LOS ANGELES - Jason Reitman, Lauren Conrad, Dierks Bentley and Kevin Smith are among the celebrities who will blog about their love of hockey on the National Hockey League's website.
Beginning Wednesday, more than a dozen celebs will follow their favourite teams through the Stanley Cup playoffs, said NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur.
"As NHL.com bloggers, they can be irreverent and candid about their love for the NHL,'' she said.
A native Canadian who grew up in Los Angeles, Reitman, 30, became a hockey fan seven years ago. Since then, the Oscar-nominated director ("Juno'') has dedicated himself to the cause, directing commercials for the NHL and serving on its entertainment advisory board.
"I'd come to really love the game and I was just a little upset because I felt there was more of an opportunity for particularly Americans to know about the game and follow the game,'' he told The Associated Press.
Reitman told the league to call him if he could be of any help and they asked him to blog.
"This year is a little depressing because my two teams, the (Vancouver) Canucks and the (Los Angeles) Kings, neither of them are in the playoffs,'' he said, adding that the invitation came "when the Canucks still had a chance.''
"Now the Canucks aren't in it. So what I decided is that I'm going to write a kind of mythical blog about what the Canucks and Kings would be doing had they still been in,'' he said. "In my version, for the first time in NHL history, the Canucks and the Kings will be the first two Western Conference teams to actually meet in the Stanley Cup finals.''
Conrad described herself as "a casual hockey fan'' who has followed the Kings for the past two seasons.
"I'm blogging about the NHL playoffs because I love live hockey and I thought this would be a fun way to get more involved with the postseason,'' the reality-TV star said in a statement.
This is the second year that stars from movies, music and television have brought their hockey fan-dom to the blogosphere. Celebrities blogging about the 2008 quest for the Stanley Cup include David Boreanaz, A.J. Buckley, Tom Cavanagh, William Fichtner and Geoff Stults.
