Custance To Cover NHL at Sporting News

In case you missed the news, Craig Custance will be leaving the AJC. After covering the Thrashers for a year. He will be taking over the NHL beat at the Sporting News.

I gather that they are going through some sort of re-design and may emerge as a bi-monthy or monthly format. To be honest, I haven't paid much attention to their hockey coverage since Larry Wigge left them some years ago. Hopefully Craig can inject some new energy into their material.

From a Thrashers fan perspective, I will miss having him on the beat. I thought he performed well in the job getting the facts and keeping us informed on what is going on with the club. In particular, I liked the way he followed up on questions fans left on his blog. Many times the questions were not stuff that merited a full article but they were things that readers wanted more information on.

On the positive side it is good to have someone on the national press scene who knows about sunbelt markets and the Thrashers in particular. The NHL press is dominated by Canadian writers and the vast majority of American reporters come out of northern markets as well. About the only national reporter who gives the Thrashers the time of day is Kevin Allen at USA Today.