The name
Eklund has been well-known to the online hockey fan community since the lockout, when the "anonymous hockey blogger" burst onto the scene with a site that became a clearinghouse of hot stove innuendo and power-circle whispers. Now the lead blogger and man-without-a-face for
HockeyBuzz.com, Eklund did something last month that he has not done since the early days of
his extremely popular blog: He inserted himself into a major story. Eklund took up the fight for Nashville Predators fans in their staggering battle against relocation;
flying in to attend a fan rally and
getting up in front of the crowd -- in disguise, naturally -- to offer words of encouragement. "I did it for a very specific reason, for the same reason I managed to get this thing going during the lockout," he told me in a phone interview on Monday. "I saw hockey being taken away from people who love it, and that's crossing the line. All the rumors in the world don't matter in comparison to those kids who go with their dad every Thursday night [to a game], and then it's gone."
This passionate show of partisan advocacy isn't something you'd expect to see from a professional hockey writer, and that's because Eklund isn't one. But he wants to be, according to
Kevin Allen, USA TODAY hockey writer and president of
the Professional Hockey Writers Association, who said Eklund has "made it clear he would like to be included" in the organization. The question is whether the PHWA is willing to overlook serious questions about his ethics, tactics and candor in accepting him; and whether Eklund is ready, for the first time in his blogging career, for a little transparency.
Because as Eklund's popularity and influence have grown -- with surging Web traffic, high-profile radio gigs and an on-air role during an NHL trade deadline television special -- so have serious charges about a fraudulent biography, his lack of journalistic ethics and some online behavior that historically has gotten professional reporters fired. During our hour-long conversation, the "anonymous hockey blogger" finally began to answer to them -- with some startling revelations.
