Off to Edmonton and the start of hockey season
Happy Thursday from an airport, let's get ready for the season.
For full transparency, this piece was inspired by my pal Bob Sturm, who earlier this week penned his annual kick-off to his Dallas Cowboys season coverage with his “Off to Oxnard,” piece.
It’s always a fun piece about hope, the start of a new year, and yes, the fact the Cowboys in reality haven’t been a viable NFL contender in the lifetime of anyone under 30 years old.
Whether you care for the Cowboys or not, it’s one of those benchmarks of the year for me (I help with his editing, so I get to read everything before anyone else) that we are getting close to the fall, crisper mornings, and eventually hockey season.
In the past, I’ve always penned my “welcome to hockey” season story in early September, for a long time it coincided with my annual trip to Traverse City for the NHL prospects tournament (that’s in Detroit this year after being in Texas last September).
But this year, for me, it starts this week, in the first week of August. I’m waiting for a flight to Minneapolis and then a connection to Edmonton, where I’ll be attending TCS Live, a coaching conference I’ve always enjoyed in the past, and covering the final few games of the Hlinka Gretzky Cup for Elite Prospects.
This will be the fourth full season of this grand experiment at Shap Shots, a reality I was forced into after a decision by my former employer, but one that’s turned into one of the favorite parts of my job. With the open-mind collaboration of other sites, like EP and D Magazine, I’ve been able to run a weird hybrid site where I’m able to write about what I want and when I want in the hockey world.
Some of the topics have some obvious pull, there is a large contingent of readers in Dallas and Detroit, and that reflects the Red Wings and Stars pull, but it’s also been a place I’ve been able to branch out, make mistakes, and most importantly learn a little bit everyday.
This year, for example, Shap Shots became home to a simulcast project with Robert Tiffin, Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey, and there’s some other key collaboration points coming in the future, that I’m quite excited about.
It’s also been a place that I can be human and personally, this has become both a hockey site and my personal blog at times, and being able to share stories, like I did yesterday, I hope have helped create a better connection with readers. Hockey stories are human stories told through a sport, I’ve always believed that.
I’m also feeling pretty thankful, while I’m flying to Edmonton right now, on Monday I’ve got a flight to Dallas where next Tuesday night I’ll be part of a hockey celebration in DFW organized by my pal Gavin Spittle, who has turned a passion project in Spits and Suds into a bona fide asset for both fans and his bosses at Audacy.
So I guess we could call this a bit of a pallet cleanser after yesterday, again thank you for some thoughts and messages I’ve received, but it’s also kind of an open note/thank you to everyone that reads and makes this site possible. I’m not sure what, exactly, is going to be published in the next couple days form Edmonton, but I’m excited to learn and share it with you.
As always, thanks for reading.