I'm a little in the weeds here. Nah, I'm not talking "Hey why don't you shit talk management for a bit here's the mic." I just mean like, questions that aren't the reporters' job to answer themselves. They lost the first game by one and the second game by a lot. He's a pissy unhappy prick, he always has his tiffs in response to those obvious ones. If your angle is "tale of two games" comparing the last one, ask specific questions that help deepen that angle or provide additional context--don't ask the pissy professor if he thinks the topic itself is a good idea for an article. Just write your f***in' thing, have some confidence.
I say this as a person who frequently interviewed people underprepared and paid for it with empty jargon and useless quotes as a result. You know the team and the guy you're asking questions of, he'll at least give you something if you set him up with "how do you work to avoid slow starts?" or what the implications are of the goalie change given that they have three on the trip or whatever. The whole "hey, so uh, tell me what I just saw" press conference approach with this prick is so lazy. Now the angle for all of their stories just gets to be "Hockey Man Was Mad" instead of any of them ever having to write an original observation about a game of hockey.
