Quacked

(PHOTO: Zia Nizami/KRT Photos)

Anaheim Ducks fans: we need to get over ourselves. The Los Angeles Kings are a very good team, and pretty soon we won’t be able to laugh derisively while we point at them with a Cup-ringed finger.

Now, hold your rotten fruit and vitriol before you earnestly launch them in my direction — the Kings becoming hockey’s kings might not be the end of the world.

Consider for a moment the situation as we have watched it unfold on the ice via our television screens. When the Kings backed into the playoffs, few took them seriously. In fact, other than the Washington Capitals, perhaps no other team had so conspicuously failed to live up to lofty predictions this season. And much like the Capitals are now doing, the Kings are surpassing even the wildest pre-playoff expectations that had been beset by more than six months of inconsistent scoring and other sundry underachievement.

(PHOTO: Don Smith/Getty Images)

The following story appeared in the March 4th issue of Puq Magazine.

There was a certain magic about the 2007 Anaheim Ducks championship team, and it had nothing to do with its twin pillars on defense (Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger). It didn’t have anything to do with its two excellent goaltenders, each a possessor of impressive playoff records. It didn’t even concern the youthful infusion of talent brought to the table by the wonder “twins” Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.

It was the swagger of a team that had the best third line in hockey.

After a protracted publication cycle, the March issue of Puq, our exclusive magazine, has arrived. You can read it (along with every back issue) online via Issuu or the Puq Hub. Remember to follow @puqmag to get all the latest updates.

What’s new this month? We take a look at the Ducks’ chances of qualifying for the playoffs, the decision to not deal Teemu Selanne at the deadline and the importance of having a gritty checking line. On top of all that, there is tons of great new exclusive artwork featured inside AND a great peek at a couple of prospects who will be available in June’s draft (special thanks to Alex Adrian).

Thank you again for being the best fans in hockey.

(PHOTO: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

The following story appeared in the January 31st issue of Puq Magazine.

It’s an age-old question about age-old players — how long after their play begins to decline does their team have an obligation to keep paying them for their services?

For the Anaheim Ducks, it’s a question that has never even crossed the minds of management when Teemu Selanne is the subject of conversation.

It’s hard to believe we’re already on the third issue of our magazine, yet here it is! It’s got a brand new name, but all the same great content you’re used to reading. Starting this month, we’re providing access to read it (along with back issues) online via Issuu (although we’d recommend downloading them yourself as Issuu seems to have trouble displaying some of our content). If you want to access them the old fashioned way, check out the Puq Hub. We’re also launching a sister Twitter account for the magazine, where you can funnel all your suggestions, sexual harassment complaints and cashier’s cheques: @puqmag.

What’s in this great issue? Without spoiling too much, we cover the Winter Classic, the World Junior Hockey Championship, the Ducks’ recent turnaround and there’s even a handy February calendar marked with the schedule and a few other important Ducks dates.

Hope you all read it and enjoy it. Thanks for being such a great community.

(PHOTO: Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)

Playoffs? Don’t talk about ­— playoffs?! You kidding me?! Playoffs?!

In so many words: yes, with a couple of caveats.

By now, most sports fans are familiar with that particular rant, unleashed by football coach Jim E. Mora when asked about his team’s chances of making the playoffs. We have not to-date  — unfortunately — seen Bruce Boudreau go on a similar tirade, but perhaps that’s for want of the appropriate question. More likely, it’s because we fans have simply refused to acknowledge the thought ever since the Ducks hit rock-bottom around Christmas.

That was just fine by me, by the way. Numbing myself to the idea of the Ducks sliding out of the playoff picture helped deal with the reality and had me looking forward to a lottery pick in what’s expected to be a deep draft this June.

(PHOTO: Paul Bersebach/KRT Photos)

It’s no shock for Ducks fans to hear about their team’s subpar goaltending this season — subpar play all around, really. Happily, things have been looking up of late. The team is on a roll and maligned goaltender Jonas Hiller has finally begun to play like the all-star he used to be. Has it been enough to wash away the early season disappointment? You be the judge:

Click to enlarge.

