New Year, Same Shank

Shank's first column of 2010 is 'interesting', which is to say it contains are good elements and bad elements.

The good: it's a decent recap of the last twenty - four hours leading up to the annual NHL Winter Classic.

The bad: the article is peppered with the following items.

Lame metaphors / cliches:

Ice on Fenway. Fenway on ice.

If you freeze it, they will come.

Overstatements and inane / inaccurate comparisons:

The Classic has taken over as the NHL’s Super Bowl. It’s where Sidney Crosby meets Bing Crosby.

The Bruins are playing the Pittsburgh Penguins? Who knew?

Semi-cheap shot to J.D. Drew:

Shawn Thornton was issued David Ortiz’s locker, which makes some sense, but how do you figure Zdeno Chara dressing in a front of a stall that belongs to J.D. Drew? Think the big fella knows about J.D.’s reputation?

Barely concealed hostility towards Red Sox ownership (like that's a news flash):

Ticket-holders who forked over hundreds of dollars may need to enter Fenway with reduced expectations. Those nifty Sox box seats occupied by Dennis Drinkwater and Jeremy Kapstein - the ones in the front row behind the backstop? Those are not going to be good seats today. You’re much better off in the upper grandstand in left field. Today, Section 31 is better than Henrytown.

Poorly worded factual statement:

Skaters know there’s a purity about the outdoor game. No Zamboni fumes.

Shank appears to be saying that because the game's outdoors, there will be no fumes from the Zamboni machine that can be noticed by the fans. Which is true, because of the drivetrain configuration of the Zamboni ice resurfacer:

Drive Train:
Four-wheel drive. Rugged Spicer axles have high capacities. Full floating rear axle. General Electric 17.5 HP electric motor provides superior on-ice power even at low speeds.

Electric motors emit fumes? Who knew?

Additionally, Zamboni has been making electric powered ice resurfacers for fifty years. Perhaps our resident Globeophile can expand on the multi - layered fact checking and editorial process that allows mistakes like this to get published. Is there, in fact, any review of Shank's columns before they're published? Maybe I'm nitpicking about this error, but this item took about one minute to check out. Was the deadline going to be missed or something?

This doesn't qualify as one of Shank's better efforts, but then again, do we ever expect more from the Boring Broadsheet's 'ace' sports columnist?

UPDATE at 1/1/2010, 12:45 PM: It doesn't appear that the Globe's in the habit of correcting Shank with any great frequency.