After
four-plus years of the site’s existence, today marks the end of the Red Light
District Hockey blog.
I
never hoped this day would come. And at
the same time, I never thought RLD Hockey would live to see this day.
When
I started this blog in 2008 I was a senior in high school looking for a place
to share my thoughts and predictions on the NHL and game of hockey. I thought I’d keep it for a month or
two. Upwards of 3,500 posts later, here
we are…
At
no point did I ever believe RLD Hockey would become what it is today. In June of 2010, RLD Hockey was credentialed
for the NHL Awards in Las Vegas, the first of five league-wide events
(including the last two Winter Classics) I was fortunate enough to cover for
the site. On top of that, the site was
credentialed by the Nashville Predators for the past two seasons. As a result to that access I gained with the
Predators, I started a team-centric site called Smashville 24/7.
Throughout
the course of this past season, I found myself enjoying covering the Predators more
than the daily grind of RLD Hockey. Running
two sites at once on a daily basis became a hassle, which is the main reason
why RLD Hockey is closing up shop today.
From
this point forward I will be focusing full-time on the Predators at Smashville
24/7 and a new role at Sportsnet, which will allow me more free time to enjoy
the game of hockey (and other things) instead of writing about it non-stop.
Over
the last two years, I was lucky enough to be able to add some talented writers
to the staff here at RLD Hockey. I would
like to thank each and every one of them for helping keep RLD Hockey afloat
until now:
Christian
Arnold
Tab
Bamford
Dan
Berlin
Carolyn
Christians
Anthony
Curatolo
Patrick
Hoffman
Brian
Huddle
Alexander
Monaghan
Jackson
Oakes
Michael
Perkins
Bryan
Reynolds
Christina
Roberts
Erika
Schnure
Michael
Smith
David
Strehle
Chris
Tremulis
Chris
Wassel
Bill
Whitehead
There
are also a few people I’d like to individually thank:
Patrick
Hoffman & Alexander Monaghan… When either things got hectic for me at
Smashville 24/7 or when I was on vacation, these two did all of the
behind-the-scenes work to keep this site going.
I can’t thank them enough.
Buddy
Oakes… Buddy, from Preds On The Glass, didn’t write one word for RLD over the
years, but he was an inspiration. He
convinced me to join Twitter to branch out in social media. He also convinced me to keep at it when I
wanted to give up blogging altogether.
Buddy and I also co-hosted over 70 shows on our podcast, ‘RLD Hockey
Talk’.
NHL
/ Predators PR… Thanks to the NHL and Nashville Predators PR for not only
believing in RLD Hockey, but bloggers as a whole. They have both embraced bloggers/online
media, and they helped this site grow into a bigger entity.
Chris
Wassel… In the early days when 5-10 people came to the site every day, Chris
was one of the handful of people that visited RLD Hockey. He endlessly promoted the site pre-social
media and is a big reason why I even kept it going after a few months.
It
was a fun ride, but now it’s time for RLD Hockey to come to an end. Thanks to our readers, thanks to everyone for
your hard work, and we’ll see you around the NHL blogosphere soon enough!
Sincerely,
Ryan
Porth
Managing
Editor and Founder, RLD Hockey
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