As the owner of a blog dedicated primarily to one particular topic (i.e. Anaheim Ducks hockey), it is incumbent upon me not to editorialize on too many issues beyond the purview of our normal coverage. One reason for that is to avoid diluting our product and see it reduced to just another unfocused site in a sea of billions. The other, more important reason is to avoid alienating readers who may not share those opinions. On matters of professional sport, spirited debate is expected and even welcomed. On issues of politics, however, it can be a real minefield, and sites like ours are wise to leave its navigation to the experts.

Today, I am here to tell you the debate surrounding internet freedom is one issue about which I will not be silent.

Two bills are currently making their way through various levels of the United States government, each with the purported aim of thwarting internet “piracy” (I use quotes because it’s actually copyright infringement — might as well call a spade a spade). SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA, or the PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) Act, both promise to protect the work of American rightsholders from the threat of foreign thievery. Far be it from me to question the true motivation behind the bills or the $94 million the entertainment industry paid to have them drafted, but suffice it to say that the ambiguity in the language within them is enough to not only stifle innovation in the technology sector — one of the few growth industries in a still-reeling American economy — but also leave innumerable innocent bystanders upended in its wake. Ironically, they will ultimately fail at the very tasks they have set out to accomplish.

Indeed, it would be a slippery slope if the entertainment industry had the ability to bend the letter and spirit of the law to their liking. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA, as it’s commonly referred to), although itself not a good piece of legislation and still frequently abused by the industry, still contains an invaluable safe-harbor provision that protects sites from liability if its users are engaging in infringing activity, so long as they comply with takedown requests. SOPA, on the other hand, makes no pretensions of allowing for due process and could theoretically allow a plaintiff to effectively remove a defendant’s entire web site from the internet before the latter has a change to even examine the charges that have been levied.

Reddit sysadmin Jason Harvey has posted a technical analysis on the bills and why their provisions are both insufficient and too broad in scope.

SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content, but rather focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.

If the Attorney General served reddit with an order to remove links to a domain, we would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. We would also need to implement a system to automatically censor the domain from any future posts or comments. This places a measurable burden upon the site’s technical infrastructure. It also damages one of the most important tenets of reddit, and the internet as a whole – free and open discussion about whatever the fuck you want.

Numerous websites across the internet — notably Wikipedia and reddit — have gone dark today in protest. The terrifying reality is that if a bill like SOPA gets passed into law, its ambiguous language could allow malevolent parties to abuse its powers and ultimately force such pages offline and their owners out of business.

I am not an American. I do not profess to be on the frontline should this bill pass and start wreaking havoc as it appears destined to do. It would be naive, however, to suggest that as a Canadian the ripple effect would not reach my country very quickly. Many major players on the web are vulnerable to this legislation. Sites that rely on user-generated content are especially at-risk: Twitter and Facebook come to mind, and both have been very public in their opposition to SOPA, specifically. Google, as a link aggregator, could be held liable if an offending link appears in its search results. What does Lamar Smith (SOPA is his brainchild) propose to do in such a scenario? Take Google offline? Even if it were able to successfully delist offending links immediately, the whack-a-mole principle is always in play on the internet: take one site down and ten more will spring forth to replace it forthwith. An unintended, although not as hotly discussed, consequence could be that these American companies (all of which serve a global market) take their business to another country with less tyrannical laws regarding online content. Such moves could irreparably damage the American economy and send the country back on a downward spiral toward a full-blown recession. Admittedly that’s a little bit of a leap in logic, but if your company was forced to decide between bankrupting itself to abide by the law (or shutting down its business entirely if its model can’t be “fixed”) and moving, the ones with enough money will choose the second option.

