After all, I've always had the necessary characteristics: a borderline obsessive love of the sport (that started in the womb), a passion for writing, a willingness to debate and a complete lack of anything resembling sanity. Looking back, I'm surprised it took me until the summer of 2006 to jump into this crazy world.
At the time we had a team that was young, full of potential and exciting to watch even when they lost - which is good, because they did it a lot. I was excited for what was to come and badly in need of an outlet for my enthusiasm, yet was surrounded by media that still seemed to only see the burgundy and gold of the Redskins. Friends and family, even those who followed hockey, quickly grew tired of me babbling on about the Caps this and hockey that.
And that's how A View from the Cheap Seats came about. It became my own little corner of the internet where, as CapsChick, I could vent about losses and gush about wins and just indulge in my own special brand of ridiculousness. I never set out to prove my knowledge, but my readers gave me some validation that I knew my stuff - the day they forgave my occasional swooning over one Brooks Laich was the day I knew I had credibility.
Laich, really? You learn something new everyday ...
I stepped away a few months ago to become part of Japers' Rink, a site that I've long considered to be the best Caps blog - and one of the best hockey blogs - around. And while I consider myself the Alexandre Giroux to the Alex Ovechkin-like writers the site already had, I also like to think my oh so feminine presence helps keep the boys (and our insanely amazing readers) in check.
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Elise from 18,568 Reasons Why
Growing up in Minnesota, hockey’s ingrained in the culture. I was only two years old when the North Stars moved to Dallas in 1993 (and subsequently dropped the “North”), but hockey returned in 2000 in the form of the Wild. I began following the team and gaining an interest in hockey and attended my first game during the memorable 2003 playoff run. That game was against the rival Vancouver Canucks. Wild enforcer Matt Johnson and Canuck Brad May dropped the gloves seven seconds into the game. Following that playoff run, one in which the Wild came back from two 1-3 series deficits to defeat the Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche, I was hooked. Rivalries, fights … how could I not love this sport?
I started off blog lurking before deciding to start my own blog. I had written for my school newspaper since my freshman year of high school and, since no one in my immediate family knew enough about hockey to talk or debate about it, I enjoyed the interaction with people who knew the sport back and forth. I began reading mainly within the Wild blogosphere. I talked to Nick from Hitting the Post and Kirsten from Land of Lakes and Hockey about running a blog before launching 18,568 Reasons Why in December of 2007. The blog started out very casual with random musings and sporadic posts. It morphed into more of a game recap/news/opinion spot last season and lately it’s been mainly opinion due to my move down to Chicago (and it’s a lot harder to find Minnesota game feeds in a dorm).
Starting my own blog didn’t really have anything to do with “proving” my fandom or being a girl. I just loved hockey and loved writing about it and decided to try out the whole blogging thing and see where it took me. And it’s been fantastic thus far. My blog has led me to all sorts of things. Without my blog, I wouldn’t have been able to work with companies like Versus, Easton, and Blackstone Sports or interview people like Chris Snow and Jonathan Toews, all things which I enjoyed immensely. I’ve met so many cool people and gained so much experience that I can’t even imagine now what my hockey fandom would have been like without a blog.
And one of the best things about it so far is being a part of the blogosphere. The men and women who make up the hockey blogosphere amaze me with their knowledge and creativity. I enjoy reading blogs from the perspective of a multitude of teams and have learned a lot more about hockey because of it; I don’t think I would know as much about Eastern Division teams if not for some of the wonderful bloggers who cover them. The high quality and wit of this group of bloggers makes the hockey world unique and a great thing to be a part of.
Now it’s been 16 years since the North Stars left, 9 years since the Wild began playing, six years since my first Wild game, and almost two years since I started my blog. I’m a freshman in journalism school and not sure what I’m going to do in four years when I graduate. Considering no one seems to know what’s going to happen to journalism in the future, I’m not trying to figure it out yet. But being a blogger has definitely been a highlight so far and I know it will only get better.
