CAROLINA HURRICANES FAQ

1. Season tickets are still available for the 2006-2007 season, pro-rated for the remaining games this season. A detailed brochure is available. Email your ticket request, or call 1-800-NHL-CANES.

2. Single-game tickets are available through ticketmaster.com, through ticketmaster charge-by phone at 919-834-4000, or at the RBC center box office. Box office hours are M-F and Saturday 10-4. The box office is also open on Sunday game days. Tickets for December and January games are available now, tickets for February, March, and April games will be available January 2, 2007.

3. Yes, we offer 10-game and 24-game mini-plans. There are three different packages within the 10-game plan. Per game ticket prices within these plans are between the single-game price and season ticket discounted prices.

4. The Carolina Hurricanes play all home games at the RBC Center, 1400 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh. The state-of-the-art RBC Center opened in 1999. It was funded as a joint venture between the State of North Carolina, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the Wolfpack Club at North Carolina State University.

5. The RBC Center is located at 1400 Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh, NC. Maps and directions are available online and below:

6. There are numerous message boards and blogs for fans to interact and keep up with news from a fan perspective. The team’s official message border is “Caniac Corner“.

7. The team has a 25-man roster. This includes Cory Stillman and Frank Kaberle who are both on injured reserve.

8. Up-to-date player statistics in numerous categories are maintained by the team, by the NHL, and by ESPN.

9. Season ticket holders receive numerous special benefits, including the option to buy extra single-game seats at a discount before public on-sale, the ability to buy multi-game parking passes, priority in sale of playoff tickets, a discount at the team store, and the ability to e-mail tickets to friends. The team has a special FAQ on this subject.

 I found out about the Rory campaign on November 26, and made my first post about Rory on November 27th. (I’ve written three or four posts at my blog so far on Rory).

I saw the offer yesterday at voteforrory.com to run ads in return for donations to the Canucks foundation and emailed the site last night and negotiated my ad.  It went live around 11 pm ET, and as of 6 am ET today, I’ve already had 102 hits on my blog coming directly from http://www.voteforrory.com !!

I paid $40 to have the ad run for two weeks.

Here’s my ad at http://www.voteforrory.com:

I’ve seen Rory play a number of times, as I attended Games 1, 2, 5, and 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in Raleigh last year and game 6 up in Buffalo.

I was glad to donate to the Canucks charity, and I’ll post here and let everyone know how much traffic my ad generates!

Theory: Communication can occur in three basic ways: interpersonal or face-to-face, mediated and mass mediated. Because our audience determines our success, we want feedback, interaction, dialogue, a conversation with our users or readers.

Hypothesis: A sports team official website needs to promote interactivity in order to drive readership and buy-in.

A sports team website such as CarolinaHurricanes.com should exist to provide opportunity for fans to:

1. find out game schedules
2. purchase tickets
3. find out about the team
4. purchase merchandise
5. find the arena
6. interact with team personnel and make suggestions
7. interact with each other

The first five items on the list do not require any two-way interactivity, but CarolinaHurricanes.com does provide a link to purchase tickets and to the NHL shop section for Hurricanes merchandise. The last two items on the list above require an effective means of two-way interactivity. Item six can be handled either through a one-way comment process, or through a message board or blog that accepts comments.  Item seven can best be handled best with a message board.

