Inside the Press Box: John Manasso

Storming the Crease is conducting a series of interviews with people who cover (or work for) the Caps and the NHL. You can find a link to the series archives on the right sidebar. Today's 29th installment: book author, former Atlanta Thrashers beat writer and current NHL.com writer John Manasso.

1. Please describe your transition from serving as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Thrashers writer to your current role writing for NHL.com (and any other of your ongoing projects).

I left the Journal-Constitution in June 2007 and went to work for a local business publication, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, where my beats included sports business. While covering the Thrashers, I always enjoyed the business aspect of the beat. One of my favorite stories that I wrote ran a few months before the 2004 lockout began and it was about Ilya Kovalchuk's rookie contract. At the time, entry-level contracts were becoming a big issue for the league. Kovalchuk's salary over his first three years was scantly more than $3 million, but he earned an additional $5 million in performance bonuses.

At the Business Chronicle, I got to write some stories for Street and Smith's Sports Journal and for Sporting News -- the parent company American City Business Journals owns all of them. Some of those included hockey stories. Before the NHL All-Star Game came to Atlanta in 2008, I interviewed then-NHLPA Executive Director Paul Kelly while he was briefly in town and discussed the predicament of some nontraditional markets like Atlanta. He said he believed in Atlanta because of the size of the television market (roughly eighth or ninth in the U.S.) but he asked rhetorically, "Do we need two teams in Florida? Maybe not."

A casualty of the recession, I was let go by the Business Chronicle in April. I have been freelancing since, mostly writing on a contract basis for the Web site of the Atlanta Falcons but also for NHL.com.

2. If it's possible to put it into words, what was it like chronicling the Dan Snyder tragedy for the book you wrote on the subject?

Writing "A Season of Loss," my book about the Thrashers' 2003-04 season after center Dan Snyder died and how his family dealt with his death, gave me the greatest sense of professional accomplishment that I've ever had.

People always asked me how "hard" it must have been to deal with the subject matter. I always responded that "hard" was what the Snyders lived through. One of my most poignant memories of doing research for the book was sitting in the Snyders' living room in Elmira, Ontario, and watching a video tape of the funeral eulogies with Dan's parents, Graham and LuAnn. It was only a little more than a year after Dan had died and the memories were still fresh for his parents. There were plenty of tears in what was a difficult experience for them.

When I had completed the first draft of the manuscript, I sent them the draft after I had sent it to the publisher. I started to get anxious after almost a week passed and I had not heard from them. Later, they told me they had to go slow since it was hard for them to re-live it. Graham said he learned things from it that he had not know since he had returned to Canada when Dan took a turn for the worse and died unexpectedly from an infection back in Atlanta. To their credit -- and as was our original agreement -- they did not ask me to remove any passages, but rather clarified and even amplified some parts, including how they began impromptu prayers for Dan as he began flat-lining in the ICU on the day he died.

In 2005-06, the Snyders made a tour of all 30 NHL cities to meet with players and speak to groups about the importance of family, community and forgiveness. (They famously forgave Dany Heatley for his role in the car crash that led to their son's death and helped Heatley successfully fight vehicular homicide charges brought by the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney.) They brought copies of the book with them that were supplied by the publisher to sell, which to me was the strongest endorsement of my work.

3. Do you think the Thrashers will be able to keep Ilya Kovalchuk under contract beyond this season? And, if not, where do you think he'll end up?

That one's almost too hard to predict. I can say that Ilya does like Atlanta and that the situation is much different from when Marian Hossa refused to re-sign in 2008 and forced the team to trade him. I can say this with conviction: Knowing the owners of the Atlanta Spirit group as I do, I doubt that money will be the deciding factor. I think it all comes down to whether Kovalchuk is convinced that he can win here and have the kind of team around him that Alexander Ovechkin does in Washington.

So far, the team has made moves to keep him happy -- like taking his input in signing his friend Nik Antropov -- and he has said he thinks this is the best team in franchise history. Beyond that, who knows. But I can say this: failure to re-sign him would be catastrophic for the organization.

4. What are some of your favorite hockey-related memories?

I almost have too many to list. I grew up a New York Rangers' fan while living in Massachusetts (I was born in Brooklyn and my parents did not move out of the city limits until they were past 30). Watching Game 7 of the 1994 Eastern Conference finals at my friend Kyle Vogel's apartment on MacArthur Boulevard in Washington, D.C., a few weeks after graduating from American University is right up there. So, then, was celebrating the Rangers' Stanley Cup victory a few weeks later.

I'd also say that attending my first game at Madison Square Garden as a 10th grader in 1987 and sitting in the fabled Blue Seats is up there. So was taking the T by myself to catch Boston Bruins' Saturday afternoon games while in high school at the old Boston Garden.

My first game at the Bell Centre in 2002 was pretty memorable -- I still think of it every time I hear U2's "Beautiful Day" which played during the pregame ceremonies. Finally, traveling to Russia to write about Kovalchuk and Slava Kozlov during the lockout in '04 and to Rimouski, Quebec, to write about Sidney Crosby as a junior in April '05 are up there.

5. What occupies your time when you're not working?

I have two kids, a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter who keep my wife and I pretty busy. Saturdays can be spent shuttling to soccer games and gymnastics. I also like to cook. When I have time -- which isn't often -- I have been known to make my own pasta and sausage.