Moreover, Quacked is a site that, while based on almost entirely original content, also employs limited, editorial use of copyrighted materials (the pictures you see atop every article). Granted that’s always been right on the line of fair use, but to-date I have not received a single takedown request or cease-and-desist order. SOPA or PROTECT IP would both grant an accuser (e.g. Getty Images) privilege to file a complaint with our web host, who would then be bound to remove our site because it’s easier and quicker than trying to work out the differences if there is a threat of litigation hanging over the situation. One complaint over a single image on this blog could bring the entire domain offline before I would get my day in court, not that it would likely arrive because we do not have a team of lawyers to fight such battles.

Mind you, all of this is being wrapped in the American flag and being presented as a measure of security against “foreigners” who seek only to profit off the hard work of upstanding American citizens — or at least the ones who make enough money to influence federal policy. To say nothing of the fact that the U.S. government is funding the development of tools to help the residents in other countries living under “repressive regimes” circumvent such measures, passing these bills into law would rank among the highest of hypocrisy offenses and obviate any discussion of the United States occupying any sort of moral high ground. After all, why worry about censorship in other countries when your primary focus is on stopping the scourge of copyright infringement through the same types of tactics in your own backyard?

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This fight, while important, will not be the last. It is imperative that we do not take what we have for granted; if we do, we risk losing the last bastion of truly free speech. Our rights and freedoms will take a back seat to the interests of corporations that have not been able to develop a cogent business model necessary to survive in the digital age.

That simply cannot be allowed to happen.

When a player scores 50 goals and becomes the NHL MVP, you tend to forget there was a time when he was, in fact, pretty green (and purple — check out those threads!).

It was a scant six or so years back that Corey Perry, wearing a decidedly more conspicuous number 61, made his auspicious debut on an NHL scoresheet, potting a goal for the then-Mighty Ducks against the Edmonton Oilers. Demonstrating a nose for the net that has stood him in good stead with the team and its fans ever since, Perry pounced on a loose puck in the Oilers’ crease to tally his first marker.

As Perry breaks down the play, the words from the original broadcast seem to echo like a prescient refrain:

As goaltenders around this league are going to discover soon, if you gotta give it to somebody on the doorstep, you might not want to give it to Corey Perry.

Perry’s is just one in a series of videos on NHL.com that features players describing their first NHL goal. Also featured are Brad Richards, Logan Couture and Shane Doan.

No suitably evil photo of Gary Bettman was available. (PHOTO: Paul Bereswill/Getty Images)

Holy hangover, Batman! We’re back after ringing in the new year, even if our favorite Orange County team appears to still be feeling the effects of the late-night champagne celebrations.

Right on schedule, 2012′s first big NHL headline is commensurate in both controversy and surprise: the NHLPA has effectively vetoed the NHL’s proposed — and Board of Governors-approved  — plan to institute sweeping changes to the alignment of its teams.

There are several potential reasons why new NHLPA head Donald Fehr chose to mark his as-yet-brief tenure so boldly, but it appears the major sticking point was the NHL’s unilateral development of the restructuring. Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy has a few theories about why the NHLPA felt the chasm in opinion was simply too big to bridge.

The unbalanced conference format, with two divisions of eight teams and two divisions of seven teams. Combined with the return to a four-team “divisional” playoff format, the players felt there was an unfair advantage to teams in the smaller conferences.

For its part, the league feels that the players’ association is overstepping its bounds and in doing so has brought ruin to its carefully crafted scheme. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly weighs in:

“It is unfortunate that the NHLPA has unreasonably refused to approve a Plan that an overwhelming majority of our Clubs voted to support, and that has received such widespread support from our fans and other members of the hockey community, including Players[...]”

“We believe the Union acted unreasonably in violation of the League’s rights.  We intend to evaluate all of our available legal options and to pursue adequate remedies, as appropriate.”

As this story develops, we will no doubt hear from all sides involved, including the teams who stood to benefit from a revised travel schedule.

What this means for the future of divisional alignment in the NHL or the looming labor negotiations between the league and players’ association is unclear, but the sense of foreboding is strong.

Good thing we pushed that feature on realignment out the door before 2011 concluded, isn’t it?