To anyone else, this blog post will not symbolise all that much.
To me, it’s the start of a whole new chapter.
I’ve been writing articles and blogs, recording podcasts and making videos about a bundle of different things over recent years, primarily sports-related. It’s been fun to do and I’ve learned a lot; however the more I’ve been working on my research and preparation for the coming hockey season, the more I’ve realised that I’m spreading myself too thinly.
That has led to a strangely cathartic process of gradually closing down some of my other content commitments. My football (soccer) blog and YouTube channel, a music project that had run its course, and a 25-year love affair with baseball that has been torn out of me by MLB’s ongoing shameful act of moving the A’s out of Oakland.
I knew that I wanted to redirect my energies towards increasing my work around hockey, but that meant making a choice of continuing what I was doing or starting again.
The former option was by far the easiest approach, yet it felt to me like one I would regret. You see, my previous hockey content involved dabbling in little fun pieces under the banner of Daft As Puck. Although the name summed up the vibe initially, as time passed I realised that it was slightly at odds with where I was going with the content. I wasn’t doing things that were “all about the bantz”, as the name perhaps suggested, nor did I have any inclination to do so.
I also found it was causing confusion, especially with European hockey fans for whom English was not their first language. If you have to explain your brand name after someone’s watched your latest video, it’s a tell-tale sign that the name just doesn’t work any longer.
Which leads me to here: Hockey With Ice.
The name comes from an experience that will be familiar to other hockey fans based in the UK. Over here, when someone says “hockey”, most people will think of what is known in other parts of the world as “field hockey”. The problem is that watching and listening to North American coverage means I invariably say “hockey” without thinking about it, only to have to clarify I mean “ice hockey”.
Discussing this in a pub recently led to overhearing someone say “… with ice please, mate” at the bar and that seemed a good way to put it when it came to this great sport too.
So, it’s hockey with ice from now on.
