t out… so it wasn’t a very healthy atmosphere to be in. It made me not think very positively of myself.”

Over the course of his 10 years working in the front office for the Colorado Avalanche, Brian Kitts, co-founder of the You Can Play Project, knows that language among players and fans alike often discriminates against homosexual players. You Can Play, he says, is trying to eradicate a “culture of silence” and promote a league where its players and its fans are better equipped to forge a welcoming environment.

“You’d be kicked out of any arena in North America for using the n-word,” Kitts said. But derogatory terms for gays and lesbians don’t spark the same repercussions, he added. “A year or two ago, when You Can Play started, I don’t think that there was any movement at all to say choose another word when you hear somebody using that kind of language in either a locker room or a fan seating area.”

Because of the You Can Play Project, Horner believes that the modern-day NHL is beginning to promote a progressive atmosphere, but it’s still a big step for the first player in the NHL to come out to the public.

Sam Carchidi, a Philadelphia Flyers beat reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, thinks that most NHL players do their best to stay out of the spotlight and not draw media attention.

“Most of them come from small towns and they’re down to earth,” Carchidi said. “A lot of these guys, especially young guys coming in, they feel like they want to tow the company line and say what the organization wants them to say.”

Unlike the typical NHL player, former Flyers goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov was known for being extremely open with the media and often making eccentric statements. According to Carchidi, Bryzgalov’s openness ultimately hurt his image.

“If Ilya Bryzgalov turned out to be a star here, the fans would have loved him, they would’ve just said that they… loved his personality,” Carchidi said. “But because he wasn’t that successful, they said that his personality was the reason he failed. That’s not the case, but it’s funny how people are perceived.”

Craig Brownstein, co-founder of Puckbuddys, a gay hockey blog “For Boys who Like Boys who Like Hockey,” acknowledged that Sam came out in a highly public way, ultimately earning him the status of a gay athletic icon. Not all players, however, have that same level of confidence, and the way they come out can be made less overwhelming.

“Not every player is going to want to do that,” Brownstein said. “They might just announce it to a team, they might just announce it to the hometown paper. Might tell a coach. Their job is to play, not necessarily be a gay role model or a trailblazer.” However, Kitts stresses the importance of gay athletes to come out to the public, not just to their teams, in order to show young athletes that homosexuality is not a burden or an obstacle.

“If [coming out] helps one kid not kill himself or not walk away from the sport he loves, that should be a good enough of a reason for you as an athlete to come out,” said Kitts.

Surveys show a professional athlete’s decision to come out can change public perception of the entire league. One prominent LGBT marketing firm found that Sam’s decision boosted the NFL’s reputation in the gay community. In a survey of more than 10,000 members of the LGBT community, 23 percent perceived acceptance by the league, up from 8 percent the previous year. The NHL lags behind at the bottom of the pack of professional leagues, with only 11 percent of those surveyed perceiving support and 42 percent still perceiving disapproval.

Despite the notion that the NHL is not welcoming to the gay population, the fact that players have done interviews espousing gay rights and equality even aside from the You Can Play Project reassures Sobotka, president of the CGHA, that the mentality of the league is changing.

“You don’t hear any slurs being thrown around,” said Sobotka. “The culture… if it isn’t there already, it’s definitely shifting to be there very soon.”

Brownstein was pleasantly surprised at how the Washington, D.C. hockey community warmly welcomed Puckbuddys, a sign, he believes, of how accepting and progressive the NHL and its fan base has recently become. “I was talking to somebody who played hockey in high school and college,” said Brownstein. “The guy explains it to me really simply: ‘Traditionally, hockey has always been a game for misfits on both sides of the glass. Of course you are welcomed in.’”

NHL Draft: Behind the Scenes (Philadelphia Business Journal)

ORIGINAL STORY AND PHOTO GALLERY FROM PBJ.COM

When NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman stepped up to the podium for the first time at the 2014 Entry Draft this weekend in Philadelphia, he probably expected a few jeers. Perhaps quick rounds of booing here and there.

Instead, Philadelphia greeted Bettman with a symphony of sheer disgust, heckling not only the commissioner, but nearly every other NHL team that checked in during the pre-draft roll call as well.

If you weren’t the Flyers, you were the enemy.

The hundreds of prospects that attended the draft quickly became acquainted with the passion that defines our city’s sports. While hockey is not the go-to sport of the country, the hockey culture surrounding Philadelphia is undoubtedly strong.

Anthony DeAngelo, a Sewell, NJ native and the 19th overall pick by the Tampa Bay Lightning, said the local hockey scene is steadily improving.

“We’ve got a lot of good development camps and development coaches around here, so it’s starting to get better and better,” said DeAngelo. “I’m happy to be a part of it.”

The defenseman sees himself fitting in well with the Lightning in terms of the team’s youth and knack for speed. While DeAngelo grew up a Flyers fan, he won’t have a problem abandoning his old loyalties in favor of his possible future home in Tampa Bay.

“I’m ready to have them as my rival, I don’t care,” stated DeAngelo.

Another prospect that may eventually face off against the Flyers as an enemy is Kasperi Kapanen, son of former Flyer Sami Kapanen and the Pittsburgh Penguin’s first round pick.

The elder Kapanen played five seasons for the Flyers before returning to Finland to play for Kalevan Pallo of the Finnish SM-Liiga. In the 2012-2013 season, a familiar face joined his team: his son Kasperi.

“It was a dream come true for me and for him, and probably a bigger thing for him. Just being with the same person you just ate breakfast with is pretty weird, but it was unique and I really enjoyed it,” said the younger Kapanen. “He’s been my influence in everything. He’s been my coach, my trainer, my fan, my dad all at the same time. That’s special and I’m really excited that I got to play with him.”

Like the other prospects, Kapanen enjoyed the intensity of the draft.

“In Philly [they have] great fans. They’re loud, they boo, they do a lot of stuff,” Kapanen stated. “I was surprised that the fans were so into this. It’s been great.”

The Philadelphia management passed over the hometown boys in favor of Travis Sanheim, a defenseman from Elkhorn, Manitoba, with their first round choice. Sanheim’s rapid development over the past season with the Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League put him high on the draft radar only recently.

“The last few months for me have been crazy and I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be selected first round or not,” said Sanheim. “I knew I had a chance to go to the Flyers, I knew they were really interested. I’m just proud to be selected by them.”

When Flyers General Manager Ron Hextall announced the pick, Sanheim did not take the exuberant welcome from the Philadelphia fans for granted.

“Being in the building tonight, the fans were crazy and you could see the passion,” said Sanheim. “It’s a hockey city and I’m lucky to be here.”

The Flyers scooped up five additional prospects in the draft, including C/RW Nicolas Aube-Kubel, D Mark Friedman, LW Oskar Lindblom, LW Radel Fazleev, and D Jesper Pettersson.

Leading up to the draft, whisperings regarding the Flyers’ desire for a higher first round pick indicated the possible move of several big-name players on the team. This never came to fruition, and Ron Hextall did not show signs of frustration.

“Somebody else has got to be willing to move. A lot of teams try to get up, it’s hard to do it… you’ve got to judge every conversation you have and if something makes sense, then you do it,” stated Hextall. “But if you don’t, you can’t move up or do something that you don’t want to do and overpay. It’s a feel, and if you feel like you’ve got the right deal, you do it. If you don’t, you don’t. We’ve got some good young prospects.”