The entries have been received and posted and now it’s time to pick the winners. We actually received interest from even more people than appeared here, but I had to limit the number of posts to something managable. When I put out the question of a new contributor on twitter, I had no idea the potential response. Thanks to everyone who applied and all those of you you who took time to not only submit an article but also read, reply and vote on them.

Here is the a list of all the entries once again. I’m going to ask everyone to vote for your favorite hopeful to help guide our ultimate decision.

When voting, consider each author’s voice, organization, quality of rhetoric and the supporting evidence for his arguments. The tendency, of course, would be to vote for someone whose views closely match your own or who picked a partisan topic with which you would naturally agree. In truth, the best test of a writer is someone who has the chops to potentially change your mind about something. Ask yourself not if you naturally agree with the writers worldview, but if you think he would be a persistently interesting or entertaining read even when he doesn’t march in lockstep with your preconceptions.

Without further ado, here are the entries again:

Derrick Newman – Calgary Flames State of the Union

Al MaGuinness – The Rebuild Begins Sooner Rather than Later

Byron Bader – The New CBA – To Sign or Not to Sign a Player…

Graham Wiswell – Putting the ‘M’ Back in GM

Kevin Hatch – The Run

Vintage Flame – What Makes an Elite Player…Elite?

Taylor Rocca – Tim Erixon Loves Chantal Kreviazuk

Mike Schmidt – In Defense of Jay Bouwmeester

Jake Travis – More of the Same is Significant Change

Scott Lepp – If it Ain’t (is) Broke, Don’t (Please) Fix it

Marty Clarke – SWOT-ing the Flames: Sloppy Seconds See Supporters Suffering

The poll below allows multiple votes. Please pick your top three choices.

Thanks again everyone. We will make our final decision by the end of this week.