Ho boy.
There are so many things to love about www.hockeybuzz.com.
When did you start coming here? This strange little corner of the internet that the hockey world forgot about.
A place where news, opinions from bold to mild, rumors, “rumors”, and general hockey talk collide to form somewhere that simply isn’t anywhere else.
Sure, other forums are out there. Reddit, Twitter, and Bluesky exist as larger entities. Places where you don’t usually recognize the person that you’re communicating with, places with defined algorithms that, I think we can all agree, are continuously doing something nefarious to our brains.
In it's own way, hockeybuzz achieves the quintessential internet experience that we all expect, but can’t really get anymore from going to other places for sports.
You can debate the comings and goings of any given team with usually some active user. You can maintain a friendship for decades without having to ask someone’s name. You share the human experience that follows the trials and tribulations of a professional hockey team.
I’ve been on here since 2004. Most of it as the user fry. No capitals.
In 2004, the rumors hit hard. The insiders of today were grinding out the early stages of their careers, and we hadn’t yet gotten to the current pillars of inside information that we see today with Lebrun, Seravalli, Friedman, etc.
The
30 Thoughts column was nine years from its inception. Podcasts were still played on IPods and had nothing to do with sports. I can’t remember if Spectors Hockey was around, and, for rumors, you had to either read a made-up one in a forum or check out what Ek may have heard.
What may be the most impressive was what the site got out of its writers.
Eklund’s little corner of the internet founded the careers of a murderer’s row of great hockey analysts.
Eric Engels and Aaron Portzline currently of The Athletic. Carol Schram, Bill Meltzer, Mike Augello, and Karine Hains of The Hockey News. Sheng Peng (who is quietly the best hockey journalist on the planet) of San Jose Hockey Now and NBC Sports. Travis Yost of TSN. Kevin Allen of Detroit Hockey Now, formerly of USA Today.
Those are off the top of my head. There are many more that found this little rock and used it as a jumping point or a hitching post. Something that Ek should be immensely proud of.
The wildest part of being a step ladder for these careers is that the expectation for the role at Hockeybuzz was overtly simple.
Have a voice.
No editor. No deadlines. Growing careers out of a zero-pressure environment.
There
must be a lesson there.
As for me, it’s time. I’m not done writing, but a change of pace is required. Last season, I mostly left for Calgary Hockey Now. Hockeybuzz was happy to have me provide a skeleton of content, but between the two entities, I ran out of sauce; the stuff that good writing is made up of.
This season, I returned to solely writing for the Buzz (other than the odd piece for CHN), and it’s been less intensive, which I figured would allow for more sauce per article. It worked. Houzah.
The next step is finding a balance between creating stuff I'm proud of and putting out enough content to be economically viable. With AI on the horizon likely taking over most of this industry, we're looking at a tough prospect—but as long as I'm enjoying it, who gives a ****?
I started here at the beginning of the 2021-22 preseason. After a solid month of pretending that I knew what the hell was going on with the Las Vegas Golden Knights (it was mostly injuries), I made a move and landed John Gove’s briefly forsaken spot as beat writer for the Calgary Flames.
A position I cherish.
Calgary went on to post their second-best season in franchise history. A 50-21-11 record. A first round victory over the Dallas Stars in seven games. Yep. That’s about it. Nothing else notable happened that postseason.
And then the team began to implode. We were all there to watch as five years of rebuilding and four years of trying to compete went piece by piece out the window.
Gaudreau left. Tkachuk demanded a trade and was shipped to Florida. While a deep team still existed as a hull, the big sails were gone, and the smaller canvases were on their way off the mast.
The talent simply walked.
All five top ten picks in Elias Lindholm, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, and Noah Hanifin that were brought in between 2013 and 2018 moved on. Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau replaced them as resident early draft picks, albeit in their early 30’s.
The important part is that, just like all of us, the Flames keep changing. And at Hockeybuzz, you could check in and be there for it with the same group that had been there for everything before that.
A 96-point finish outside of the playoffs is a setback, but good things are going on with that team that even the fans are picking up on.
The vibes are that of a story just beginning.
I would like to finish this with as much gratitude as I can. The internet is a bitter place for anyone creating content. The nature of communicating through screens with people who you can't physically reach leaves enough anonymous security that anyone can say basically anything without consequences.
But here, people are nice, encouraging, and hopeful. From day one, we’ve been on this journey together. And when I started contributing, there was nothing but gratitude and upliftment. A quintessential ingredient to the sauce and a major reason I kept going.
So here is to the past, the future, and of course, the present that we all share. I’m raising my glass to all of you guys tonight—and you better know I’ll be making a night of it.
Thanks for being here. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Trevor
Follow @Trevor_Neufeld
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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