A Spiraling Mess of Miscommunication

An Open Letter to Jason:

Okay. I'll admit it. I lashed out. The point of this comment is to mend the fences, because it's pretty foolish of me to be angry at you.

I wrote my follow-up because I felt you were attacking me. I felt you were saying I was wrong to be angry at the players. (I'm still angry at them, and that's not likely to change). I felt the Poile thing you mentioned was specifically designed to make me look silly and uninformed. The "do you even know" comment was what sent me over the edge, because that's traditionally not something I've heard people say in discussion...only in condescending attack. But I can tell by your second comment that this was not your intention.

I do hope, though, that you can see my perspective, and see where your wording at times seemed to me to be confrontational. That's the only reason I lashed out, because I felt I was "lashing back" and that you had fired the first shot. I can see now that you didn't think you had, which means you probably didn't mean to--but I think you can re-read your post and see how words like "bogus" and "partisanship" and "swallow someone's propaganda" would make a guy feel attacked.

So, I'm here to apologize for my lashing. Surely wouldn't have done it if I hadn't felt lashed at. I even told a fellow L & N Liner by phone last night that "if Jason hadn't felt the need to belittle me, we could have had a cool debate about this." So I am sorry. You obviously weren't trying to belittle me and I'll take the blame for reading into it. I would like to think we can both be bigger than our initial exchange, and perhaps even hold an intelligent discussion on hockey. What I�d really like is an honest and open and accepting swap of thoughts and ideas regarding hockey. I certainly don�t want you holding my rant against the rest of my blogger buddies� as they don�t have any more control over my tongue than they do over yours. Please reconsider abandoning your reading of our site.

It�s clear we don�t agree on blame for the lockout. There's probably a lot we wouldn't agree on. But surely we agree on how much the lockout sucks for us fans. Surely we agree on how badly we want both sides to fix the problem. I know we agree on how awful the timing of this thing is in the life of our franchise. Surely we agree on how awesome the Preds are and could have been this year.

I hope the tone of this comment shows you that angry is not my normal mode. I�m angry and the players, the owners, and also this guy named Pete, who stole my toy truck in elementary school. But not at you. I�m a passionate Preds/hockey fan and probably read your comments in the wrong light. I really only attacked and got angry because I assumed that�s the sort of exchange we were having. I am an informed, intelligent hockey fan and felt like you were suggesting I was quite the opposite. Hearing you say that this was not your intention is good enough for me.

That�s the fundamental problem with the written word: that only half the story gets told. We don�t get to see facial expressions or hear vocal inflections. We don�t get to see non-verbal communication. We only read. So we read into things.

I�d like to bury our hatchet. I don�t even know you, so why carry anger at you, right? Too many things in the world to have real anger at to let this thing go any further. Too few Preds fans web-savvy and passionate enough to blog about them. I hope you�ll accept my apology and give me another chance to be Non-Angry Guy. Let me know what you think, okay?