So, this post will be a little bit different than what you folks usually get from me. That said, I wanted to take the time to thank a few people who have helped me along the way in my first season of writing about hockey… heck, I had never really written much of anything before this season.
First, a little personal background info to help you understand what a big deal this has all been for me.
In August of 2011, just two months ahead of my 39th birthday, I was diagnosed with stage 3C colorectal cancer. Doctors told me that I had a 30% chance of living more than five years after my diagnosis. I went through chemo and radiation and then had a surgery to remove what needed to be removed and then it was onto more chemo. Anyone who has gone through the chemo experience can attest that “chemo brain” is very real and can at times be very limiting for a person’s ability to interact with others.
It was shortly after my chemo finished up that I joined Twitter under the handle of @nine30shineshop, which was the name of my former auto detailing business that I owned/operated before I got sick. I found that Twitter allowed me to interact with other hockey fans, while also being a place where I could find information on the Canucks and their prospects of which I’d previously been unaware. Blogs like CanucksArmy were a whole new world for me and I was excited about this “new world” of hockey maniacs who were churning out Canucks info that I wanted to read.
I spent my first year or so on Twitter just trying to interact with some people in a way that worked for my chemo brain and eventually, thanks to my old high school friend Mike Warhurst, I started following Jason Botchford and reading the Provies. I started pulling photos off of the internet that I thought fit the different narratives floating around the team and I would tweet them and tag Botch… over and over again with the hopes of “making the Provies.” I was incredibly persistent, which likely drove Botchford nuts, (sorry Botch) but I eventually “made the Provies” and did so off and on for the next few seasons of hockey.
It was at this point when I reached out to @tron_funkinblow on Twitter because I enjoyed his Pshaps so much and I wanted to learn how to do those as well. Tron was awesome and showed me the ropes as far as what programs to use and how to use them, and because of that, my follower count grew from roughly 40 or so people to a couple of hundred. It also meant that more of my stuff was “making the Provies”.
All of that exposure in the Provies boosted the follower count some more, and suddenly I had way more people with which to talk hockey. I can’t say enough how big that was for me at that stage of my life.
Having something like hockey to focus on rather than illness and what the future may or may not hold was massive for my mental and emotional state. I had found a place where I could forget about everything else going on and just enjoy all of the hockey talk.
I should mention as well that I have been unable to play hockey since getting sick and anyone who knows me understands how much of a blow that was to me as a person. I love the game and didn’t get to start playing until my early 20’s, but I was a beer league goaltender who always felt most at home when I put my gear on and took to the ice. There weren’t many things that I enjoyed more than whipping out the mitt to make a glove save and seeing the shooter’s face when his “sure-fire” goal was taken away from him with a flash of the leather.
After spending another season or so churning out the Pshaps and enjoying the reactions that they would get from folks on Twitter, I thought that I would try my hand at blogging. I had never written anything in my life, and I’m sure that more than one of my former English teachers would have told me to try my hand at something else instead.
I had been following Jeremy Davis at the time before he joined CanucksArmy and enjoyed reading his blog, the former OneCancukBlog. I started to interact with him more on Twitter and eventually, he let me write a couple of pieces for his site. That was a huge step for me to put myself out there like that. As you all know, Twitter can be pretty unforgiving if a person puts out content that others don’t agree with or enjoy.
After writing those pieces for OneCanuckBlog, I decided that I wanted to start my own blog and try to focus more on the Canucks prospects, so I started up NuckToTheFuture. The idea behind NuckToTheFuture was that I would focus on the Canucks farm team and try to provide some info about the team to the 400-ish people who were following me at that point.
There was one problem with that idea though — I didn’t know where to start and ended up writing just a handful of pieces that mostly focused on the Canucks big club rather than the farm team.
I found myself reading a lot of Ryan Biech’s work with CanucksArmy, and I really enjoyed his prospects focused content, which really made me want to get back to trying to do something farm team related. At the tail end of last season, I started watching the Comets games online and did a little bit of live tweeting of the games, which didn’t go over well at first, but I wasn’t going to be deterred.
After the season wrapped up, I reached out to Dylan, (JD Burke) over at CanucksArmy and asked him for some advice about how to get my blog up and running and how I could make it better so that folks would want to read it.
