Thanks to Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal for sending along a link to an interview he did with Cecil Harris, former sports writer for the Raleigh News and Observer and author of Breaking The Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey.
Harris, an African-American raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn has plenty of interesting insight to pass along, including the following anecdote from the season he spent covering the Carolina Hurricanes:
GM: You mention in the book that you were once mistaken for a messenger at an arena.CH: Yes, it was at the Molson Centre, where the Canadiens played in downtown Montreal. I walked in, and they just assumed I was a messenger. They didn't want to let me in. I had to call in to the News & Observer so they could vouch for me.
In Phoenix, fans would say to me, You must have gotten the short end of straw
That Phoenix anecdote is ironically amusing, considering that Cecil treated his assignment as Hurricanes’ beat-writer like he really did draw the short straw–this is the guy that took every opportunity to bash the Hurricanes left right and center while he wrote for the N&O, and who viewed his assignment as some sort of divine punishment. This is the guy that would regularly go onto Hurricanes message boards and post nothing but insults directed at fans who took issue with his constant bashing of the team. This is the guy who, on his way out the door, posted an article blasting the Hurricanes as “The Clippers of the NHL”. The fans hated him because of the way he treated the team, the team hated him because of the way he treated the team, and he hated the fans and the team right back. He only had one mode in which he would address even the politest of fans: Rude As Hell.
The guy is a joke, Eric. How you can even give the guy a shred of credibility is amazing to me, considering the appalling way he’s acted towards team and fans as beat-writer for two NHL teams (the Hurricanes and the Islanders). I will never be convinced that the guy likes hockey at all, given the way he acts.