The PHWA mourns the loss of USA Hockey assistant executive director Jim Johannson.
Johannson didn’t just have a relentless passion for the game of hockey and his country, he was always helpful in working with our organization to enhance the coverage of the players and teams he cared deeply about.
Our deepest condolences to USA Hockey and the Johannson family.
(Photo courtesy USA Hockey)
For today’s members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association, Red Fisher was a link to a different time. A time before the internet, when hockey writers wearing Fedoras wrote willowy prose on typewriters, quotes scrawled on a notepad and a cigar burning in a nearby ashtray. A time when reporters and players gained trust in each other, because they had enough one-on-one time to allow for such a relationship to be built.
Long before Twitter and blanket TV coverage, they were our only daily links to the teams we loved. People like Red, Frank Orr, and Dick Beddoes — if they wrote it, it was true. Period.
Since his first NHL game — the Richard Riots of March 17, 1955 — until very recently, Red chronicled the Montreal Canadiens. He covered the 1972 Summit Series, was an Elmer Ferguson Award winner, received the Order of Canada, and numerous National Newspaper Awards in Canada.
The Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) is proud to announce Michael Russo as the inaugural winner of the Red Fisher Award, which recognizes to the top overall beat reporter from the 2016-17 season, as voted by his peers.
Russo, who recently joined The Athletic Minnesota after a 12-year run at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, narrowly edged out finalists Aaron Portzline (The Athletic) and Larry Brooks (New York Post) in an incredibly close vote.
Longtime NHL broadcaster Dave Strader passed away this morning following a battle with cancer. He was 62.
The Professional Hockey Writers Association is proud to announce Sylvanna Gross as 2017 winner of the Jim Kelley Memorial Scholarship.
Gross is the daughter of PHWA member and Bergen (N.J.) Record reporter Andrew Gross, who has covered the Devils and Rangers since 2001. Despite falling short in the inaugural contest one year ago, Gross entered again this summer determined to win.
“The children of writers tend to have a knack with words, so I wasn’t disappointed participating last year and not winning because I knew I was up against strong writers,” Gross said. “It made me work harder this year and spend more time tightening up the narrative. It is a surprise to me that I won, and I’m very thankful I did.”
The Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) has named the Minnesota Wild and Toronto Maple Leafs as recipients for the 2016-17 Dick Dillman Award for their respective conferences.
The award recognizes public relation staffs which go to extra lengths to help promote and cover their teams as well as the NHL.
Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson, Anaheim Ducks left winger Andrew Cogliano and Carolina Hurricanes center Derek Ryan have been named finalists for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy.
Members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) vote on the trophy which is awarded “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey,”
Like he has so many times before in his copy, one line from Cam Cole left our jaws dropped.
“Since someone spilled the beans: My last day at Postmedia is Dec. 16. Man, 41 years went fast,” Cam announced on Twitter.
With that, the tributes poured in.
The Professional Hockey Writers Association is proud to announce Paula Duhatschek as inaugural recipient of the Jim Kelley Memorial Scholarship.
Duhatschek is the daughter of PHWA member and Globe and Mail columnist Eric Duhatschek. This particular award means a great deal to the Duhatschek family since Kelley was chosen to introduce Eric Duhatschek as the 2001 winner of the Elmer Ferguson Award at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Paula Duhatschek met Kelley that day when she attended the luncheon in Toronto as an 8-year-old – but she was awarded this scholarship on blind merit. Duhatschek’s scholarship essay was voted the winner by a panel of six PHWA members; all names and identifiable references were redacted from submissions.
Working in the NHL’s only two-language market, La Presse hockey writer Guillaume Lefrançois wanted to find out if that was why he found it difficult to extract information from Canadiens management.
It turns out, he wasn’t the only one.
“I spoke to Pierre LeBrun, Bob McKenzie and Elliotte Friedman,” Lefrançois said this week. “What I learned and what they told me was it wasn’t just us from Montreal, it was everybody across the league finding it hard to get information out of the Montreal market.”