Blogs and Message Boards 

The Carolina Hurricanes maintain both blogs and a message board, but as I have noted, Canes blog central  has blogs from Mike Commodore, TV play-by-play analyst John Forslund, Youth and Amateur coordinator Paul Strand, and Canes Media Relations Director Mike Sundheim. There have only been two or three posts on each of these sites during the season that began over two months ago. The blogs do have a “comments for” feaure that allows a submission, but these submissions either do not post to the blog (either with or without moderation) or no one has submitted any comments. Commodore’s blog has a response form that says “Have a question for Mike? You may send fan mail to Hurricanes defenseman Mike Commodore (or any other Hurricanes player, coach or staff member) at the following address: c/o Community Relations Department, 1400 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh, N.C. 27607. Or you may submit fan mail electronically via the email form below. It will be forwarded to the appropriate person.”  Forslund’s says “Have a question or comment about something John has written? Fill out the form below, and tell him what you think.” Strand’s blog invites “Paul welcomes questions or comments by email – just click here,” while Mike Sundheim’s has a form submit feature at the bottom that says “comments for Mike”.  Assuming the recipient of the comment or message responds, there is two way interactivity, but not in the way most people think of blogs. The comment mechanisms are not even standardized between blogs.  The Canes blogs are more like commentaries or diaries, the online predecessor of the modern blog.  The fact the blogs are updated so infrequently and do not post comments both limits their usefullness to meet the theory of interactivity.

Message Board

The Canes maintain an official message board, “Caniac Corner“. In existence several years, the board went down during the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals, was replaced for a time by a link to an outside board, and was finally put back online October 31, 2006, but with all old messages purged. A Canes official told me in September that the board was taken down during the finals because it had too much traffic. The forum has already registered 570 users since its reinstatement, and has 15,908 posts. There seems to be an unwillingness to commit sufficient resources to this project.  For the board to go down for months beginning during the team’s Stanley Cup finals run when the traffic would be most beneficial to the team during the push for merchandise sales after a successful cup run and for season ticket sales for the next year seems pennywise and pound foolish. I have been told that the team has only used free software for its board hosting. The former volunteer admin of the site told me this week that the cheap software does not even allow them to ban users, and this week one character dropped 1200 spam comments on the site, causing them to lock all threads (very useful to the fanbase)

Conclusion
CarolinaHurricanes.com should have as one of its goals the promotion of interactivity between management and the team’s fans.  The current level of interactivity is inadequate to meet that goal.  Management should:

1. seek more frequent blog posting from blog writers.
2. allow moderated comments on the blogs.
3. use a level of message board hardware and software that will both stand the test of heavy usage during successful years and also allow a level of moderation and supervision to make the board useful and its participants comforatble that they will be insulated from abuse.

• Discuss how your writing has changed since the beginning of the course
• What you have learned in the course that you think will prove most useful going forward
• What unanswered questions remain for you
• How this course could be enhanced, improved, changed (be brutal!)
• What the instructor could perhaps do to better facilitate maximum learning

More than the sum of its parts

At the beginning of the course, I viewed the course title “Writing for Digital Media” as the three (actually four) words that made it up:

Writing 

–verb (used with object)

…..

Digital

–adjective

…..

Media

–noun

2.

(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight. …..—Usage note Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them: The media is (or are) not antibusiness.

Integrating content 

This course has given me the opportunity to integrate those words and to understand that together they are both more than the sum of the parts and different.  I’ve learned to think of who the reader is, perhaps a:

1. coworker
2. fellow sports fan
3. classmate
4. newspaper reader
5. random web surfer

and tailor my writing accordingly. I’ve learned that the online reader will view the writing differently than the print reader, and things need to be organized to maximize what might be only a fleeting moment of the reader’s time, for example:

1. organize things in chunks,
2. use headlines and mini-headlines,
3. use bullet lists like this one,
4. break the post so that the interested reader will be able to expand and the casual reader will not be threatened by its length.

I’ve learned (what now seem to be simple) tricks in the WordPress software to embed links and graphics, to use headers and page breaks, and to keep up with who is using my blog. I’ve learned more HTML, most of which was a refresher of things I had long ago forgotten from days of coding pages on geocities.com in the late 90′s before they had a page editor that auomated things.

What will I do when I grow up?

I suspect that much of my use of the course will be in blogging (whether for personal whim, sports fans, or for coworkers, legislators, and lobbyists wanting to keep up with legislative news) but some of its use may be for memo writing where the recipient will be able to click on embedded links to go to more documentation, fact, or opinion. I had not realized until a few weeks ago that the version of Microsoft Word I use has the same icon to embed a link that WordPress and other blogging software has.

