EP 104 A career of reporting on Alaska hockey with Doyle Woody

In this episode, Cody talks to long-time Alaska sports journalist Doyle Woody. Doyle got his start at the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) in 1983 covering high school sports. From there, he moved on to covering college basketball for a short period of time before he began covering hockey. And that’s where he stayed for the rest of his journalism career.

 

For 34 years, Doyle reported on and built relationships within Alaska’s hockey community. He says that back in his early days at ADN, they were generous with travel expenses. So, he would travel with the University of Alaska Anchorage Seawolf hockey team out of state about eight times a year. Those trips were part of what Doyle calls “old-timey hockey,” a time when it was played rough rather than technical. He says that he appreciates how the game has changed in the last few decades, though. How it’s less about fighting and violence and more about speed and skill.

 

Doyle says that there’s a difference in playing the game of hockey and understanding it. To play hockey is to go through the motions, understanding it is more intuitive. It means having a low panic point and knowing how to buy time. These qualities are what distinguish good players from great players. As far as Alaska hockey players go, Scott Gomez and Dean Larson come to mind. Both were intuitive players who knew how to buy time and space in order to make plays.

 

PHOTO / Marc Lester

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