Today’s newsletter is a mailbag! You can send in mailbag submissions by replying to any newsletter in your inbox (that will send an email directly to me), or you can always use this contact button:
Editor’s note: Some questions have been edited for brevity.
Today’s mailbag topics include:
How would I respond to differences in reporting on the Arizona State story?
Could an NHL team circumvent the salary cap by placing a player in college and signing them to an NIL deal?
Why do some teams schedule 1-game weekends instead of always having 2-game series?
Where/when will player rankings be published?
Q. Hi Mike, I am a fan of your work, but I wanted to ask you about your reporting on the Arizona State situation vs. the reporting from The Athletic. How would you respond to the differences in your reporting? You seem to have some differences in terms of how “punishing” the workout was in particular.
Honestly, I don’t think our reporting was factually all that different.
This story is much different from covering a hockey story, and I’ve tried to approach it accordingly. There are a lot of things to consider. I’ve kept my reporting as factual as possible and based it on conversations with people who were present during the workout.
I’ve spoken with five individuals who were there. I’ll be candid: not every version of events lined up perfectly. Because of that, I reported only the details that were consistent across multiple conversations.
I’ve also intentionally kept my own opinion out of the reporting.
The Athletic described the workout as “punishing.” That’s not a word I used, and that was purposeful. I wanted to avoid adjectives or qualifiers that could influence how readers interpreted the workout. I described it as “military-style” because that was how it was characterized to me consistently by the people I spoke with.
But when you get down to the actual facts, I don’t think The Athletic and I reported dramatically different versions of what happened.