I still need to learn formatting, font size, placing and sizing images in more relevant places, and how to tweak page appearance to be more appealing. I also need to learn how to sift through information overload to find what is relevant without being drowned.

Annoyances 

I’ve been annoyed with the Blackboard message board format where it is impossible to keep up with subject headers as threads get longer.  I’ve been frustrated by the lack of synchronicity between the course book and the various places that the online syllabus appears. It was not until many weeks in that I realized that the course book predated the online syllabus.

Excellence 

I’ve found the course to be incredibly useful, my classmates to be uniformly helpful with nary a flame on the Blackboard discussion board. The questions posted each week by the pair of students leading the discussion have been great. I’ve found the instructor to be knowledgeable about the subject matter, willing to come to the rescue of threads that need help.

This course has been the best of the three I have taken, although I am sure that the other two courses laid a great foundation for this one, and those taking the classes in a different order will say the same things about their third or fourth class.

All I Really Know I Learned in Kindergarten 

I take to heart the words of Robert Fulgham in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten* as I planned each week how to get the work done “Live a balanced life, learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon.” (page 2), and when things bog down “…just lie down and shut up and wait…” (page 95)

 *text found using the “search inside” feature of Amazon.com

Original assignment: Original writing piece for an organization, the Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team (with which I have no affiliation). Site visitors may be those who regularly frequent message boards and are familiar with the written and unwritten rules, or they may be new to the genre and will welcome a FAQ on etiquette. Users might just come once or twice to the site, or may revisit to see updated resources and news about the fan message board universe.

You may be in the capacity crowd when 18,730 fans converge on the RBC Center for home dates for the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, a fan from afar, a former Raleigh area resident, or even a resident of another country, perhaps the native land of one of the Canes’ European-born players. With the internet, the fun doesn’t have to end when the game is over. This guide to online fan sites, such as message boards and blogs, can keep you involved.

MESSAGE BOARDS

Hundreds of Canes fans are using online message boards to share their experiences, commenting on the team and individual players. Tickets are traded, photos posted and shared, and stories told and retold. Here’s how to get in on the action.

Anyone with an internet connection can join the online Carolina Hurricanes world. Message board users can make up their own screen names and stay relatively anonymous, or post with their real names, and even upload avatars like that of Scoreboards message board moderator Jeffbear.

BLOGS

In addition to message boards, blogs allow individual fans to set up their own individualized weblogs and post commentary, with most allowing readers of the blog to chime in with their comments. A good blog will also have a blogroll, linking the reader to similar sites or resources.

AN ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY

Online fan communities have largely developed on their own, but both national media and the team itself have also hosted message boards or set up blogs. This article catalogues numerous message boards and blogs that focus on the Canes, as well as gives casual fans pointers on using those boards. Message boards are be of two varieties, moderated, and those with standards. Scoreboards moderator Jeffbear discusses differences:

“I think it’s important to deal with the stance regarding moderation and Standards up front. There’s a huge difference between an actively moderated board and a loosely moderated board in terms of what posters can get away with in terms of behavior, and it’s good to make people aware of the rules up front … and then enforce them. All message boards generate their own conventions in terms of slang terms, user handles, avatar pictures and the like. Those things need to be explained in a good FAQ”

GAME DAY THREAD
Fans seem to enjoy the message board game-day thread, where the moderator posts an introduction to the game a day or two in advance, fans make predictions and talk about injuries, and during the game fans listening on the radio or watching on TV post commentary. Fans returning from the game also chime in later. A regular season game might see 100+ postings, while a playoff game might have over 300.

