The Hockey News, owners of the most respected printed hockey publication on the planet, recently made what could be the most questionable decision in their 61 year history. They asked yours truly to start a Hurricanes blog for them.
Hopefully, they have done proper research on this site and know exactly what they are getting themselves into.
Seriously, I feel honored and privileged to be offered such an opportunity. As I have mentioned before on the blog, Canes Country receives a multitude of emails every day. Some of the emails are requests to write articles, or for permission to copy articles, or even to start blogs for other sites and online sports networks. I do the best that I can, but in some cases I just have to say no.
You don't say no to The Hockey News, or at least I couldn't. But I admit that while I am a huge fan of their printed publication and have been a subscriber in the past, I am somewhat ignorant about their online presence. It's not a site that I used to visit frequently, but that will certainly change in the coming weeks and months.
Their intent is to eventually enlist enough writers to blog for all 30 NHL franchises. They have a few teams covered already and a couple of familiar faces joined me yesterday, Dirk from the Forechecker, (Nashville) and RJ from the Boltsblog, (Tampa Bay).
First and foremost, I don't want anyone to worry that this site will suffer now, because of this decision. Canes Country will still be my primary focus. I have big plans for this blog, and if anything it should be busier than ever in the coming season. My new partnership with THN will probably help to fuel that growth.
The Hockey News has been gracious enough to offer me complete autonomy for the new blog. I can post as often, or as little as I want to. Of course it makes no sense for that project to be dormant, so I plan to be as active as I can be over there. Also, I'm not planning on just copying and pasting my posts from here, over to that site like I have done in the past with other projects. While I might touch on a subject here and elaborate more over there, (and vice versa), I will try to keep things a bit different from blog to blog.
I have added the RSS feed for the new blog on the right sidebar with the other feeds so that readers will notice if there are any updates, and can check it out accordingly. I will probably add a few more RSS feeds in the near future.
A couple of the writers for THN have been less than kind to southern hockey teams, including the Hurricanes, in some of their past articles. I considered dropping my nickname for this new project and leaving "Bubba" over here at Canes Country. But I decided against that because I thought that if I started taking myself too seriously and this blogging business stopped being fun, the writing would probably suffer.
Besides, I want to keep having fun.
Finally, once again I would like to thank all of you who keep reading this blog, especially those of you who have taken the time to email me or leave comments of encouragement. Considering that Canes Country is just a bit over two years old, the growth and steady readership is truly amazing. I really appreciate the support.