RLD has reached its final stop

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