CANES MESSAGE BOARD CATALOGUE

To get you started, here’s an extensive list of Carolina Hurricanes oriented message boards:

• The Scoreboards is a message board covering hockey, baseball, football, and basketball, with individual boards for each team. There are 1,769 members of the board with privileges to post anywhere. A smaller number of those post on the Canes board. The greatest activity on this board is for NHL hockey, with 3,911 separate discussion threads, compared with 969 for baseball and 609 for NFL football. The Scoreboards Canes board is the newest Canes message board, becoming active August 24, 2006, and already has 475 discussion threads. The systemwide moderator has posted community standards, covering harassment, disruption, vulgarity, solicitation, spamming, and use of copyrighted materials, while Canes Scoreboards moderator Jeffbear has posted a FAQ for the site, covering the history of the board, including the migration of participants from several other boards in the past, as well as inside jokes, and short bio sketches of some frequent posters. There is a general search function, and a member list and the ability to send private messages to members exists. The member list includes profiles and the ability to search posts by member. For those with greater interest in the Scoreboards, Jeffbear discusses the history of both Scoreboards and Canes message boards in general.

• Letsgocanes.com (LGC) is an independent board with 1,093 members, 7,142 threads, and over 383,000 individual posts. Members can send private messages to other members, and start new threads. Its Canes discussion thread includes the obligatory game day thread and even a place for new members to introduce themselves. On the top menu bar is a FAQ that is more focused on technical issues than the Scoreboards FAQ. LGC has separate sections for ticket exchanges, commentary on subjects such as other NHL teams, minor league hockey, and member initiated polls. There is a general search function, and a member list and the ability to send private messages to members exists. The member list includes profiles and the ability to search posts by member. LGC moderator Caniac suggests in a message about the development of that message board: “I would say it is beneficial if a new user lurks for a little bit to see how the site works and how they’re supposed to act and even type.”

• HFBoards.com (short for Hockey’s Future) is a site like Scoreboards but for NHL hockey only, with over 31,000 members systemwide. Its Canes message board does not have separate section for different aspect of hockey like LGC, but all threads shown in inverse order of last posting. This makes finding threads more difficult. Its FAQ is very similar to LGC’s. There is a general search function, and a member list and the ability to send private messages to members exists. The member list includes profiles and the ability to search posts by member.

• ESPN maintains message boards for every professional sport and team. Its Canes message board is lightly used, with 116 topics and 588 messages dating back only to October 1, 2006. Board managers have posted that all boards were reset on that date and older messages eliminated. No member list or contact capabilities exist, making this board less useful to posters. (ESPN has no message board specific logo)

• The Insiders (also known as scout or fanhome) maintains a Canes message board that is organized much like HFBoards. It was one of the most active Canes message boards until mid-summer 2006 when most posters deserted to Scoreboards after a dispute with management over long-term prospects of maintaining the boards.  Its structure is similar to that of HFBoards. Now there are only a few posts per week. 

• Fanhome.com re-established itself in late November after a split from scout.com. It has a new Canes message board established November 21, but as of December 3 there were two threads with 8 posts. 

• The Canes maintain an official message board, “Caniac Corner“. In existence several years, the board went down during the 2006 Stanley Cup finals, was replaced for a time by a link to an outside board, and was finally put back online October 31, 2006, but with all old messages purged. A Canes official told me in September that the board was taken down during the finals because it had too much traffic. The forum has already registered 570 users since its reinstatement, and has 15,908 posts.

• News & Observer Carolina Hurricanes forum. Very lightly used, no search function, does allow other posts by a user to be searched after clicking on a post by that user. No special graphics. No FAQ.

MESSAGE BOARD FEATURE COMPARISON

There are a number of common desirable features on message boards, which I show in a comparison table below the descriptions (the new Fanhome is not evaluated):

• the Game day thread (mentioned above).
• new member intros, to help make a new member at home.
• a FAQ and/or community standards section to let a new member learn board policies.
• “stickies”, a feature that let the moderator keep popular or important topics at the top of the board, rather than sinking to later pages and thus hard to find.

