Another writer makes a mistake.

Normally this feature is filled with a writer from an sports website that makes an egregious error. This time though, it's NHL.com. It's not a major mistake, but still, you'd expect them to be able to get the facts.


Evan Weiner has a niece piece about the trade deadline and how it relates to Mike Gartner. Of course, there's a glaring factual error in it that makes you bang your head and wonder who makes this stuff up.

Gartner led the Caps in goals (36) and points (68) in his rookie NHL season. Over the next eight years, Gartner scored 35 or more goals annually, and became the first Capital to hit the 50-goal mark, in 1984-85.

Here's the problem. There was this guy Dennis Maruk who played with Gartner early in his career, and Maruk hit the 50 goal mark twice before Gartner ever did. The year that Gartner first hit 50, some other kid on the time actually had 53 goals. I don't have the game by game stats to figure out who hit 50 first, but there's a really good chance that Gartner was actually the third Cap to hit 50. He was definitely no better than second.

My gripe aside, this is a good article with some nice quotes from Gartner. Again, I'm not trying to tell professional writers how to do their jobs. I just wish they'd check their facts.