YouTube, Hockey Brutality and You!

So a few nights ago, when I heard about the Jonathan Roy beating (see my previous blog), I got hold of a newscast of the incident and posted it on YouTube.

What did I expect?  A few hundred hits, the standard stuff, perhaps a thousand at most by the time it’s run had ended.  What happened? Over 48,000 hits and counting!  Talk about a great marketing medium.

I had posted a link to this blog, as well as one to the home site PuckWise.com.  So of 48,000 views, how many translated into site hits? Not as many as you think.  Only about 250-350**, from what I can tell.

One site that tackles YouTube marketing very successfully is HockeyFights.com.  David Singer has done a great job of posting hockey fight videos on YouTube very rapidly and regularly and has built a great hockey community.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I exchanged a few emails with David recently in hopes of getting a link from his homepage to the site.  This proved unsuccessful unfortunately, but he seems like a nice enough guy regardless!)

So what’s to be learned from all this:

1. Controversial hockey stories spread like wild fire on YouTube – people love brutality.

2. YouTube can be a successful marketing medium if done correctly and updated frequently.

3. If you’re Patrick Roy or related to him, hockey fights can get you charged criminally!

Well, onwards and upwards.  There have not been any major changes done to the site lately.  Unfortunately some of my other projects have taken a front seat.  However, the next time someone stomps a leg, or beats someone mercilessly, you’ll be sure you can find me on YouTube!

** Most sites feel that disclosing traffic numbers is a big no-no.  I think that’s silly personally! I have nothing to hide when it comes to traffic and I think it’s in the best interest of the development community to share numbers and help web communities grow, especially when it pertains to hockey online.

GOALIE FIGHT! Jonathan Roy vs Bobby Nadeau, Does Anyone Win?

I don’t claim to be a QMJHL fan. I follow the OHL, I watch the Memorial Cup, but that’s pretty well where my relationship with the CHL (Canadian Hockey League) ends.

Watching this fight however, really got me going today!

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a huge Patrick Roy fan. I loved him when he played, I loved him when he coached the Ramparts to a loss against my Peterborough Petes in the 2006 Memorial Cup. The guy is the greatest goalie of all time and a total ego-manic, what’s not to love?

Further disclosure will reveal that I also like a good hockey fight (as most fans do)!

This takes us to the current playoffs, game two, Ramparts vs Sagueneens. Chicoutimi goes up 7-1 in the second period and shit break loose. Players pair off, Ramparts goalie Jonathan Roy rushes opposing goalie Bobby Nadeau, hilarity ensues.

As stated, I’m all for hockey fights. And we’ve seen some pretty classic goalie fights in our day (one of the most notable was the one and only Patrick Roy vs Chris Osgood – one of the best commentating jobs I’ve ever heard on a fight… ahem)

So you have to think, was little Johnny (no pun intended) just trying to impress daddy?

Probably!

Either way, anyone getting their knickers in a knot needs to look at this as what it was, a hockey moment. Whatever, call me a bigot, but I think Roy was reacting to the crowd and certainly it didn’t help that he had just been served his ass for seven goals! He figured he would win back his pride in a fight. And if that was the objection… I think he faired pretty well.

Okay, so “Nadeau wasn’t interested in fighting“, you say? Well you’re probably right. But when Sébastien Rioux jumped off the bench to take on a blood thirsty Roy, maybe he should have been better prepared! We’re talking about a lot of extra equipment here and a guy who’s already just thrown about 20 some-odd punches. Roy handled himself pretty well.

So I’m going to go ahead and tip my hat to Jonathan Roy, but in the same breath, say that he should probably be suspended and very likely will.

As for coach/father Patrick Roy. People need to just let it be. Patrick has said some pretty outrageous things about teams and leagues and has shown in the past that he’s not exactly an A+ ambassador for the game. However I don’t think this was an issue of father/son “whatever”, that the media is making it out to be. Any coach would have let that happen the same way. Down 7-1, if your players want to fight, you just keep your mouth shut and let them go. That’s what he did.

So does anyone win? Probably not Roy (either of them), definitely not Nadeau or Rioux. Maybe the Sagueneens if they can capitalize on an imminent Roy suspension, not to mention the momentum from the incident and a 10-1 victory on the road.

Regardless, hockey is what it is. That’s why we love it. If you want to know who really won, it’s probably the fans. We have more to watch, more to blog about, more to talk about.

And isn’t that what makes the game great?