Gary Smith piece on the Lamoureux hockey family

Can't disagree with most of what's been posted, but I'll say this: An average Gary Smith read (and this may have been one) is still better than 99 percent of what's out there, and better than anything else in SI this week.

 

Good stuff UM clears up a few of my questions. thank you.

 

It was, and that's saying something because it was a great issue. As someone said earlier, the Ohlendorf and Harvard basketball piece were both great.

 

I didn't read it, or continue to read it, because it was by Gary Smith. I read it because it was about hockey.

I don't read stuff because it's by a certain writer. I understand Smith is a favourite of many, and a sacred cow to some, but his byline is irrelevant to me.

You make a good point, though - a lead like that is not likely to be an enticement to someone who is normally not inclined to read a hockey story. I wonder if Smith has a "no-edit" clause, meaning there's no opportunity to say, "um, Gary, about your lead.......yeah, it just ain't working for us."

 

SI jinx strikes again. DU sweeps UND in Grand Forks, and Cornell destroys Harvard.

 

Don't tell Pete Thamel you liked that Harvard story. Didn't anyone see the arguments he was having (starting) with the story's author Pablo Torre on Twitter? Thamel was upset Torre glossed over Amaker's questionable recruiting tactics, coming from a story he broke.

 

The ditch framing threw me off as well...the rest was a fantastic read...finally got to it Friday night.

 

if i got this wrong, sorry: but was the dad the one who dug the ditch and filled it? or some guy who had nothing to do with the story otherwise?

 

Can there be a Gary Smith story that doesn't come off like a big Hollywood production?
This story is so freighted down by a lot of cheesy melodrama it can barely breathe.

 

Just some dude who lived nearby was my reading.

 

Bingo!! Absolutely unreadable.

Examples of barfy-ness:

"Let's get this straight: Both you and your spouse are going to need the right double helixes to have even a prayer of hatching your ubertribe. Not that Pierre Lamoureux went trolling for blue-ribbon eggs ...."

"I cleared away the stones and withered sorrow..."

An entire page that begins with the ice age -- begins with the ice age (!?) -- only to set up the fact that the six kids played hockey on a frozen coulee across the street, bundled up because it was cold, and became passionate about the sport.

Whatever.

 

I'm trying to remember, what was his last Smith-worthy masterpiece? Is he starting to lose his fastball?