Let me be 100% clear about this: It has absolutely nothing to do with the team's performance last year. Truth be told, had one more puck ended up in the net against Minnesota-Duluth a couple of years ago, this would have happened sooner. It's been a long time coming, and given that I'm going to be out of the country for the first month of the season, it just makes sense to me to do it now.
I'll still be just as big of a fan as always, I'll still be posting on Twitter (@YostBuilt) on a very regular basis since Twitter is my favorite thing ever, and I'll probably chime in on The Yost Post more often than I have been the past couple of years. If you want to get at me via email, the link to my address is still there. Hell, I'll probably get the itch to comment on the team a few times throughout the year on here and thanks to RSS feeds and Twitter I'll hopefully reach most of my usual audience when I do write. But this site isn't going to be a regular source of information this year.
The past couple of seasons a lot of what I've done on this blog has felt like more of a chore than something I loved doing. I loved writing the recruiting posts and I loved writing recaps of the games I actually got to watch. It was really hard for me to write previews that got increasingly more cookie-cutter and to recap games by watching the MGoBlue highlights--things that needed to be done for completeness, but ultimately were just a pain.
I play hockey on Friday nights during the winter so I'd miss a lot because of that. A big part of my desire to take some time off, though, is that I sit in front of a computer all day at work and I don't really want to fire up the laptop when I get home anymore. I also haven't had the time to put out the content that I used to put out. I also took a look back at some of the stuff I wrote before I was employed and it was head-and-shoulders better than anything I've written in the recent past outside of the few occasions I've gotten really fired up. Stupid real world getting in the way.
As far as what the future holds? We'll see. It's possible that next year will roll around and I'll reboot this thing. It's possible that I'll decide I don't really miss writing and this will be an occasional thing from here forward (though I don't expect that since I'm already getting somewhat excited while writing this post). It's possible that once I move back to Michigan (hopefully in the next couple of years) and can actually attend games again I'll pick the coverage back up. It's also possible I'll really miss writing once the season starts and I'll do my best waffle (Brett Favre and Dominik Hasek are my favorite athletes, after all) and I'll be back at it this year. We'll have to see.
I've had a blast writing this blog over the past 8 years (Dear God, it's been 8 years?) and it's going to be weird for me when hockey season rolls around and I'm not racing to my computer to comment on the games. It's been an unbelievable experience. I've met a lot of great people, made several friends (including a couple of people that became good enough friends of mine and my wife's that they served as a groomsman and a bridesmaid in our wedding, which, to make friends like that makes all the hours I've put in on this site worth it), I've done a lot of cool things, made a (very) little bit of money, and along the way I even got to break a couple of stories (and had the pain of dealing with off-the-record stuff that I wanted to break but couldn't). If I never do more than this, it's been a pretty amazing ride.
I have to thank the following people: Brian Cook and Chris Dilks for inspiring me to start a blog of my own through their excellent work. Bill Rapai for all the photos. Mike Spath, Bob Miller, and the excellent writers from The Michigan Daily and the other fine publications out there for doing all the hard work and writing the stories that I was just able to comment on. Anybody who took the time to read what I wrote, comment on what I wrote, and/or linked to what I wrote (particularly Brian, given that this site would have about 1/3 of the traffic it has without MGoBlog linking to my stories). The folks who emailed me tips from time to time-it was always a thrill to know something (whether I could post about it or not). The SIDs for their excellent work (and Trev for any trouble I may have caused if anyone (incorrectly, I might add) ever assumed he was my source for something). The guys who have suited up for the Maize and Blue over the past decade and a half for cultivating my love of college hockey, especially Shawn Hunwick, Carl Hagelin, Jack MFing Johnson, Jed Ortmeyer, Kevin Porter, and Chad Kolarik. The Children of Yost past and present for making the games so damn fun. It was great to be a part of that group for 7 years while I was around Ann Arbor. And anyone else that I forgot to mention, because there undoubtedly were some.
So yeah. I'm excited to see the newest edition of the Wolverines--I think it will be a much better year. I love outdoor hockey and there will be plenty of it this December with the GLI and the Winter Classic festivities. I'm excited to see if Michigan makes good on last season's report that they were going to have streaming video for this year. I'm excited for any chance I have to get back to Yost. I'm more than excited to see this schedule that we're facing this year. It's going to be one great game after another. I'm excited to see the B1G Hockey Conference and how the college game evolves because of it. As always, FYS and F the O. And I'm hopeful that after some time off, I'll rediscover my love for blogging about all of it.
Thanks for reading.
