All across the United States and Canada, Feb. 17 was Hockey Day in America. NBC had nationally televised games all day and 14 of the league's 30 teams were playing. With no real profiles on the Detroit Free Press' website, I decided to go back to June 1, 2012, when one of the Red Wings' greatest players decided to retire.

Nicklas Lidstrom's retirement was not the least bit shocking, but fans still did not want to see their captain retire after 20 seasons. Lidstrom was the definition of a leader and was a class act on and off the ice. The article touches on these facts, but they are well known in the hockey community. So, the article decides to look at how the way he retired reflected these attributes.

The article even has a looking forward piece, a critical part of profiles as Marco Williams pointed out to #loweclass last week. The going forward aspect of the story was what Lidstrom was going to do after retirement. Rather than become a media personal to NBC or the Wings' Fox Sports affiliate, Lidstrom decided to return to his hometown in Krylbo, Sweden. The profile does a great job in letting a little known fact about his hometown having the largest wooden horse in the world before he left and it still being there today.

One aspect of the profile I did not like was the authors weird fascination by adding -eth to the end of some words, as if it adds some sort of storybook flow to the article. I get the idea of trying to implore a "the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away," feeling towards the article to show how lucky fans have been. But having it in the lede and one of the last sentences of the article was not a smart move by the writer. 

The article may be slightly untimely, but I believe this article is a great example of what a profile should be. It captures the personality of Lidstrom in details and quotes, while still giving readers a reason to continue. On Hockey Day in America, there is no better person to do a profile on than Nicklas Lidstrom. 

The Super Bowl is America’s single biggest sporting attraction. The game features the two “best” teams in the countries most popular sport, and the commercials are more hyped than the game. The Detroit Free-Press, despite not having a team even make the playoffs, had some pretty good coverage of the game. However, they focused less on the game and more on the spectacle.

Post game coverage was more concerned with the halftime show and the commercials than the actual game. At 10:30 at night, the website’s home page consisted of the best and worst eight commercials as the lead story, and on the carousel was the actual game recap and then a story on the power outage.

The Free-Press has decided that the commercials are the most newsworthy aspect of the game, not the fact a new champion was crowned. Even on Monday, the lead story on the Free-Press’s homepage was about Dodge’s “Farmer” commercial, and the best commercials of the Super Bowl. Maybe it’s because people want to watch the commercials again, just in case if they missed something.

But if it were me, the lead story would have been the Raven’s weathering the 49ers historic comeback, and still winning the championship. It would be Ray Lewis winning his second Super Bowl in his last game, behind a backdrop of his murder allegations and deer-antler spray accusations. It may even be a column on a possible conspiracy theory that the NFL caused the 34-minute light delay that swung the game’s momentum into the 49ers favor.

The fact of the matter is the Free-Press has decided pop culture takes more precedence than the actual outcome of the game. The Super Bowl drives huge revenue not only for the league but also for the city that is hosting the game. A team becomes champions and cements relevance in the NFL for at least five years. In my opinion, that should have been the Free-Press’s focus, not the commercials.