I’ve been waiting so long for this day that now I’m not sure where to start. But here we go.

Starting today, The Athletic is officially expanding across Canada. We are investing in building one of the largest sports media companies in this country, and we’re doing so because of the incredible support from readers to our Toronto site in our first year here.

In late February, I flew to California and proposed this idea to the co-founders of The Athletic, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann. It was a concept that resonated with them largely because, while we were a Toronto-focused site, from the very beginning we had subscribers signing up in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax — you name it.

I’ve long believed that sports fans in this country have been underserved with the quality of coverage they get. Now we get to try to help change that for fans of the Canucks, Flames, Oilers, Jets, Senators, Canadiens and the CWHL.

Let’s start with a few caveats, as I know there’ll be many questions about why we are doing what we are. The vast majority of this initial expansion will be aimed at hockey coverage. Sincere apologies to the fans of the CFL, MLS and other sports and leagues, but we need to be strategic at this early stage and, well, hockey is king in Canada. It has also been integral to The Athletic‘s growth to date.

The other thing to keep in mind is that launching in six cities all at once is such a monumental challenge that we will be building out their staffs gradually, with one or two hires per city beginning this week. (Montreal is the exception. Editor-in-chief Arpon Basu will be unveiling his terrific team — and sites/apps in both languages — in the very near future.)

That said, the markets that add subscribers early on will be invested in quickly. Our medium-term goal is to eventually have full staffs in every Canadian NHL city and to cover more than just hockey in those markets.

I hope we get there. It means this worked.

In addition to the writers we have started to add in various markets, I’m very excited to announce the following additions and changes to our national team and management staff:

As announced earlier today, Pierre LeBrun will be our senior NHL columnist and spearhead our national coverage, including attending all of the significant league events. Pierre is one of the very best in the business, and we’re incredibly lucky to have him in a leadership role at this early stage.

His work will be supplemented by our existing hockey staff, several of whom will now be writing regularly about all of the Canadian teams instead of just Toronto. That includes Tyler Dellow and Justin Bourne, but also newcomers like Karolina Urban, who will be writing about women’s hockey with the perspective of someone who has played professionally.

On the editing side, Sunaya Sapurji joins us full-time as assistant managing editor after being an integral member of our editing staff in Toronto the past three months. Sunaya will also write about the Leafs and hockey in general this season.

And Ian Denomme, previously of The Hockey News and Yahoo Sports, becomes deputy editor of The Athletic Canada project, with a focus on shaping our NHL coverage.

Credit: LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images

If you’d like to subscribe to The Athletic Canada and get all of our coverage, we’re offering a low introductory rate at this link over the next few days. Articles on your favourite team should begin appearing in the coming days. You can start by following our new NHL accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

We also have a launch event planned for Sept. 27 in downtown Toronto. All subscribers can attend free of charge and meet Pierre and the rest of our staff. There will be T-shirts.

Again, we hope this is just the start for this project. You will see more names joining us in the coming days, on this site and social media. Many of these writers will have a significant following in the market they’ve been hired in order to help get us established in that city. But we are still hiring, too, and looking beyond the big names.

On that front, Toronto managing editor Sean Fitz-Gerald is going to be leading a project this fall aimed at finding new talent and giving more young writers an opportunity with The Athletic, something that has been a priority for us from Day 1. More details on that will be released in the weeks to come.

Thank you for your support,

James