Awards: Last Place

Finally, we have the Last place award.  This award goes to the member of the CSN crew who accumulated the lowest point total in the Action on the Ice standings.  The winner (or loser) of this award could be none other than Chuck “the Gormley” Gormley.  Chuck managed to rack up an impressively bad -11 point total on the season, despite only appearing in a few select home game broadcasts.  Chuck managed to do this be finishing in the last star spot every time he got the chance.  If Julie Donaldson gets credit for inspiring my blog’s title, than Gormley’s consistently bad performances get the credit for giving me the idea of critiquing the CSN broadcasters.  The reasons for Chuck’s poor performance have been discussed at length.  His lack of personality, his shallow and useless stories, his ridiculous claim of being a “capitals insider”, and the list could go on and on.  On this occasion I thought instead of ragging on Chuck yet again for his obvious flaws that I would do a little bit of “hard-core” investigative journalism to uncover why Chuck is the man we love-to-hate.  Or maybe that should be hate-to-hate.  So I present, The Chuck Gormley Story. (apologies in advance for any formatting errors with the pictures.  I am not a computer wizard.)

All of this is the conjecture of an overactive imagination and should not be taken as fact in any way shape, or form.  It is purely written for entertainment and is almost certainly 100% false.       

I began my investigation as any good investigator would, by googling Chuck’s name.  The results were...curious to say the least.

The first three results were all FLYERS related.  That is odd.  Now that I think about it I remember hearing that Chuck was a connected with the Flyers before he came over to Washington so maybe the search results aren’t that strange.  I decided to snoop onward and clicked on the first link, “Chuck’s Pucks”. 

WOW.  Alright so this is clearly something of a personal webpage.  It is also starting to look like Chuck wasn’t only working for the Flyers before he came to CSN, but that he was something of a superfan of the team.  Particularly interesting is the fact that he wrote a book, a book about Flyer’s Hockey.  The fact that he wrote a Flyer’s book confirms for me the idea that Gormley was a huge Flyer’s fan.  Suddenly, Twitter comments like these from Chuck during the last week of the NHL season come off a bit differently...

Chuck’s book sticks in my brain.  A person capable of writing an entire book must have some genuine skills as a reporter/writer.  Yet Chuck constantly seems to lack those skills with the Caps.  It doesn’t add up.  Is it possible that Chuck is just phoning it in with the Caps, that his heart really isn’t in it?  No, it can’t be the reason.  I proceed to scan his web page and then I find this.

What the hell!  The section labeled “Chuck’s Blog” is still being updated with recent Flyer’s news posts.  Chuck IS phoning it in with the Caps!

…

After a brief break period that I used to recover from my discovery I decided to click on on of Chuck’s blog stories.  Lets see what the Gormley is actually devoting his time too.

Hmmm that one doesn’t seem to be written by Chuck himself.  In fact, none of the links I clicked on seem to be directly written by Chuck.  They are all written by “Randy Miller”.  If these stories aren’t written by Gormley why is his webpage updating to post links to them underneath the heading “Chuck’s Blog” and who is this Randy Miller guy.

Okay so Randy is the Flyer’s writer for the Courier-Post.  His back story seems to check out and for the time being I am ruling out that “Randy” is an elaborate persona created by Chuck to allow him to cover the Flyers while working for CSNwashington.  Now that I knew who Randy was, I was still left with the question, why is Chuck updating his website with these stories.  Well, Randy’s bio said he started working for the Courier-Post in 2011.  Time for some time traveling...back to those heady days known as 2011

...

After going back through the archives of the Courier-Post it appears that Chuck Gormley was the Flyer’s reporter BEFORE Randy was given the job in 2011.  This discovery left me with a new question.  Why would Chuck, a die hard Flyer’s fan and a presumably somewhat successful author of a Flyer’s fan-book leave a job covering the team he loves to work for the Capitals in Washington?

I had to look no further than Chuck’s last post, August 17, 2011.

  

Reading through his final post there is no mention of his leaving for CSN washington.  What is even stranger is the fact that Chuck was announced as joining the CSN crew on August 1, 2011, meaning he knew he would be leaving...or did he?

In light of this information I was left with one conclusion...that Chuck intended to keep working for both the Flyers and the Caps and wanted to keep this information a secret from his Flyer’s readers/employers.  The rest of the story seems pretty simple to piece together.  People found out that Chuck was two-timing the Flyers.  He was let go at his post at the Courier-Post and replaced by Randy Miller.  The aftermath of these events left a depressed and souless Chuck who had lost his dream job.  Sure, he still had his CSN job, but his heart wasn’t in it.  Now Chuck drifts along collecting paychecks from CSNwashington while wishing he could return to his true love, the Flyer’s.  My final piece of evidence to tie everything together is a few of the comments that appeared on Chuck’s final Courier-Post blog article.

Strange comments.  Three repeats heaping generic praise and promises to return to the site whenever Chuck posts again.  One claiming that they are a first time viewer and pointing out that everyone seems to love Chuck.  All of them posted in December, several months after Chuck had left and Randy had taken over.  How did these four people find their way to Chuck’s last article and why did they say the things they did.  I couldn't find any comments of these sort on an of Randy's articles.  This seems like an impossible question to answer.  However, maybe the person we should be asking is Chuck Gormley himself...

So there you have it.  The Chuck Gormley Story.  All of this is conjecture of an overactive imagination and should not be taken as fact in any way shape or form.  Congrats on your last place finish Chuck and thanks for giving us stuff to write about here at Action on the Ice!