Meet the Blogger: Jonathan Willis, the Ubiquitous Voice

I had a dream last night that I started a new hockey publication, Numbers and Narratives, and somehow Jonathan Willis had already published 7 articles under its imprint.

Jonathan first caught my attention back in 2011. He’d been doing some pleasure reading while travelling and made good use of Machiavelli’s discussion of counselors in The Prince (§23) for a piece at Oilers Nation. I’ve been thinking about Machiavelli and Jonathan of late (incidentally, Jonathan also used Machiavelli in the unfortunate pejorative sense in this article about Gary Bettman). You see, I’ve been trying to contextualize for myself Jonathan’s approach to hockey writing.

To some of his Oilers Nation readers, Jonathan is often couched as the dry, statistical robot of the family. As someone who first perked up at the mention of Machiavelli rather than Corsi, my impression of Jonathan has always been otherwise. To be sure, Jonathan has a big brain and uses it to crunch numbers in novel ways (take, for instance, this article about drafting goaltenders; these posts with hand-tracked zone-entry data–here, here, here and here; or, his tracking of shot metrics for OKC Barons’ games, as in this article) and breakdown plays (some of my favorite Willis’ posts include his use of video analysis to demonstrate how things work, for example this recent look at the Blackhawks’ use of Brandon Bollig; or, one of his many single event breakdowns like this one). However, Jonathan is also a writer with a remarkable dexterity. Aside from his absurd level of output (rivalled perhaps only by Lowetide), Jonathan also manages to be interesting and funny. He is especially adept at turning some piece of cultural detritus into something useful and informative (this reference to Carol Reed’s 1947 classic film Odd Man Out comes to mind).

Packaged together, these assets combine to make a writer unique in his ability to shuffle readers easily along the often hard road of enlightenment. Which brings me back to Machiavelli. In what is one of the most famous letters ever written, Machiavelli writes to a friend on the occasion of completing his Prince. He writes of his daily routine. His day is spent entirely at play: he “become[s] a rascal for the whole day,” shouting abuses and insults and playing games with “vermin.” This ribald fun allows him to “scrape the mold off [his] brain.” At night, however, things take serious turn as he “put[s] on [his] regal and courtly garments” and enters into a discourse with the Canon of literary greats.

After reading a healthy dose of Jonathan Willis, one gets the sense of having both just quarrelled joyfully with the townsfolk about some trifling matter or another and of having entered the hall of great minds and held court with edifying and ennobling discourse. It really is quite a marvel.

For his part, Jonathan is also extraordinarily free with his time and knowledge. Over the years, I’ve found him very helpful and approachable. We here at the Rig are delighted he partook of our Meet the Blogger series. Thanks, Jonathan.

When asked what song he’d like to have accompany his interview, Jonathan picked a stone-cold piss-cutter of a song, Stan Rogers’ “Northwest Passage.”

1. When did you start writing about hockey? What got you into it?

I started writing about hockey in April 2008. At that point I was an apprentice instrument mechanic, and I found myself in trade school and with a lot of time on my hands. I’d always wanted to be a writer and I’d always loved hockey, so I started more or less on a whim.