Research sources for ATD bios and discussion

[VanIslander]

It would be nice to have a thread dedicated to listing sources of information, especially links! among other sources offline. For instance, there was a link about Czechoslovakian Golden stick winners and finalists that was posted in a discussion thread and would get lost, but is too valuable to lose in the flux.

Post here links and other sources of information.

Click to read more...

 

[VanIslander]

And of course discussion of the VALUE of certain sources over others is relevant too. Sturm had some good points to make in this regard elsewhere.

... a culture of bad research methods in the ATD... hilarious credulity when dealing with historical documents and on the embarassing list of materials.. call[ed] sources.

Sturm also wonders about the difference between being a historian and fanboy.

I am a fanboy. But... but... at least I don't pretend to be a historian! I use whatever sources are available. I have been living in a foreign country that hates hockey for nearly a decade (South Korea) and have had no access to a public library. If I could, I would be signing out history books right and left and citing them in bios galore. Instead, I have had to settle with using online sources. This means some online copies of historical books (good) and newspapers (sometimes good), and organizational sites like HHOF Legends (not so good) and blogs (outright bad, from a historian's perspective, as a source of information, like organized gossip). I have contributed greatly to the culture you describe I think. Seventieslord did sell me a couple dozen history books a few months ago (I paid him $500 to ship a box full I'd picked out from his vast collection). I have cited some books occasionally, but haven't done as much as wanted to yet, this coming year being the plan.

Blogs are better than nothing imo, and there are some decent ones out there by history buffs.

Chidlovski's Soviet hockey http://www.chidlovski.com/personal/1954/

Pelletier's Greatest Hockey Legends http://www.greatesthockeylegends.com/

Others?

 

[Hedberg]

Blogs are better than nothing imo, and there are some decent ones out there by history buffs.

A blog is as good of a secondary source as a book without references (I doubt most hockey history books had an extensive fact-checking process).

 

[Nalyd Psycho]

I think we have to concede that we cannot get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but we have to try as hard as we can to get the full picture.

 

[BraveCanadian]

A blog is as good of a secondary source as a book without references (I doubt most hockey history books had an extensive fact-checking process).

Obviously the book and the blog are only as good as the source of their information.

I don't think either one is inherently better than the other.

The biggest problem for both is that often you don't have any indication where they got their information.

 

[jkrx]

Obviously the book and the blog are only as good as the source of their information.

I don't think either one is inherently better than the other.

The biggest problem for both is that often you don't have any indication where they got their information.

Books are usually worse as "books" are "right" in the minds of many readers. Many doesn't have the same critical eye for books as they do for blogs.

 

[VanIslander]

Books are usually worse as "books" are "right" in the minds of many readers. Many doesn't have the same critical eye for books as they do for blogs.

Books are legitimate sources of hockey history, though a historian like any academic has criticism for the literature in the field. Some books have extensive interviews cited and stats and endnotes. Others don't.

 

[Nalyd Psycho]

Books are legitimate sources of hockey history, though a historian like any academic has criticism for the literature in the field. Some books have extensive interviews cited and stats and endnotes. Others don't.

Exactly, a book is as good as the book is. But. What jkrx is saying is that it can be difficult to differentiate between a good book and a bad book when it is cited and books are often treated as always being good, so bad books are very insidious.

 

[BM67]

http://www.hockeydraftcentral.com/index.htm - good info on injuries, switching positions, team awards and other stuff. Only has bios up to pick 19 of the 85 draft

Wings Of Legend - one bio for each year from 26-27 to 00-01

http://rangers.nhl.com/ - under tradition: some good bios in their all-time roster, some players have multiple bio entries linked at the bottom of their main bio, a team award history, and now a 85th anniversary heritage site

Some teams had some good stuff that got hidden when the NHL took control of all the team websites a few years ago.

 

[nik jr]

imo, a description from the time when a player is active is much better than a description from years later.

 

[Sturminator]

A few things I've noticed while doing research of players from bygone eras:

1) Most of the best descriptions of a player's playing style, strong and weak points come from the first few years of his peak, when the information is still "news". This is true of modern players, as well. Nobody spilled a lot of ink describing Gretzky's still amazing post-Edmonton play because everyone knew by that point what a great player he was.

2) Playoff games tend to yield better, more granular descriptions of player performance than do regular season game reports, which almost always gloss over the game action and list only the scorers. If you're going through old periodicals looking for information beyond mere scoring stats, start with the playoffs before you go to the regular season. Searching in the appropriate date ranges (generally March and April for prewar guys) can save you a lot of time.

3) Don't include words like "hockey" or "playoffs" or Stanley Cup" in Google archives searches, as they will filter out articles where these words are not mentioned or not correctly read by the scanner. Search for the full name (or common nickname - like Ching Johnson) is generally your best bet. Only use the "hockey" tag if your player has a common name and you want to avoid non-hockey related articles, but be aware that you will miss some hockey-related stuff, as well.

 

[hfboardsuser]

Search for the full name (or common nickname - like Ching Johnson) is generally your best bet. Only use the "hockey" tag if your player has a common name and you want to avoid non-hockey related articles, but be aware that you will miss some hockey-related stuff, as well.

Depends on the era. In the early 1900s, players were rarely referred to with their full name- typically only a surname, and position. It takes a bit more time to dig through them all, but by using just the surname and city/team name, I managed to exponentially increase the results for guys like Hobey Baker and Pud Glass.

Your point about early-career is valid, although I've found some pretty thorough game descriptions from regular season contests. ie the Montreal Gazette; they're some four or five columns and a sports editor would never do that today. The G&M is of course gold for Leafs players and games against the Leafs.

 

[overpass]

You can also find things that don't get picked up by the search by browsing papers. Look for important dates like playoff games in March and April.

Regular season NHA games were held on Wednesday and Saturday from January to March, so you can check the Thursday and Sunday or Monday sports pages for game reports.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I listened to nine 70s-habs games for the past 3 days , and i'm still listening some , have 4 or 5 left to watch.

Couple of things:

Lafleur played the point on the PP

Robinson was sometimes capable of playing in front of the net on the PP

Bowman occasionnaly played the big 3 on the ice at the same time ( the 3 of them )

Savard's transition game is underrated.

 

[Leafs Forever]

Maybe this seems stupid considering the source seems pretty blatant, but I am finding Google Books to be a very good source thus far, and I haven't seen it mentioned a lot around here. (Though maybe that's where a lot of people get their book sources from) At any rate, it's a quality "cheat" of sorts if you don't have a big hockey book collection, and I am finding I usually get quite a few good hits for books with whatever player of mine I type in.

 

[EagleBelfour]

Maybe this seems stupid considering the source seems pretty blatant, but I am finding Google Books to be a very good source thus far, and I haven't seen it mentioned a lot around here. (Though maybe that's where a lot of people get their book sources from) At any rate, it's a quality "cheat" of sorts if you don't have a big hockey book collection, and I am finding I usually get quite a few good hits for books with whatever player of mine I type in.

I use it all the time. However, it can't be quite frustrating some time, as not all the books are 'open' to read, and you can only read a few lines. So you're searching for an obscure player, and you can read: ''obscure player X was an incredible .... and you can't read the rest. FUUU!