Inside the Blogosphere: Ravings of a Rink Rebel

As a follow-up to the popular Inside the Press Box series, STC is asking (mostly) local bloggers about why they do what they do. Today's eighth installment: Erika Schnure of Ravings of a Rink Rebel and The Fourth Period.

I didn’t always like hockey. In fact, when I was a young competitive figure skater, I hated the mite hockey players that used our rink. But in February 2008, all of my preconceptions changed. I attended my first NHL game, and I’m incredibly lucky that it was a Capitals game.

I knew the rules of hockey, having had a three-season stint on my high school girls' hockey team, but had a lot to learn about the team and the league itself. I became a sponge, finding all the information I could get, starting with Capitals Insider, and soon moving to other Caps blogs once I joined Twitter.

Twitter was the impetus to start my blog -- I realized that I had something to say about hockey. My first entry was written shortly after meeting Tomas Fleischmann at a Q&A session at DC's ESPN Zone in January. I wanted to report on the event for the people who didn't attend, and discuss some of the questions he answered. At the end of February, I attended my first Hershey Bears game.

I knew most of the guys on the team, but there were a few who had never been called up about whom I had little information. After Dmitry Kugryshev signed his entry-level contract, my "Focus on Prospects" feature began. And I found out that I had a knack for this sportswriting thing. Not only that, but I actually really liked doing it.

To me, it's important to learn about the organization's prospects. They're the future of the team, and it's helpful to know their strengths and weaknesses ahead of time, and it's exciting to see them develop and improve. The posts involve a lot of research and compiling several sources into one place, so that my readers can follow a player's entire career instead of just one snippet of information. I always find out something new when I do my research -- for instance, in a rookie camp post, as I was researching Dylan Yeo, I discovered that he sang the National Anthem before one of his own Calgary Hitmen games.

In July, The Fourth Period came to me and asked me to be the Capitals correspondent for their Web site. I joined the team and I'm looking forward to the new challenge.

So why do I blog about hockey? Because I love this sport. And I love this team. Every time Ovechkin scores a goal or Backstrom makes a perfect pass or Green lays a huge hit, I still feel that thrill I felt when I first saw the team in action. When I feel as strongly as I do about this team, I'm the kind of person who just wants to write about it.