I hit the Twitter scene nearly three years ago and felt overwhelmed by the countless hockey accounts I could follow. With so many options came many disappointments. Accounts either didn’t tweet often or tweeted too much. Tweets could be too dull or too colorful. However, I found Hockey Broad to be an excellent combination of hockey knowledge and humor.

So it’s no surprised I hunted her down for an OET interview. If you already follow Hockey Broad, then I know you will really enjoy this interview. If you are not following her work and tweets, then you will crazy enjoy this interview and have a new, fabulous hockey writer to follow. You’re welcome.

OET: For those unfortunate souls who are not familiar with you, give us a little bio.

HB: I’m Cheryl Adams, a hockey writer and photographer. (Neither of these are my primary job, but I wouldn’t mind if they were!) I run my own site, HockeyBroad.com, and I also am the lead Blackhawks writer for TheCheckingLine.com. I live in Chicago, so naturally I follow the Blackhawks, but I love hockey in general, so my rooting interests are spread out across the country.

OET: When did you first fall in love with the sport of hockey?

HB: I was a kid for the 1980s “Miracle on Ice”. Back then, when the Olympics rolled around – remember, they were only every 4 years then, not alternating spring and winter Olympics every 2 years – watching them was an event. All the other TV stations would run repeats because they knew everybody was watching the Olympics, and as kids, we’d get to stay up past our usual bedtimes to watch. I remember watching the US-Russian game and it was just huge for our country, not just as a sports event, but a political event. It was the kind of thing that even as a kid, you understood it was something big. Anyway, I first got interested in the sport from that, but nobody else in my family was too interested in hockey then. Meeting Kevin Dineen my freshman year in high school, when I was on a school trip to Europe, sort of cemented to me how awesome hockey players were, and I’ve followed the sport ever since.

OET: Do you play as well?

HB: I wish! Right now I’m something awful on skates, but I’m working on getting more in shape, and I want to take skating and hockey lessons once my budget allows. There’s a lot of good “learn to skate/learn hockey” programs around Chicago.

Bobby Goepfert (Photo by Hockey Broad)

OET: Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

HB: Bobby Goepfert (@geffman47). He’s a funny guy, and a goalie.

OET: You seem to have a love for goalies. Who is your favorite tendy and who wears the best mask art in your opinion?

HB: I have a really hard time picking between Pekka Rinne, Antti Niemi, and Jonathan Quick. Two Finns and a guy from my home state of Connecticut, although that’s not why I like them. They all have their own style. Rinne is just a big guy who is amazingly athletic in the net, like some kind of Cirque du Soleil acrobat. Niemi of course helped bring the Blackhawks the Cup. Sometimes you look him in the net – even with some of the changes he’s made since going to the Sharks – and you think he seems too hunched over or even awkward, but he really keeps his teams in the games. And Quick – until the Kings won the Cup – was kind of overlooked out there on the West, quietly having several nice seasons behind a good team. Read more