Earlier this season, journalist David Berry resigned his position with an Edmonton Oilers blog after an incident with the team's media relations staff. It was a story that continued the debate between mainstream and alternative media over access; more importantly, it ignited a fresh conversation about perceptions of "good taste" in coverage of the NHL, as Berry's blog Covered in Oil was frank, guileless and unabashedly coarse in its tone.

This month, a Boston Bruins blogger who writes under the Bueller-approved moniker "Cameron Frye" wasn't scrutinized in a press box or given a stern warning from the PR staff. She was terminated by New England Comcast Sportsnet for writing a lewd, satirical first-person account of life for a female reporter in a professional locker room for Deadspin.com.

"It stinks," she said in an interview this week. "Am I sorry? I am, but I'm not. I think I wrote a darn good piece."

The piece in question was part of Deadspin's "Waxing Off" series, in which female writers opine on a given subject. Frye submitted a (NSFW) riff on strange encounters in the locker room, filled with candid sexual terminology and slang. A safe-for-work snippet:

You just have to go in there and give them the same respect you'd expect back from them. Do you always get that? No, but in the end you're the bigger man and for some men out there, that's something they'll never be. The view of naked flesh doesn't bother me. Although, what does bother me is athletes who wear Crocs. Now that's offensive.

The story published on Friday, Dec. 12. By Dec. 28, and after the story was picked up by a Boston newspaper, Comcast said that due to the language and subject matter of the Deadspin piece, she would no longer be welcome as a blogger on their Wicked Good Sports site. They soon removed all of her previous content.

"According to them, even though I'm not a full-time employee I still represent them. Do I want to say it's a chick thing? That's one thing I haven't said. I just don't understand it. What I wrote was not that bad," she said.

So was it a case of crude language colliding with corporate standards? Was it because a woman broke a locker room taboo by talking about her experiences in a candid manner? And would the Bruins ever let Cameron Frye back in the press box after this incident?

Frye, 25, starting writing for Bostonist.com out of college, focusing on fashion. ("Much like Sean Avery," she said.) She transitioned into sports writing by hooking up with New England Comcast Sportsnet as a freelance blogger, covering the Bruins for a network that focuses mostly on the Celtics and the Patriots. She said she attended every game, and covered the team with a beat writer's focus.

After her Deadspin locker room story published under her penname, the Boston Sports site Barstool Sports took note and asked "Who Is Cameron Frye?" Then the Boston Herald's Inside Track column -- a quasi-"Page Six" for Beantown readers -- noticed the tale and called her bosses at Comcast for a reaction. As Deadspin noted in its follow-up, this attention was the catalyst for Frye's eventual firing.

From the Herald:

Cameron's commentary was quoted on barstoolsports.com late last week, and before you could say Bird Watcher, she was, uh, stripped of her Bruins blogging career at Comcast SportsNet!

"Cameron was a freelance blogger covering the Bruins for WickedGoodSports.com, but she is no longer blogging for WGS," said Comcast spokesguy Skip Perham. "She was not our employee. Obviously, her comments do not represent Comcast SportsNet."

"I think it had to do with the language, and the fact that it was picked up by Barstool and the Inside Track. And I don't like Crocs," she said, adding that Comcast was aware of her submission to Deadspin. "I used certain words. It's frickin' Deadspin. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but they knew."

If language was the issue, Frye sees this as another example why the paradigm needs to shift in the mainstream media. "If they want people to keep reading papers and buying papers, they're going to have to [accept this language]. The numbers are there. People aren't buying this stuff as much as they used to," she said.

But what if the issue wasn't just language? Clearly, Frye's tale received coverage from the Herald and scrutiny from Comcast because the subject it covered was a sports taboo -- a woman discussing life in the men's locker room.

Frye doesn't believe her article played into fears that female journalists can't approach the locker room in a non-sexual way. "I don't think so, because I don't approach the locker room in a sexual way. It's like going to a museum and seeing sculptures. People make something dirty in their own minds, projecting their agenda."

As for extra scrutiny because it was a woman discussing a professional locker room, Frye said:  "It's because we're supposed to be seen and not heard. They want women [in media] to be safe."

We asked another female hockey blogger (who asked her name not be used in the story) her take on the Cameron Frye matter. Her take:

"I'm saddened at the idea that a writer can be removed from her craft for being open, honest and humorous outside of her own journalistic assignment.  If you tell me her actions within the locker room were ever unprofessional or disrespectful, then by all means, she should be removed.  But if a 'journalist' or 'bloggerist' or 'twitterist' conducts them themselves appropriately in a room where appropriate dress is absent, how do you condemn them for expressing their thoughts in other mediums? 

"Certainly, there are things not to be discussed in retained print of any sort.  Surely the writer was told what topics are taboo if witnessed.  But come on, where's the wiggle room?  If, indeed, the case is that 'Cameron' broke explicit rules that came along with the privilege of being let into the inner sanctum, then sadly, I would have to understand. This is still a man's world, and there are invisible lines in the sand we dare not cross. Knowing where they are is always the hard part."

Comcast drew its line. But what about the Bruins?

Matt Chmura, the team's director of communications, said this week that the team was aware of the Cameron Frye situation: "I've read what you've read, as far as her being let go from Comcast."

But Chmura said her dismissal from Comcast doesn't necessarily mean her banishment from the press box.  "We evaluate every credential request on a game-by-game basis," he said, "and we review the request with the editor for that media."

In a positive twist in her career, Frye is now writing for Barstool, which has much looser standards on language and content than Comcast ever could.

She's taken her share of grief in the fallout from the locker room story. "But there are also people who said, 'Finally, someone who can write,'" she said.