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Tampa Bay Lightning Insider Geography Lesson

If you were wondering, here’s what the Lightning’s trip looks like (you can see more on Google Maps).

The Lightning Insider is an anonymous individual who writes blogs detailing team travel and behind the scenes activity for the Tampa Bay Lightning on their official website. They have been with the team during this epic road trip and have been reporting as usual. During the last couple of days, however, they’ve gotten their geography of the Western United States all mixed up.

Normally, I could overlook that kind of thing – if it weren’t on the team’s official site. It’s not so much that it’s wrong that bothers me, but the fact that an easy two-minute search would’ve spared them the humiliation of being so dreadfully wrong. Being wrong is an occasional fact of life. Not fact-checking before posting public information is unacceptable.

Part of this comes from the fact that they butchered Everett, Washington’s, location by saying it’s “a quaint mountain town“. And it’s not. It sits at sea level – on salt water, no less, with a US navy base right along the waterfront downtown. But it does have some nice views of the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Olympic Mountains to the west on a clear day.

I was willing to overlook that single instance of confusion. But then, would you believe that they screwed up again and said that Loveland, Colorado, was “on the other side of the great Rocky Mountains that we were looking at in Everett, Washington“? Ummm…sorry to break it to you, but there’s a whole lot more going on between Everett and Loveland than just the Rockies. And the Rockies barely fall within Washington State borders, anyway.

It’s people like this who think they know what they’re talking about, so they don’t bother to fact-check, that create hockey rumors. This completely reminds me of the Canadian hockey media and how they’ll print something up about the Lightning, thinking that it’s true, when the team website flatly contradicts their report. And all it takes is a simple search on Google. There’s just no excuse for it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I grew up west of Seattle and I have a BA in geography. Oh, and I made this map. It’s not up to my personal standard, but I just slapped this together this afternoon, and it gives you a general sort of idea. I already know that it’s far from perfect, so please don’t bother pointing things out that are wrong. Thank you.

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