One of the things I didn’t realize during my first year running this site is how long the offseason can feel when your team is out early. The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in my first year, which is kinda like buying your kid a Mercedes when he’s 7 years old. The offseason also lasted like four weeks once you include the post-championship celebration.
This offseason, by comparison, feels like four years. It’s actually more like four months, but after the Blackhawks’ playoff smackdown at the hands of the Predators, we’re all probably a little antsy to see this team try to redeem itself next season. Whatever that team might look like.
We’ll have loads of coverage in the coming weeks on the expansion draft, entry-level draft, free agency, and whatever trades GM Stan Bowman has up his sleeve, but this also seems like a good time to start a mailbag.
My goal here is twofold: (a) provide more compelling offseason content for everyone to read when there’s not a steady flow of big news (b) create more of a give-and-take relationship with you guys, the readers, who give this whole website a reason to exist in the first place.
So I’m going to lay out the ground rules here for how this will work, then we can get into it.
- Questions will be submitted primarily through Twitter, where we’ll post weekly tweets requesting questions from people. You can also DM our Twitter account (@2ndCityHockey), which we’re opening up so anyone can do that.
- Mailbags will be posted weekly on Fridays, unless we don’t get enough questions to justify doing one. If that happens, I’ll try to let everyone know and ask for more questions so we can get back on the horse the following week. Ideally we’d get enough momentum this won’t be an issue.
- Preferred topics will be the Blackhawks and the NHL, although that’s not going to be a hard rule. Want to ask us about TV shows? Or the best food to eat while watching a hockey game? Or which of our writers is the best at making puns? Go for it. But this will be a hockey mailbag first and foremost.
- If I call it a mailsatchel, don’t yell at me. It’s funny. I swear. /
So that’s about it! We’re going to aim for the first one to go up on Friday assuming we get enough questions. If anyone already has feedback for how to make this as good as possible, let me know in the comments below! Thanks y’all!