A Thursday Evening Quickie

Check back tomorrow morning, as I'll probably do another live-blog summary of tonight's Predators-Canucks game, which starts especially late this evening. For some previews, check out Canucks Hockey Blog and Waiting for Stanley. This is a battle of the NHL's worst road team visiting the NHL's worst home team; just imagine the possibilities!

In other news, mega-congratulations go out to hockey blogger supreme Eric McErlain, who will lend his talents to the Sporting News twice a week. When I work out at the local Y, the Sporting News is the only sports rag available, and they could certainly use a boost in their NHL coverage. Well done, Eric!

UPDATE: Thanks to Mirtle for informing us of Spector's good news; he'll be writing for the Hockey News website weekly as well. Spector's been churning out great hockey writing and rumor vetting since Ye Olden Days of Ye Internet, i.e. the 20th century, and should be a great credit to the Hockey News.

Also, a recent feature over at Joe Pelletier's Legends of Hockey called "Taking a Stand" focuses on players who made huge differences due to special courage and determination. His latest example of that is Slava Fetisov. I've only got one personalized NHL jersey, and it's a #2 Fetisov jersey from his time in Detroit. Check Joe's profile out, it's always a good read over at Legends of Hockey.

Celebrating a milestone month

I've been remiss in providing regular updates on my quest to turn this whole sports-blogging hobby into at least something of a significant side income, if not a career, but good news has a way of prompting action. That, and I've been heads-down busy working on a few different fronts to push things forward...

Social Media, Internet Marketing, and Real, Paying Customers - it really works!

Applying the basic tenets of internet marketing (SEO best practices and social media network building) have helped me grow the readership and engagement over at On The Forecheck tremendously in recent years, but lately I've been wondering if those same techniques could be applied to small- or medium-sized local businesses, to help them drive real, tangible business results. I'm talking about not just drawing idle hockey fans looking to a blog so they can muse over line combinations, but helping businesses connect with potential customers in ways that otherwise wouldn't occur. Recently, I was able to help make just such a thing happen, and it shows just how great the opportunities are for small, local businesses which may not have the resources or skills available to extend their brand effectively on the internet.

NHL Fake Trades, an idea worth pursuing further in 2013

As I wrote about a month ago , I decided to jump upon a short-term opportunity and set up a "hot topic" website for the 2012 NHL Trade Deadline. NHLFakeTrades.com was inspired by a column by Eric Duhatschek of the Globe & Mail, who looked at the frenzy with which hockey fans jump on even the sketchiest of information about potential hockey trades, and wondered if some cash could be made by simply and forthrightly writing about fictitious trade scenarios. This meshed nicely with an exercise I went through a few years ago to create a Random Trade Generator, so in the course of a few hours I went ahead and registered the domain, set up a WordPress site using ( as I do at Hockey Gear HQ ) the wonderful Genesis framework with the News theme , and freshened up the Trade Generator for 2012. So how did it do, in terms of traffic, revenue, and accuracy of the trade projections? Let's take a look...

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