I think the greatest compliment you can give another writer (or, blogger) is that they changed the way you thought about a topic. For sports fans, reversing opinion on subject matter is sort of intrinsically resisted. I think it's pretty fair to suggest that in our little corner of the internet, it takes something extremely compelling to force a change of heart.
The reality of hockey analytics is that it's really just coming out of a first phase of niche thought, and though I can point you in a dozen different directions for quality hockey reading these days, I don't doubt that such a number will explode in the next three to five years. And yet, we have come quite a long way since about three or four web sites were kicking around the ideas of Corsi% and the like.
Upon hearing the tragic news of the passing of
Tore Purdy, I couldn't help but write at least a few words about a guy who has quietly done more for the online hockey community than just about everyone.
Purdy (operating under the pseudonym JLikens), who ran the brilliant
Objective NHL web site, was one of the guys leading the charge into the importance of even-strength possession time. He completed some of the exhaustive leg-work that so many of us now rely upon for the basis of many arguments/posts --
this piece, for my money, was one of the strongest pieces of hockey writing produced that I can ever remember. It was as much exhaustive as it was persuasive, and more or less laid the foundation for anything/everything we do now.
I write words here because it's likely that the passing of Tore Purdy -- who, if you click through his above-linked obit, was as accomplished a 28-year-old as any in this universe -- will really hit hard for those who knew him in his personal life. Yet, for the hockey community, the loss of JLikens is just as big. His time as a niche quantitative hockey blogger may have long passed, but the work he did is going to hang around the internet for a long, long time.
If you have a minute or two, I encourage you to check out his web site and the massive database still in operation. The writing is excellent, and you'll learn a lot.
I know I did.
-- 
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
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