First of all, latest podcast here.  Second of all, if you want to hear the latest installment of ChompTalk complete with the Joe Pavelski interview, you can find it here.  Third of all, we are in the longest Sharks layoff until the end of the season, so it’s an opportunity to take a little stock and think about some hockey-related stuff that’s not mired in the day-to-day grind of games and injuries.

Along that vein, are JR and Jumbo the best interviews in hockey?  I just heard the Joe interview on Monday with E.J. Hradek and Don LaGreca, and there are few players out there as affable, easygoing, and willing as much as Joe.  He’ll talk about anything, doesn’t automatically default to the middle-of-the-road answer, and seems genuinely excited and pleased to do an interview.  Most players sound like they’d rather be having a root canal than being interviewed on the biggest hockey radio show in the U.S.  And JR, as he related to Adam Proteau, is quite vocal about how crappy player interviews generally are.  Sounds like Joe has learned from the master.  I bet Tom Holy and the media relations team have a hand in it too.

Since I’m a west coast American hockey fan, I’m often thinking about the differences between players and teams here, in less pressure-packed markets, and the hockey-mad places like Montreal, Toronto, and New York.  Makes me wonder if playing in a more laid-back city (yet still plenty hockey-mad) like San Jose tends to make players better at interviews, since they aren’t hounded by the press and fans all day every day.  Of course it depends on the player (Marleau gives about as wooden of an interview as I’ve ever seen) but I think the less traditional markets give naturally extroverted players more room to have fun in media situations.

Whatever it is, hearing Joe and JR obviously happy to be playing hockey, in San Jose no less, makes it that much easier to be a Sharks fan.