October 27, 2007.
That’s the date of the first post here at Second City Hockey.
The Chicago Blackhawks were just emerging from their doldrums, then ripped off a trio of Stanley Cup championships. It’s now been eight years since and, probably for the first time since 2015, it does feel like there’s a genuine plan in place to return the team to contention.
And, just as we were approaching the bottom of this plummet, with the potential turnaround moment that is the 2023 NHL Draft inching closer and closer on the calendar, Vox Media decided to pull the plug on us.
What’s transpired in the last month has been a confusing and confounding and challenging and frustrating process but one that’s ultimately resulted in a decision which can be summarized perfectly in this GIF:
We ain’t dead yet, folks.
As you may have read at Broad Street Hockey or at Blueshirt Banter or Die by the Blade or a bunch of other sibling sites, Vox Media has extended our contracts for another month — now through the end of March — and then they’ll be giving us this URL so that we can venture off on our own, and we intend to bring all of you with us.
The logistics of that will be sorted out as we transition this site from what it is now to what it’ll be in the future. Know that one of our primary goals is to keep the community that exists here intact.
Here’s where you come in.
There are three things that you can do, right now, to help us as we start this process:
- Take this short survey, which will provide us with demographics on our community that can be shared with potential investors, should that possibility arise.
- We have started a GoFundMe to raise funds for the next chapter of SCH. These funds will help take care of the people who’ll be keeping this website going. It’ll also help cover the expenses that will now be our responsibility, including a different publishing platform, photo licenses, and countless other logistical items.
3. Share this post to every damn corner of the internet that exists.
There will be elements of what we’re going to do that will likely end up behind a paywall. We would much rather do that than utilize ads. We’re still working on all of those details and the funds raised, along with the information obtained from that survey, will help us finalize all of the things we hope to accomplish as we move the site forward. Again, our primary goal is to keep this community together.
This place has been around for over 15 years now and there’s no fucking way it’s going to die on our watch without a fight — so here is that fight. And with the potential for a resurgence of the hockey club that brought us all together lurking in the months and years ahead, we can’t think of anywhere else we’d want to be for that ride than at Second City Hockey dot com.
We’re not saying that this next version of Second City Hockey is going to guarantee that the Blackhawks are about to go on another streak of unfathomable success … but we’re not not saying that, either.