Ten years of DGB

I just realized that this blog turned ten years old today.

My first thought, as is often case these days, was "Good lord I am getting so old." My second thought was that I should probably write something to mark the occasion. So that's this.

Ten years ago was an interesting time to start a hockey blog. Or more accurately, a Maple Leafs blog, since that's what this was before I cravenly sold out expanded my horizons. The Leafs had just fired John Ferguson Jr., we were in the middle of the whole "Muskoka Five" debacle, the Mats Sundin era was about to end and Brian Burke was a few months away from arriving. Meanwhile, Brendan Shanahan was scoring 20 goals for the Rangers, Lou Lamoriello was a Devil for life, and Auston Matthews was ten years old. It feels like a long time ago, because it was.

But that was the backdrop on a Friday afternoon when I wrote up the site's first ever post. It's not much – basically a quick reaction to the Leafs beating the Habs. The post is short, has a few attempts at jokes, and isn't very good. I'm pretty sure nobody read it.

That's pretty much how it went in the early days – anyone who's ever tried to create anything on the internet if familiar with that sinking feeling that you're just talking to yourself. But it was fun, and eventually a few things I tried ended up working well enough to attract actual readers. From there it was on to stuff like the flow chart, the game seven summary, and countless top secret transcripts. I spent an entire month writing about my all-time favorite player, dabbled in the parody music genre, and wrote a heartfelt post that ended with a poop joke that my kids still think is hilarious. A certain fake Twitter account probably helped along the way. So did countless bigger, better sites that were willing to offer a signal boost to an amateur.

Looking back, some of it still holds up well. An awful lot of it doesn't. But eventually, the audience got big enough that it led to the National Post, which led to Grantland, which led to Sportsnet and Vice and books and various other stops along the way. I got to be on the ice for two Stanley Cup celebrations and meet more than a few of my idols. Eventually, this became a full-time career. There are good days and bad days like any job, but on balance, it's been pretty great.

This is the part where I feel like I should impart some profound advice. At least once a month, I get an email from an aspiring writer who wants to follow the same path that I did, and I always feel like I always let them down with my response, which is basically this: Get really lucky. That's it. That's what I did. You have to have some talent and be willing to put in the work, but the key is to fluke your way into being in the right place at the right time and then have a bunch of very nice people help you for no real reason. That's the secret, as far as I've been able to tell.

So since I don't have much in the way of advice, I'll just say thanks. Some of you reading this are the same small group of people who were reading ten years ago. Some have come aboard along the way. Some of you just clicked a link to this post and have no idea what this is all about but have read this far hoping it's building to a payoff somewhere, and are slowly realizing that it is not. But I owe a huge thank you to anyone who's read anything I've ever put out there, and especially to anyone who's helped spread the word. So… thanks.

It's been an interesting ten years. I'd love to do this for ten more. The way the sports writing world works these days, I'm not sure any of us can look much further ahead than ten weeks. Either way, it's been and continues to be a fun ride. I hope you stick around for whatever comes next.

- Sean