Seen and Heard in Edmonton

Meet Ryan Batty, managing editor of Oilers blog The Copper & Blue and an engineer who blogs about transportation from time to time on All Roads Lead to Ryan.

Like many hockey bloggers, Ryan got his start on the message boards and comment threads of the storied Oilogosphere. That and his work on his own site, Spilled Oil, caught the eye of The Copper & Blue’s Derek Zona, who recruited Ryan as a columnist in 2011. In May of this year, Ryan took over as managing editor, overseeing 15 other writers on the site, which belongs to the SB Nation network.

In this episode we talk about why he wanted the job and what it takes to do it. He reads everything on the site and watches every game, most of them twice, which is quite the feat, since the team has been bad for his entire tenure as a blogger. I should also mention that when we spoke, Connor McDavid had not yet broken his collarbone, and was still a realistic source of hope for a fan who dearly wants to see the Oilers in the playoffs again.

Ryan is also a transportation nerd, and so we talked a bit about how we conceive of our streets and how we could better arrange our city to get people around. It’s an interesting intersection of passions, so to speak, and it was a pleasure to hear his thoughts on both hockey and roads:

You can also get it on SoundCloud, in iTunes, or on Stitcher.

Here are the hockey blogs that Ryan reads:

• Lowetide
• The Cult of Hockey
• OilersNation
• The Superfan
• Woodblog, aka Because Oilers

You can find Ryan on Twitter: @ryan_batty.

This episode is brought to you by CKUA, Alberta’s original radio. CKUA recently launched a new season of TransCanada Music West, highlighting the best live acts in Western Canada. This season kicks off with Jr. Gone Wild at the Calgary Folk Music Festival.

Subscribe to TransCanada Music West in iTunes, or listen to it at ckua.com.

Musical credits: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 2 No. 1, played by Daniel Veesey, from freemusicarchive.com.