Born and raised in Vancouver, I left this beautiful city way back in 2005, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever return as a permanent resident.

It’s funny how sometimes the most unlikely paths lead you home.

A decade ago, I graduated from university and entered a shrinking local economy, the worst in 80 years. I took on a variety of odd jobs – mailroom clerk, bus tour guide, professional cartoon watcher – that barely paid the bills and left me bored to tears.

To maintain my sanity, I did what any rational, ambitious person would do: I started an Artem Chubarov parody account on Twitter.

I then converted a growing Twitter following into a social media-marketing job and several writing gigs. I joined Canucks Army and quickly became the managing editor, a role in which I shepherded a vacant platform into a cult resource for Canucks fans. I was always grinding, writing hundreds of articles a month, committed to making it work in an increasingly volatile media industry.

As Canucks Army evolved, it attracted other smart, young people as contributors and became a pipeline that a dizzying number of alumni have used to land jobs in hockey operations with NHL teams.

I never stopped working at Canucks Army until 2017, even as I moved between a variety of Toronto-based sports media companies, gaining experience as a journalist and making connections. I wrote a book about the history of the Canucks and was convinced that I would be a hockey writer for life. That’s when life took an unexpected, discombobulating turn.

I was working for Sportsnet at the Canucks garbage-bag day in April 2016 when my editor called me and told me I’d best book a flight to Fort Lauderdale. They had assigned me to cover the first-round playoffs series between the Florida Panthers and New York Islanders.

So I flew down, covered the hell out of an exciting series over the course of two weeks, and built relationships in the Panthers front office. Eight months later, the Panthers organization brought me aboard as VP, Public Relations and Communications.

I spent the better part of three seasons with the Panthers, learned a ton about the inner workings of an NHL team and had a chance to work with a tremendous group of people and athletes. The work in South Florida was challenging and gratifying, and I’m proud of what I accomplished in my time there.

Which brings us to today. I’m returning to my hometown of Vancouver to cover the Canucks for The Athletic.

I’m joining The Athletic because I’ve never stopped thinking of myself as a hockey writer.

I’m joining The Athletic because, while I enjoyed leading strategic communications for an NHL club, I longed for this opportunity, for a chance to get out from behind the scenes and tell great hockey stories directly.

And I’m joining The Athletic because there’s a torch that’s been left to us to carry.

Turning this introductory column over in my head, my thoughts return constantly to a friend, mentor and the most unique sports writer I’ve ever encountered: The irreplaceable Jason Botchford.

It was less than a year ago that we were going back and forth about his “Why I’m joining The Athletic” column:

What I wouldn’t give for the chance to have had that conversation in reverse these past few weeks. (And the results were spectacular.)

Botch was a supernova. I’m conscious of the responsibility we have at The Athletic Vancouver to carry his legacy forward, for a subscriber base he built, at an outlet that he vehemently believed could offer a sustainable, profitable way forward for high-quality coverage of professional sports.

There’s no replacing Botch’s inimitable style or the peerless impact he made in the Vancouver sports market in his professional life.

Our inheritance, however, will be Jason’s values: His stubborn determination that the hard questions get asked, his insistence that sportswriters should never take themselves too seriously, and his generosity – not just of spirit, but of information – that core belief that a reporter is responsible for entertaining, verifying and sharing what they know with their audience.

Generous as always, Botch even left us with a mission statement embedded in the middle of his letter.

“The Athletic Vancouver’s ecosystem will be unlike any of the platform’s other verticals. There will be opinions, analysis, great reporting, scoops, speculation, feuds, rumours, peeks-behind-curtains and a whole lot of shenanigans. There will be nothing like it in Vancouver or anywhere else.”

That’s the standard we’ll strive for with every sentence we type, every event we cover, every question we ask.

We’ll meet this standard by being at the rink constantly, covering the Canucks at home and away, providing exhaustive coverage of the club.

I’ll work hard every day to have some interesting conversations at the rink and share details you won’t find anywhere else in off-the-wall feature stories, original reporting and analysis of all things Canucks. I’ve learned a lot over the course of an eccentric career in hockey media and my perspective has changed significantly since working behind the curtain with an NHL club. I can’t wait to put that experience into practice.

This doesn’t start and end with me though. This is going to take an army.

Which is why The Athletic Vancouver will be the exclusive home of analysis from the “Boy Genius,” the most talented college dropout since Kanye, Harman Dayal. Harman will be unleashed this season.

Harman on road trips? Check.

Harman with more access? Also, check.

Harman with the resources and time he needs to track, analyze and form completely original, perception-altering conclusions from Canucks-centric data? Check and check.

Back in the fold, we’ve also got Wyatt Arndt, who will be unveiling a new-look postgame feature next month. The Athletties was Jason’s masterpiece, but we’ve got grand plans to use the talent at our disposal in a fun, collaborative way to present you with something unique and compelling.

We’ll be fleshing out the precise composition of the Canucks coverage team further in the weeks leading up to the hockey season, but I can tell you that The Athletic Vancouver has big, exciting plans to ramp up our coverage at the rink and away from it.

It’s good to be home and gearing up to cover what promises to be the most interesting Canucks season in half-a-decade. But it’s even better to be back among the VIPs.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, sign up here for a 40 percent discount to The Athletic today for access to all of our Canucks and NHL coverage this season.





(Main photo: Jamie McGinn and Thomas Drance with the Florida Panthers. Credit: Savannah Hollis)