I filled him in on my idea of watching the Comets games and then doing simple post-game reports. I knew that I didn’t have the capacity to include analytics in my work thanks to chemo brain, but I just wanted to report on the game and give my opinions of the players as the season went on. To my surprise, Dylan thought that was a decent idea, and he told me to leave it with him over the summer and that he may be able to find a spot for me with CanucksArmy for the upcoming season.
Fast forward to September of 2017, and I received a message from Dylan letting me know that he did indeed find a place for me with CanucksArmy to write Utica Comets post-game reports. I was honestly stunned that I was now going to be a writer for CanucksArmy… what a thrill!
I knew that I would need to have a distraction-free space in order to watch the games and be able to write up a report on them after, so I turned a portion of the 8×12 shed in my yard into my own little Utica Comets viewing area/writing nook and Ridin’ The Bus With The Utica Comets was born.
I spent the season watching games and doing my post-game reports, trying to improve my writing along the way. I had readers who would make suggestions, some of them good, some of them not so much, but many ended up becoming part of what made up my post-game reports. I still have plenty of work to do as far as my writing goes, but I do intend to continue making those improvements as I continue to learn.
On October 27th, which also happened to be my birthday, I was asked to join Dylan, along with Jon Abbott to talk about the Comets on Nation Network radio on TSN 1040… uh… wow! Hearing the former radio voice of the Canucks saying my name on the radio was pretty surreal.
That was my first time on the radio, and I will admit that I was crazy nervous and literally sweat right through my shirt while we were on the air. Chemo brain can make situations like that rather uncomfortable, so I vowed to myself that if I were ever to get another chance to be on the radio that I would make notes ahead of time and have them handy in case I needed them.
Over the course of the season, I was fortunate enough to be asked to go back on the air with Dylan and Jon a few more times, and I felt a little bit better about things each time. I can’t stress enough how huge this has been for me personally. Being on the radio is a cool experience that I never even fathomed as a possibility, but it was the fact that I was eventually able to more or less hold my own and not sweat through my clothes that gave me a feeling of accomplishment.
On April 16th of this year, I received a message from Andrew Wadden, the producer of the Sekeres and Price show on TSN 1040 asking me if I would like to join Blake Price and Jason Botchford to talk about the Utica Comets. I understand that Botchford went to bat for me on that one and I truly appreciate that. Never in a million years did I think I would be on the radio as a guest talking hockey with the likes of Botchford and Price… what world was this?
This entire season has been a massive learning curve for me, but as you can see above, I was afforded some incredible support from some pretty great people in the world of “Canucks Twitter”.
From my old high school buddy Mike who pointed me in the right direction as to who to follow when I was a Twitter newb, to Tron Funkinblow, who really got the ball rolling for me when I got into the whole Pshap thing, to Ian Cooper, (@1Cooop) who has been a constant source of encouragment for me, to writers like Jeremy Davis, Ryan Biech, and Dylan, whose work inspired me to want to try my hand at writing, to folks like Jason Botchford, Jon Abbott, and Blake Price who have provided me with way more exposure than I ever thought possible, I thank you. I don’t think any of you understand how much this has truly meant to me this season.
I would also like to thank Ben Birnell and Andy Zilch for all of their help this season. Ben is a writer for the Utica Observer-Dispatch, and he has been somewhat of a sounding board for me at times this season and has always been ready to “talk Comets” with me. Being able to ask questions of an experienced writer who is with the team all the time and have that person take the time to answer back was huge.
As for Andy Zilch, he is the play-by-play voice of the Comets, and he may not know how much he helped me this year. I can honestly say that without the quality with which he called the Comets games this season, I am quite sure that my post-game reports would have been lacking important details that I may have otherwise missed.
Finally, I want to thank any of you who have taken the time to read what I have written in this space this season. It truly has been a pleasure to be able to provide some Comets info and interact with so many of you on Twitter and through the comments sections of my articles.
In closing, I look forward to bringing you more Utica Comets content next season, but in the meantime, stay tuned as I will have a few more pieces trickling in for CanucksArmy over the next few weeks.
If you have been mentioned in this article, you have played a huge part, not only in my writing but also in helping me move forward as a person after what has been a fairly rough seven or so years for me personally. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
