“Life is much more successfully looked at through a single window.”

In the world of sports media and coverage, there are more windows than consumers can look through.

In an analogy that can be applied to the direction of sports media in general, the widening Valley of Ashes between the powers that have always been versus the powers that could be in Minnesota high school hockey gently follow the plot of native son F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal work. 

In this scenario, however, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press represent East Egg, while the various outlets who cover the sport in more provincial capacities occupy the role of West Egg. 

But don’t expect a digital turf war anytime soon. Both the girls and boys hockey hub websites are under the banner of the Star-Tribune and provide regular online coverage. The newspaper’s relative lack of consistent print attention is by design, according to longtime high school sports reporter David La Vaque. 

“Going on five years (ago) we decided we weren’t going to have a weekly game presence when it comes to hockey,” La Vaque said over hot chocolate, adding that football is the only sport that receives weekly coverage directly from the Star-Tribune. 

The move allows the metro’s largest daily to balance its prep coverage when the hockey season ends in March, revamping its coverage teams for the oncoming state tournaments. 

“When hockey is done, I’m not done,” La Vaque said, explaining that he moves on to girls and boys basketball and the half-dozen spring sports on both boys and girls sides. “(The Star-Tribune) serve(s) different purposes in the overall coverage scheme.”  

Karl Schuettler, Duluth East alumnus and preeminent resident of high school hockey media’s West Egg, has been covering the sport via a blog and social media since 2009. 

“I was fresh out of high school, and still trying to stay in touch with hockey,” Schuettler said. It began organically, and as one thing led to another it became a side-career of sorts.”

An unabashed Hounds fan, Schuettler’s foray into coverage began with the primary jumping off point for barroom debates and internet comment sections - rankings. But Schuettler took his hierarchy of teams, published weekly, to another level. 

“Instead of just listing team number one, team number two, team number three, I’d actually go through and explain why I did what I did,” Schuettler said. 

Through the years, Schuettler’s scope has widened to include a podcast along with his blog and his moderation of a popular message forum populated with high school hockey observers, and until the 2017 MSHSL State Tournament, was a regular face in the Xcel Energy Center’s press box.

In addition to his own ventures, Schuettler has covered games (including the last two Class A, Section 7 title contests) for the Minnesota Hockey Hub, a branch of the Star-Tribune’s high school hockey presence.

With Schuettler’s insight and knowledge permeating several coverage spheres, he is sympathetic to the cutbacks and belt-tightening of newspapers. 

“Somewhat,” Schuettler responded when asked if traditional media has not kept pace with growing demand. 

“(But) I think that’s a lot of the decisions being made by the higher-ups,” Schuettler continued. “They’re trying to do all they can, but they don’t have the resources that they used to.”

La Vaque has felt the squeeze of that lack of resources on the coverage front. 

“A little bit I do feel like I’m paying a little catch-up,” La Vaque said. “I know when Riley Tufte was our Player of the Year, I never saw him play,” La Vaque continued. “After that happened, I said okay, that can’t happen again.”

Tufte’s unexamined yet albeit deserved selection aside, La Vaque is adamant that the Star-Tribune’s coverage does not suffer as it prepares its state tournament preview each March. 

“It’s not that hard to get caught up for the purposes of what we’re doing,” La Vaque said. “You pick up enough anecdotes and enough insight to put together the preview that you do and to weave into state tournament coverage as it plays itself out.”

As a testament to the fluidity of tournament coverage, La Vaque published a story on eventual state runner-up Duluth East’s issues with cell phone usage on the team bus before the Class AA tournament started, the type of story that can only come from a plugged-in source. 

“It was an insider-type story that I was able to get later in the process,” La Vaque explained.

“We can cram for the final, as it were, and still be relevant and still get the storylines out that are relevant to the tournament,” La Vaque said. 

Schuettler, whose own 2018 state tournament preview clocked in at nearly 4,000 words, says that area-based reporting may be the future of high school hockey coverage. 

“There has to be more (coverage) on the local level, (done) passionately,” Schuettler said, adding that his focus on Duluth East hockey has not clouded his vision when writing about games. 

“In my writing, I’ll say something good and bad about both teams,” Schuettler said. “I’ve been critical of East every time I’ve watched them.”

While La Vaque and Schuettler represent two contrasting media styles, the primary goal of the mediums remains to be clear, concise, and thoughtful coverage. 

“Everyone is contributing to this choir,” La Vaque said. “And the people who want to grab as much as they can of (hockey) have a lot of good places to go an get that material."