We have this from Jarome Iginla (paraphrased, occasionally, for flow; you can compare to the original to see if I'm full of it): Road games are easier, because everyone's focused. I don't know if I believe that, but also I don't care. This doesn't tell me anything I really want to know about the game. You won because you were concentrating? Ok.

Everybody knew the game was important, and that the Ducks had some momentum, and we tried to stop them. I'm glad we did. Yes, everyone did know that, and also that you were going to try to stop them. I also could have guessed you're glad you won.

[Huselius] ended up with a few points and they were big points. He really got us going out there, got the confidence going up and then every guy fed off it. I was able to glean how many points Huselius had, in fact. To the extent the infectious confidence bit is true, that was also observable.

Chuck Kobasew, who scored his first playoff goal in 29 games: The '04 playoffs was something totally different. We're three games into this playoff series and I knew I had to contribute. It turned out to be a great play [Chris Simon] made and it's nice to be in that spot and get that opportunity. Agree with me that the first two sentences are completely devoid of... anything. Now imagine Randy Sportak had written, in the Calgary Sun, "Chris Simon made a great play and it was nice that Kobasew was in the right place and had an opportunity to score." You'd think he was retarded, or that he was quoting sombody's LiveJournal.

Mikka Kiprusoff: We played much better than we did a couple of days ago. We still can go better but it's a good feeling and our game is going in the right direction. A combination of I Knew That and What Else Is He Supposed To Say?

Darren McCarty: It wasn't pretty but if somebody says, 'They look pretty out there,' that's a bad thing for us. That's a quote. Not because it's informational, just cool.

The point is by no means to make fun of the Flames' players. This is what you "learn" from most players. They don't say anything. They don't have anything to say. Sportak got 400-450 words out of a bunch of vapid, unnecessary quotes that have two virtues, and only two: They have names you've heard of after them, and they're English words that take up column inches when you put them together. Read his piece without any quotes. It goes like this:

The road warriors are back.

Forget that disappointing regular-season road record. The Calgary Flames were a formidable force last night at Arrowhead Pond, where they thumped the Anaheim Mighty Ducks 5-2 in their quarter-final series.

Calgary holds a 2-1 series lead with Game 4 tomorrow night in Anaheim (8 p.m., CBC).

Calgary's powerplay unit finally came to life, as Daymond Langkow, Kristian Huselius and Robyn Regher all scored with the man-advantage.

Chuck Kobasew and Darren McCarty were Calgary's other scorers.

Hard work was evident on Kobasew's tally, the first playoff goal in his 29 post-season games.

After Chris Simon gained the puck and drove to the end boards, Kobasew sped to the net, took the feed and beat Jean-Sebastien Giguere with a perfect shot.

Francois Beauchemin scored both Anaheim goals, both on the powerplay.

Calgary's overall team performance was much improved. All those little battles the Flames were losing in the games at home went the other way, with Calgary's forecheck and physical play setting the tone for the whole game.

Goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff stopped 27 shots.

Now read Matt Fenwick's take on the game at Battle of Alberta. It's unremarkable; I didn't pick the best example of amateur analysis I have ever seen. But it tells me 100 times more about a game I didn't see than Sportak plus all the players into whose faces he stuck a microcassette recorder.

If you're as rabid about politics or the courts as many sports bloggers and sports blog readers are about sports, you're an idiot if you only get your news and analysis from blogs. Bloggers often aren't watching the proceedings -- they're watching Randy Sportak report about the proceedings. They may have an opinion Randy doesn't have, but you probably already share that opinion, and that's why you're reading the blog in the first place. This (moving even beyond politics to crime, community news, etc.) is also among the reasons "participatory journalism" isn't going to replace newspapers anytime soon.

But sports bloggers, they can replace 85 percent of sports reporters. They watch the games, maybe more closely. They may be bigger fans, and know more about what they're covering. Your political blogger does not know more about how Congressional committees work than the Washington Post beat reporter who covers them. Unless he's Tom Goldstein, your law blogger does not know more about how the Supreme Court works than Linda Greenhouse or Dahlia Lithwick. This is probably not true of sports bloggers vis a vis sports beat writers.

The big difference? No original quotes from players. So? it's the rare and precious player who has anything to say in the first place. Again, not to fault the players. But it's true. To prove I'm not picking on the Flames, here are some other quotes from players involved in last night's games. I'm not going to tell you who they are (I will link) because it doesn't matter.

We knew when we looked back on the first two games of this series, we hadn't played well. We knew we had to make a better effort. We had some chances, we shot the puck more and we were able to put the puck in the net. I really thought we were able to play a complete game. That's all you want. Link

To be honest with you, we win the game and for me right now that's the most important thing. Even if I don't score and somebody different on the team scored that goal, I'd be as happy as I am right now. Link

We didn't play well enough to win. They came out, battled hard and got what they deserved. We didn’t play the way we needed to. There's no time to worry about what happened. All there is is time to get some rest and focus on being better in two days. Link

You see unsung heroes score a lot of big goals in the playoffs, and it's the teams that get those goals that will win. A lot of times the top lines saw each other off and you need other guys to step up. Luckily we've got more depth than we've had in a lot of years. Link

Yeah, well you, Mr. Cranky, are a Sabres fan and probably think Sabres players crap pure milk chocolate. Oh yeah? Like this from Paul Gaustad?

We're not going to get too high about those last two wins or too low about the bad things. We're just trying to keep an even keel. We're not really thinking about last game at all. We're just focusing on the next game. I've heard this before, I think it was from Kevin Costner.

The point is that there's better quality analysis -- and even better quality reporting -- about the NHL playoffs going on in blogs than in newspapers because sports reporters have no real advantage over sports bloggers, unlike political, legal, or other reporters. Of course even if there is no appreciable resource advantage, the reporter didn't get the job by writing crap. So why might sports bloggers be doing a better job?

Your typical beat writer isn't immediately accountable for the number of readers he (or she, yada yada) has. He doesn't normally subject himself to immediate feedback from readers. His job is to fill column inches, not, technically, to write engaging, insightful copy. The job security of a sports beat reporter is, as Eric tangentially mentions, tied to the job security of a sports beat reporter -- that is, the longer you do it, the more likely you are to be able to keep doing it, regardless of performance. There are probably more and better reasons I'm not thinking of.

Whatever the reason, show me someone who would not rather read Colby Cosh's roundup of an Oilers game than an AP stringer's or Edmonton Times-Picayune reporter's.