                                         Scoreboard      LGC     HFBoards    ESPN   Caniac  Insiders   N&O

Game Day Thread              Y                       Y          Y                N          Y          Y          Y

New Member Intro            N                       Y          N                N          N         N          N

FAQ or comm. standards   Y                       Y          Y                Y          Y         N           N

Stickies                              Y                       Y          Y                N          N        N            N

CANES FAN BLOGS CATALOGUE

While anyone can start a free blog, here’s a list of Canes fan blogs found from a Google search and from blogrolls:

• Sweet tea, Barbecue and Bodychecks “Rants about hockey (chiefly the Carolina Hurricanes) from an Adopted Southerner” by the AcidQueen. Posts made several times a week, good blogroll.
• Carolina Hurricanes blog Hokejowy A Canes blog maintained by a fan from Poland.
• Red and Black hockey. Self-styled rants and raves about the Canes. deleted
• Stormbringer’s Blog of Madness Daily posts from a Virginia based fan who is a Triangle expatriate.
• Penalty Killer. From Chris, an Apex fan who makes several posts a week. Extensive blogroll.
• Canes Country. By Bubba, an unidentified fan
• Canes blog central. These are “official” house blogs of the Carolina Hurricanes, which do not allow comments to be posted. Among those blogging are defenseman Mike Commodore, TV play-by-play analyst John Forslund, Youth and Amateur coordinator Paul Strand, and Canes Media Relations Director Mike Sundheim.
• Life and Times of a Caniac Self styled as “A sarcastic, hockey-loving teenager’s view on life and the Carolina Hurricanes.”
• Caniac’s blog. Defunct blog, active during the 2005-2006 season.
• Hockey puck_it Defunct blog, active during the 2005-2006 season.
• Hurricanes Hockey News Blog that was active during the 2005-2006 season, recently began posting 2006-2007 news. Links for “about” and “contact information” are dead, making it hard to know anything about the writer’s perspective!
• Canes All-Stars New blog, established to promote the candidacies of Canes nominees Rod Brind’Amour, Erik Cole, Eric Staal, and Cam Ward to the 2007 NHL All-Star game. Covers the on-line voting process, the seasons of the four Canes, and some write-in campaigns.

Module 15 assignment: Complete final revisions on your  press release (Module 12) and post to your blog.

For More Information Contact:

Gerry F. Cohen

(919)247-xxxx

CanesAllStars@gmail.com

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAN BLOG

TO HELP COORDINATE NHL ALL-STAR GAME VOTING

CanesAllStars helps fans vote for Ward, Brind’Amour, Cole and Staal

in online balloting beginning November 15; hanging chads gone

Raleigh, NC, November 12 – Fans Sound Off, a website that helps Carolina Hurricanes hockey fans to connect with each other on message boards and blogs has announced plans to launch a “CanesAllStars” blog devoted to Canes fan online balloting for the 2007 National Hockey League All-Star game to be held January 24 in Dallas. The blog will link the online ballot for Canes hockey fans, and have sections for fans to comment on the Canes nominees and encourage others to get involved. According to the NHL, fan balloting begins November 15 and ends January 2, 2007.

The NHL released the official 100-player ballot list on Friday, which includes Carolina Hurricanes forwards Rod Brind’Amour, Erik Cole, and Eric Staal, as well as goalie Cam Ward. For the first time, all fan voting will be online. For Ward and Staal, this is their first time on the All-Star ballot. Brind’Amour played in the 1992 All-Star game while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Cole has been on the All-Star ballot.

Fans will be able to vote and enter a sweepstakes once per day. The top vote-getting goalie, three forwards, and two defensemen in each conference will be the starting lineup for the game to be held at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. The past six years, in-arena punch paper ballots and ballot boxes supplemented the online voting, but this year the NHL has eliminated the paper ballots and hanging chads. Fan in-arena paper balloting began in 1985. Sweepstakes prizes including a trip for two to the 2007 NHL All-Star Game, Mark Messier autographed jerseys, and NHL 2K7 video games will be awarded in a random drawing among voters.

Brind’Amour, captain of the 2006 Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, was acquired by the Hurricanes on January 23, 2000 in a trade with the Flyers. He has played 1,205 NHL games, tallying 388 goals and 616 assists for a total of 1,004 points, the 72nd player in NHL history to surpass the 1,000 point threshold. As of today, his 17 assists this season are 4th in the NHL, while his 23 points are 7th. Brind’Amour is a native of Ottawa, Canada.