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The Hockey Junkies
Why are we bloggers? That seems to be the million dollar question after a year and a half of doing it. Everyone wants to know why we blog about hockey. There are quite a few reasons why we started a blog. But to this day, we only remember one main reason why. Blame our existence on The Pensblog.
Around the 06/07 season, Henrik found a website that would do hilarious recaps of Penguins games. Every morning after games, we would load The Pensblog and laugh the whole game away (win or loss). Reading that blog was always so much fun but there was something off about it. It almost felt like we were left out from the punch line at the end. They didn’t talk about things that we thought were important, they made jokes that we could only marginally understand. It was like a boys-only blog sometimes.
Our blog isn’t about proving anything because we already know that we’re awesome. We have been hockey fans since the tender age of six. Our first game was in the old Chicago Stadium between the Blackhawks and the Blues. Since that game, we have been addicted to hockey. We go to different arenas instead of the beach for vacations, we’ve met most of our friends through hockey and we watch at least three games a night. Henrik knows way too much about the Rangers and Sidney Crosby than should be healthy. And I know the stupidest and strangest facts (like what Jimmy Howard’s mask looks like) for no reason at all.
The most impressive thing about (most) girls who love hockey is their ability to be knowledgeable about the sport yet also embrace what it is to be a girl. What we always found offensive was the fact that girls who know their stuff about a sport have to be devoid of anything feminine. It’s almost like we can’t know hockey and be a girl, we have to pick one or the other. We can’t just turn our femininity off because some guy thinks it’s funny to call us ‘puck bunnies’. So now we accept it. We twirl our hair and talk Valley Girl at card shows just to get a better deal on a Steve Mason rookie card. We wear make-up and ‘fuck-me’ boots with our Brooks Orpik jersey. If that makes us skanks, then so be it. We can do and say whatever we want because we are skanks who know our stuff.
We had always wanted a blog that talked about what we thought was important. Things like hotness of this player and the color schemes of jerseys and which players were single. We wanted a blog that would feature the things that we always talked about with our friends. That was why The Hockey Junkies was started. And if we didn’t write the damn thing, we would probably read it.
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Sarah of Tea Party Throwdown
I never really thought about blogging when I got really into hockey last year. Sure, I'd see links floating around on twitter, for for the most part I was satisfied to sit on my ass and make stupid image macros and laugh at people on HFBoards, and that was that. For the most part.
Something started picking at the back of my brain around Trade Deadline Day last year, though. All these opinions and breaking news blogs, and the excitement of sitting in front of NHL live for 8 hours trying to figure out what was going on with all the rumors flying rampant - I began to wish for a place to express my own opinion of why exactly Mark Recchi was an awesome pickup and why I thought Steve Montador was a fantastic way to get rid of Petteri Nokelainen. And there were other factors, too - I'm an Earth Science nerd, what better subject to blog about then the fact that on the night that TWO in-state playoff series games ended in shutouts, there were earthquakes in BOTH states and only one was California? I mean, seriously.http://forpuckssake.blogspot.com/2009/04/playoff-hockey-2-north-american-plate-0.html
But let's be honest. My team is the Bruins; there are a squillion-and-one blogs out there trying to do the same thing I'm doing; in many cases with a higher fanbase, better graphics, more professional looking, whatever. That's not why I'm here. I blog because pouring a few hours into a well-researched post is my GAME. I blog because as a journalist with no other platform to express my opinions, I need a creative outlet. If five or ten people read my posts, fine - that's all well and good; the benefit for ME is seeing my work outside of myself, quantified as words on a page instead of just stupid thoughts in my head. I've tried blogging alone, blogging with a friend (Margaret, now of
eyerollsports.com), and now am back at it alone; I'm not quite at the stage where I care about followers, just getting my stuff out there.
Plus, what better way to record one's hockey adventures than with a travel blog? :) Really this is all for my own entertainment. It's just more fun when people come along for the ride.
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