Category: Site business

If you're old like me, you will remember when the cutting edge of hockey analysis and the finest writing was to be found, not on large corporate sites nor still less in newspapers, but on things called "blogs." Back when "67" was a Toronto Maple Leafs reference, people would start blogs that looked like hell, had no marketing to speak of besides word-of-mouth, were updated erratically as a rule, contained whatever the author found interesting, had no possibility whatsoever of making any money, and changed the way people thought about hockey: bringing serious statistical analysis to the game, at first, almost single-handed.

Those days are gone and shall never return. The "blog" has become a column on a corporate network at best; a Substack at worst. Young people are more likely to start a YouTube channel than a long-form writing enterprise, and the community of the comment section has become the community of the chat window. AI and social media motivate takes churned out at speed rather than 1,500 words about Stan Weir every third Wednesday.

That's not all bad: the gifted can now actually make money writing on the Internet (even I made some), and the really smart guys turned hobbies into thriving careers. Edmonton Oilers bloggers circa 2006 have more Stanley Cup rings than the post-Messier Edmonton Oilers, but as to bringing the style back, 2006 was twenty years ago. The old days had its excesses: I went along with some of them, and glad I am that they're lost in the mists of time. It had its limitations: we'd have killed for Hockey Reference or Natural Stat Trick in my hockey-writing era. Concepts that were once almost in-jokes, "Fenwick" and counting scoring chances, are now commonplace. For tastes to change with the times is no unhealthy thing.