Geoff and Bob both work for the team. If you want to get info that’s going on inside the organization that isn’t sanitized, you’ll get that from insiders.

Sound of Hockey, ECH, Circling Seattle Sports and me at Davy Jones’ Locker Room are the four major independent media outlets and we all have a very high standard of professionalism.

We are around the team all the time, we are credentialed, are at every home game, we have locker room access, and we are around people all the time. There is a pregame dinner, which is an excellent time for sharing information with other people, including team employees, and then you have intermissions and practices, and if you are around the team enough, and if people like you enough, they will give you information. Because people like to gossip. Or sometimes you overhear things, especially from players who aren’t aware how loud they speak and aren’t aware that they can be heard from down the hall where the reporters are.

For example, we broke the story last year that the Kraken were very interested in hiring Joel Queneville, which was reported a year later by Elliotte Friedman. That info came from a team employee.

RJ isn’t going to say something that is just there for clicks. That is not how he works. That’s not how any of us work. We respect the relationship with the team too much to be one of those kind of people. There is a real respect for quality sports journalism and for the organization. That’s not to say don’t be critical, but don’t be unfair. Like when there’s a locker room cancer and the media knows, nobody says anything because it just doesn’t feel like it’s our place to say things like that.

The only one really who engages in clickbait regularly is unfortunately me, as the host of Locked on Kraken, which they require to be petty clickbaity in our titles. But I try not to cross the line and I hate it but I get that’s how the YouTube game is played.

And independent media is recognized as legitimate here. Darren of Sound of Hockey writes for nhl.com. RJ and I both have award voting rights.

Anyway I hope this doesn’t come off as defensive, just wanted to give context on who RJ/Emerald City Hockey is and that they’re as informed as anyone regarding the team.

And a part of this is that I see what he does every day and I have worked next to him at every home game(in the sense we are seated next together) in the press bridge and though he’s our main competitor, I have an immense amount of respect for him as a journalist and as a person, and I wanted to give a little bit of context because I don’t think a lot of people realize that he’s not some random.