A great day: Jay Greenberg is a Hall of Famer

Jay Greenberg has worked at a lot of publications in his professional life, in Kansas City and Philadelphia and New York and Toronto, and covered most everything there has been to cover. But, on the day that the Hockey Hall of Fame recognized him with its highest honor for print journalists, the Elmer Ferguson Award, it is appropriate to remember his years covering the Flyers for the Daily News.

He did not cover the Cup teams. He came here after that, working first for the Bulletin and then the Daily News, and took a 14-year stretch from the '70s to the late '80s and the end of Mike Keenan's time. The Flyers got to the Stanley Cup Final three times in that period but never won it again. They still haven't. He was there for Leon Stickle and he was there the day Pelle Lindbergh died in his Porsche. It was a memorable time for the franchise and Jay was its premier chronicler (which is saying something, considering that he competed for much of that time against the Inquirer's Al Morganti).

Back then, the Daily News had deadlines that were much more liberal than today -- maybe 5 am or 6 am when he started at the paper. It was a perfect setup for Jay, who had the skill and knowledge base necessary to analyze the game, the work ethic to put in the time, and the writing ability to fill a big space in an entertaining way. It was an ideal marriage of a person and a time.

This is how Jay covered a home game. He would watch it from that sweet, low-level Spectrum press box -- sight lines that a journalist in 2013 would not believe. Then he would go down to the dressing room for interviews and invariably be the last reporter to leave. It was a more leisurely process then, and the opportunity for a one-on-one conversation with a player was much more available than in today's journalism-by-scrum, and Greenberg took full advantage of it.

By the time he got back upstairs to the press box, everyone else was already typing furiously. Jay, though, would not yet begin writing. As often as not, he would get in his car and drive back across the bridge and go into his house and turn on his VCR and watch a tape of the game he had just watched in person, searching for nuances and trying to sync up the quotes from the players with the events as they happened.

Only then would he start writing. His stories would routinely be transmitted to the office after 3 am, and they would be a delight -- often containing a telling detail that no one else had picked up, or a colorful quote that no one else had been able to get. A lot of hockey reporting around the country was superficial back then -- still is, in some places -- but Jay provided a depth of coverage that was unmatched at his time.

"During the prime of Jay's career he was probably the best NHL beat writer in America," Kevin Allen, President of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, said. "He was both a gifted writer and a thorough reporter. It was a treat to read his NHL coverage."

The Hall of Fame honor is overdue, frankly. Because if you are from Philadelphia, and of a certain age, Jay Greenberg probably taught you more about hockey than anybody.