Hockey Fans Flock to the Brinkley Report

A scroll through the "Related Blogs" page (the link is to your right) will confirm just how crowded the online hockey community has become, with many accomplished and insightful bloggers vying for your attention. So how does one get a leg up on the competition?

Well, it helps if you've made the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Christie Brinkley is a newly minted hockey fan, and among a handful of celebrities recruited by NHL.com to chat up this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs. According to the National Post, her blog is a runaway hit.

Brinkley's web diary appeared for the first time a few weeks back, and within a day it had generated 50,000 page views.

It does not feature any pictures of the 53-year-old mother of three in swimwear, though there is a series of Brinkley at a game in an Islanders sweater.

Brinkley, admits (NHL official Nirva) Milord, works with a ghost blogger at the league's New York offices. When she has the urge to talk hockey, she talks to them, and they transcribe her thoughts for public consumption.

As far as I can tell, you have to sign up at NHL Connect and "join the community" to read Brinkley's musings. Better do it quick, though, because her profile says she'll be "following the Islanders throughout the playoffs." So she'll be around for maybe another week.

Other celebrity contributors include a wrestler, a rapper, a slew of TV actors and Mike Modano's fiancé, who "recently appeared on Dancing with the Stars."