Staal, a center for the Hurricanes, is a Thunder Bay, Ontario native. Staal was the Canes 1st round choice (2nd overall) in the 2003 NHL entry draft. He has tallied 151 points in 181 regular season games, and his 10 goals this season puts him 11th in the league.

Ward, the Canes starting goalie, received the 2006 Conn Smythe award as Most Valuable Player during 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs. He was the Canes 1st round choice in the 2002 entry draft. He is a native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Cole, who plays left wing, is an Oswego, New York native. He was the Canes third-round choice in the 1998 NHL entry draft. He has 101 career assists and four hat tricks, the latest a three-goal effort against the Washington Capitals on November 9.

Among tactics being considered by CaneAllStars is soliciting fans of other teams to vote for one or more of the Canes nominees. Fans can vote for both Eastern and Western Conference teams, so an alliance with fans from a Western Conference team could assist both teams.

ABOUT US: Gerry Cohen, a Carolina Hurricanes season ticket holder since 1999 is the creator of both Fans Sound Off and the CanesAllStars blog. He received the team’s “7th Man award” in the 2002-2003 season. A Hartford, Connecticut native, Cohen was a team fan before the franchise relocated from Hartford in 1997.

###

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAQ

1. Season tickets are still available for the 2006-2007 season, prorated for the remaining games this season. A detailed brochure is available. Email your ticket request, or call 1-800-NHL-CANES.   

  2. Single game tickets are available through ticketmaster.com, through ticketmaster charge-by phone at 919-834-4000, or at the RBC center box office.  Box office hours are M-F and Saturday 10-4. The box office is also open on Sunday game days. Tickets for December and January games are available now, tickets for February, March, and April games will be available January 2, 2007.

 3. Yes, we offer 10-game and 24-game mini-plans.  There are three different packages within the 10-game plan. Per game ticket prices within these plans are between the single-game price and season ticket discounted prices.
 
 4. The Carolina Hurricanes play all  home games at the RBC Center, 1400 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh.  The state-of-the-art RBC Center opened in 1999. It was funded as a joint venture between the State of North Carolina, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the Wolfpack Club at North Carolina State University.

 5. The RBC Center is located at 1400 Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh, NC. Maps and directions are available online and below: 

From Greensboro, Durham, Chapel Hill
I-40 East into Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue,  Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Fayetteville, Lumberton, South Carolina
I-95 North to I-40 West
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Goldsboro, Kinston
US 70 West to I-40 West
Exit I-440 Inner Beltline
Exit #4; left at top of ramp
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Rocky Mount
US 64 West to Raleigh
Exit I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilmington, Jacksonville
I-40 West to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilson, Greenville
US 264 West to 64 West to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Charlotte, Kannapolis, Salisbury
I-85 North to I-40 East to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Richmond, Petersburgh, Virginia Area
I-95 South to I-85 South to US 1 South to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

6. There are numerous message boards and blogs for fans to interact  and keep up with news from a fan perspective. The team’s official message border is “Caniac Corner“.

7. The team has a 25-man roster. This includes Cory Stillman and Frank Kaberle who are on injured reserve.

8. Up-to-date player statistics in numerous categories are maintained by the team, by the NHL, and by ESPN.

9. Season ticket holders receive numerous special benefits, including the option to buy extra single-game seats at a discount before public on-sale, the ability to buy multi-game parking passes, priority in sale of playoff tickets, a discount at the team store, and the ability to e-mail tickets to friends. The team has a special FAQ on this subject.

