Creative experience
Having built my first website at thirteen while still unsure of my niche, I made my first foray into the hockey blogosphere in 2007 with the launch of the original edition of The Faceoff Circle, managing a small but determined staff and associated message board and building an early foothold in the hockey blog landscape. The Faceoff Circle has re-opened in various forms throughout the years as a landing spot for ideas and concepts I’d like to try out. I also operated the Toronto-focused LeafsHQ and MarliesHQ platforms between 2009 and 2013. I was one of the first people to bring NHL highlights to the masses on YouTube (even beating the league itself to the punch), and a part of creating the game and league’s initial foothold on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Digg (RIP) and Reddit.
Between 2013 and 2017, I wrote over 1500 articles on The Nation Network, beginning as a contributor on The Leafs Nation and ending as the Managing Editor of Hockey Content, with stints managing Canucks Army, Wings Nation, and The Leafs Nation along the way. It was here where I developed consistency in my writing, began a greater curiosity for hockey analytics, and gained a better understanding of being a piece of a team environment. It is also where I began to do more credentialed work, covering major NHL events such as Winter Classics and the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, along with continuing the decade of experience covering the AHL’s Toronto Marlies that began on my own platforms.
During the 2017/18 NHL season, I served as a Digital Content Producer for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment and the Toronto Maple Leafs, creating social media graphics and game clips for their community managers and editing content on MapleLeafs.com. Between March 2022 and November 2024, I worked with Better Collective Canada with a primary focus on their Canada Sports Betting property as they expanded into the Canadian market. This began as an evergreen role as we updated the platform to BC standards and evolved into an Editorial and Social media role where I informed readers on Hockey, Soccer, Baseball, and other sports with a hybrid of traditional media, advanced analysis, and betting angles.
This journey has been me with no shortage of memories, experience, and lessons, developing me from a curious teenager to a multi-faceted creative talent. It’s required me to learn how to operate in independent and team environments of many sizes, how to both create for platforms and manage them, how to get ahead of the game with some online trends as well as react to others and pushed me to look at new angles of topics that I care about.
operations experience
Along my time covering the Toronto Marlies beat, I noticed a lack of public information available at the American Hockey League level and, on one of the renditions of The Faceoff Circle, spent much of the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons hand-tracking my own data, to gain a better understanding for the team and it’s opponents, ask more informed questions to players and coaches, and pass along the insights to my readers. This experience made me curious about applying these insights directly to teams and getting more involved in hockey operations.
Since then, I’ve been involved in the Ontario Junior Hockey League, one of Canada’s top Junior A leagues. I spent my first season and a half with the St. Michael’s Buzzers before the COVID-19 pandemic. I returned to the league after the pandemic with the North York Rangers, joined the same core staff at the Toronto Patriots, and then moved on to the Markham Royals in 2023/24. Presently, I’m the Assistant General Manager of the Royals, contributing with everything from player evaluation and scouting, along with overseeing the expansion and operation of our creative & scouting staff as we look to build the organization up to one of Canada’s top programs.
Working in junior hockey has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I continue to learn more about myself and the game every single day while being able to help younger players and staff achieve their goals. I am passionate about the game and especially enjoy the development process, which has made this a perfect fit. I want to continue to grow on this side of the sport, particularly specializing in scouting or management.