Hockey insiders fall into one of two categories: Bob McKenzie and Not Bob McKenzie. The latter group you can subdivide further by isolating the ones that contribute to fans' understanding of hockey and those that actively dissemble, misdirect, mislead, and hurt hockey fans. When you think of the former, you're probably thinking about people like James Mirtle (disclosure: a friend), Jonas Siegel, Chris Johnston, Justin Bourne (another person I'd consider a friend), and a short list of others that escape my mind right now but that if you mentioned them then I'd probably agree. These people are interested in pursuing the truth and not sticking to disproven arguments, acting as mouthpieces for anonymous sources, or fighting against the expanding knowledge of the average fan.

A lit of the latter group would resemble the Book of Genesis except that every generation's worst mittenstringers begat another generation of willful incompetents. The worst characteristics of these are that they will provide cover to anonymous sources to slam subjects without revealing their relationship, they themselves will prop up or slam subjects without revealing their motivations, they act as stenographers for their sources, and their opinions shift with nary any suggestion that they've been wrong.

Obviously I could expand a lot on both topics but I really just wanted to use it as a set up to say that Nick Kypreos might be served to sit down and read transcripts of what he says so that he can keep track of his exuberant pronouncements. That might help him from looking stupid when he goes against his own comments:

That's on January 21, 2014. Let's revisit that thought a scant year later:

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" and you'd be right. People should be open to changing their opinions as the facts change. Of course, they should also note that they previously held beliefs that were demonstrably false if only to acknowledge that nobody's perfect. But then again, that's not the mittenstringer way. Hope Smoke's timeline is pretty fantastic as you can see Kypreos wondering why all of his baseless assumptions about Tyler Bozak have suddenly gone so sour. I think Birky probably said it best:

God, what more do you want from insiders and pundits? You want them to actually investigate things? Wouldn't it just be easier for them to pretend they knew all along or to repeat what their sources tell them? Because that's precisely why we're being fed this crap.