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I’m running a guerilla marketing campaign, using some of the tools suggested by the marketing component of this course. The assigned press release announced the campaign. I used the list of message boards and blogs in my original writing and posted voting information and links to my blog on all the message boards and blogs I found in the research for my original writing.  I next decided to embark on a viral marketing campaign. I went to Myspace and found two different Carolina Hurricanes groups with several hundred members each, and posted info on voting on the discussion thread for each group, and used my member’s privilege to send a bulletin to all the members of one of the groups. I used my unc facebook.com account and found a dozen Canes fan clubs there as well, varying from 50 to 500 members. I posted info on voting and a link to my blog on the wall on each of those groups. Yesterday, I wrote to the admins of each of those groups, asking them to message all of the members with the information.  One admin has already messaged her 250 members, I hope others will follow along when they return from Thanksgiving break.  I’ve also written to the Canes marketing department and talked stragegy with them.

 I’ve linked a graphic from the Canes website to the ballot itself:

 I’ll post a version here later this week that has links to my sources.

For More Information Contact:

Gerry F. Cohen

(919)247-xxxx

CanesAllStars@gmail.com

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAN BLOG

TO HELP COORDINATE NHL ALL-STAR GAME VOTING

Will help fans vote for Canes players Ward, Brind’Amour, Cole and Staal

in online balloting beginning November 15; hanging chads gone

Raleigh, NC, November 12 – A website that helps Carolina Hurricanes hockey fans to connect with each other on message board and blogs has announced plans to launch the “CanesAllStars” blog, devoted to Canes fan online balloting for the 2007 NHL All-Star game to be held January 24 in Dallas. The blog, http://canesallstars.wordpress.com will link the online ballot for Canes hockey fans, and have sections for fans to comment on the Canes nominees and encourage others to get involved. According to the National Hockey League, fan balloting begins November 15 and ends January 2, 2007.

The National Hockey League released the official 100-player ballot list on Friday, which includes Carolina Hurricanes forwards Rod Brind’Amour, Erik Cole, and Eric Staal, as well as goalie Cam Ward. For the first time, all fan voting will be online.  For Ward and Staal, this is their first time on the All-Star ballot. Brind’Amour played in the 1992 All-Star game while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Cole has been on the All-Star ballot.

Brind’Amour, captain of the 2006 Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, was acquired by the Hurricanes on January 23, 2000 in a trade with the Philadelphia Flyers. He has played 1,205 NHL games, tallying 388 goals and 616 assists for a total of 1,004 points, the 72nd player in NHL history to cross the 1,000 point threshold.  As of today, his 17 assists this season are 4th in the NHL, while his 23 points are 7th. Brina’Amour is a native of Ottawa, Canada.

Staal, a center for the Hurricanes, is a Thunder Bay, Ontario native. Staal was the Canes 1st round choice (2nd overall) in the 2003 NHL entry draft. He has tallied 151 points in 181 regular season games, and his 10 goals this season puts him 11th in the league.

Ward, the Canes starting goalie, received the 2006 Conn Smythe award as Most Valuable Player during 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs. He was the Canes 1st round choice in the 2002 entry draft. He is a native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Cole, who plays left wing, is an Oswego, New York native. He was the Canes third round choice in the 1998 NHL entry draft. He has 101 career assists and four hat tricks, the latest a three-goal effort against the Washington Capitols on November 9.

While rules for the contest have not yet been released, it is expected that fans will be able to vote once per day. The top vote getting goalie, three forwards, and two defensemen in each conference will be the starting lineup for the game to be held at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.  The past six years, in-arena punch paper ballots and ballot boxes supplemented the online voting, but this year the NHL has gotten rid of the paper ballots and hanging chads. Fan in-arena paper balloting began in 1985. 

The past several years, prizes including trips to NHL events and televisions sets have been awarded in a random drawing among voters. An announcement on prizes for the 2007 All-Star game voting is expected when rules are released on November 15.

Among tactics being considered by CaneAllStars is soliciting fans of other teams to vote for one or more of the Canes nominees. Fans can vote for both Eastern and Western Conference teams, so an alliance with fans from a Western Conference team could assist both teams.

The Canes All-Stars blog is registered to Gerry Cohen, a Carolina Hurricanes season ticket holder since 1999.  He received the team’s “7th Man award” in the 2002-2003 season. A Hartford, Connecticut native, Cohen was a team fan before the franchise relocated from Hartford in 1997.

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