Season 4, Episode 5 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; If You Hate Goals. This week, Tim Braun, Rob Gilreath and Matt Cavender were joined by CCHA Director of Strategic Communications and Brand Advancement Perry Laskaris. Dustin Lindstrom joined the group after Perry left. In this episode they discussed Perry’s path to his position within the CCHA, Perry’s roles and responsibilities, reviewed Techs series last weekend against Alaska Fairbanks, previewed the upcoming series against Bemidji State and briefly discussed Matt’s article on David Johnstone.
The path to get here
Tim had a chuckle and asked Perry how a guy who went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) ended up working in the CCHA front office. Perry talked about needing to try something else with his career after spending 14 years working at RPI. He also revealed that he is a St. Paul, Minn. native, which allowed he and Tim to bond for a minute. Perry talked about his work at RPI which was largely being a radio play by play commentator but also included doing communications for the athletic department. Perry also talked about having to catch up a little on Midwest hockey due to being out east for so long.
CCHA work
Perry talked about some of the things he’s doing currently with the CCHA, which includes The CCHA Show podcast. Currently the podcast is interview based with players and coaches but Perry talked about wanting to add an analysis angle in the future. Rob asked if there was any big projects that Perry was working on. Perry said he didn’t have any particular initiatives at this time due to joining the front office so late in the process of the season. He mentioned that he talked with his predecessor, Dominic Hennig, a lot and can see the production value increases that Dom worked on during his time. Rob noted that he noticed a definite increase in the quality of Tech’s broadcast compared to last year. The guys then discussed the terrible camera work from last weekend’s Alaska series.
Matt took the opportunity to ask Perry about the growing pains of moving from working with an individual school to working with an entire league. Perry talked about loving working with the coaches and players directly at his old position, and how he won’t be doing that as much in his new role. Perry also discussed the largely remote nature of work he does, which makes it hard for him to actually go to games and produce the media content he needs to in a timely manner.
Gotcha!
Tim pointed out the discovery that Perry is using the highest rankings for each CCHA team for the league graphics, even though that means using the rankings of multiple different polls. Perry talked about getting yelled at by someone on Twitter about it, but was definitive in his statement that he will keep doing it. The guys then joked about polls being made up anyway and that Perry might as well make the CCHA look good.
The Plugs
Before Perry left the show, he plugged a few things within the CCHA he’s working on. He said that he’s trying to do more with the league website as well as working on the previously mentioned CCHA podcast. He also talked about the highlights that he puts out on the CCHA YouTube channel for each game.
Alaska series review
Tim started off the weekend review by discussing the offsides call which overturned one of Tech’s goals. He hoped that the refs had a better angle than the rest of us viewers. The guys then discussed their thoughts on how replay could be improved and referenced an article written by Chris Dilks which discussed the offsides call on Tech.
Overall, Matt thought that it was dominant showing from Tech and was the type of weekend he was hoping for. He added that it was good to see Tech put their foot down and not back off. Tim agreed it was nice to see them show up, but added that he thinks this season will still be of the “Jekyll/Hyde” nature on a weekly basis for Tech. The guys talked about Michigan Tech goaltender Blake Pietila breaking the school record for career shut-outs, as well as the high number of different scorers on the weekend. There was also discussion about the power play and all of the guys expressed concern at Tech’s lack of efficiency with the man advantage.
Bemidji State series preview
The guys briefly previewed the upcoming weekend series against the Bemidji State Beavers. Matt thought that Bemidji is similar to Tech and looking to replace a lot of scoring. He thought that Tech would see a lot of Bemidji throughout the year. Rob agreed with this and pointed out that Bemidji is still strong on the defensive side of the puck. Tim didn’t know what to think since Bemidji has only played one series so far this year. Tim also wondered what Tech team will show up. Dustin hoped that Tech’s scoring production would be there.
To wrap up the show, the guys spent a couple minutes talking about Matt’s recent article on David Johnstone. The discussion was short in this episode as they plan to discuss it more in depth in the coming weeks.
Cut for time
This week’s cut time for Patrons is approximately 23 minutes long. Perry talked about which eastern schools fans of western hockey should be paying attention to. The guys discussed the differenced between 1080p and 1080i video and there was extended discussion on the video upgrades made at the CCHA arenas. There was a discussion on Tech and Northern rebranding a few years back. Tim got angry that he can’t buy his favorite stickers anymore. There was a discussion on the “no-goal” that happened in Minnesota State this past weekend. The guys discussed their thoughts on how long offsides reviews should take and if they could put a chip in the puck to track offsides. There was extended discussion on the poor camera work during the Alaska series including how it might affect InStat data. Tim tried a gourmet root beer. Tim talked about an analytic that he and Brandon Maurisak wanted to create.
Learn More
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