Meeting with Blazers had the right outcome

Yesterday’s meeting with Kamloops Blazers majority owner and Western Hockey League commissioner Ron Robison over the suspension of Daily News sports editor Gregg Drinnan’s access to team personnel had the right outcome.

Robison and Gaglardi agreed to rescind the ban on Drinnan with no strings attached, although an odd turn of phrase later appeared in a WHL press release that referred to the end of the season. That puts a nuance on lifting of the ban that was not agreed to at the meeting.

The ban wasn’t put in place by the league, but rather by the Blazers, so the wording is doubly puzzling. Technically, the Blazers could do it again, though I think all parties recognize there would be nothing productive in that, so the end-of-the-season proviso is out of place with the spirit of the meeting.

Nevertheless, it’s a chapter that’s finished and we can all move on, including Radio NL’s sportscaster Rick Wile, who has been uttering such drivel on the issue over the past week he should be ashamed of himself. He’s taken a liking to claiming we played “the free-speech card” and that we went about generating some sort of international campaign against the ban.

What does “going national and international” mean. That the story was of sufficient interest across the continent that other media started calling and asking for interviews? And that we answered their questions? Picking up the phone and calling us, by the way, wasn’t something Wile ever did. Didn’t have to — he’d already made up his mind.