Thanks, feel free to subscribe and comment! Would love to hear your thoughts!

Coming up, I've got essays in the pipeline on the NHL's gestures towards progressive politics; what it means to be underrated; the aesthetics of Soviet hockey; and the decline of hockey's drinking culture. Stay tuned!

And then, most recently, I wrote about the origins of the advance stats vs experiential hockey knowledge debate, and how to think about where we are in the history of hockey metrics.

In the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series, I went to a professional hockey game in Switzerland and wrote about fans, nonfans, and whether hockey is "fractal."

Then I made some mid-season award picks based purely on narratives, vibes, and how fun and fitting it would be for a given player to win--and riffed on how rare and special it is for NHL players to be Jewish.

My first real essay was an argument against NHL expansion. The more teams there are, the less likely any given team, and player, is to win the Stanley Cup. If we have too many teams, we risk devaluing the playoffs--but I love the Columbus Blue Jackets, and I don't want them to leave.

I feel like the essay speaks for itself

This looks like a great job. But on the other hand, we could question the basis for hockey stats as a way of knowing at all, and dissolve into paranoia:

nordiquesfancorner.substack.com/p/a-brief-hi...

Hi LT, you're one of my favourite hockey writers and an inspiration for why I got into this. Would love to hear your thoughts on my new blogging project, exploring hockey culture and politics in the 2020s. Keep up the amazing work!

nordiquesfancorner.substack.com/p/manifesto-...

Really happy for some more Quebec content--and would love to see the PWHL there. This is expansion I can get behind. I wrote about that a couple weeks ago:

nordiquesfancorner.substack.com/p/against-nh...

Is the NHL more likely to a) avoid giving other players long suspensions for a while so it doesn't have to suspend Connor McDavid, or b) suspend McDavid for a long time to make a point?