Status Update

Hey everyone,

As I’m sure some of you who follow me through social media and this site have noticed, I’ve been a little bit more involved online in the past month or so. With junior and minor hockey seasons wrapped up in March, I had a bit of time without a ton to do on the work hockey front, before summer leagues and camps and the like began.

In April, I decided I’d poke around the Toronto Marlies, a team I’d covered for a decade in a younger state of my life, for a few weeks to keep busy. I figured it would be a fun couple weeks while I gave next season some thought. They’ve since had different plans, going on a Cinderella-ish run to the Calder Cup Final that will go on for at least another week and change. I guess they were excited to have me back in the building? Either way, it’s kept me in the rink.

The big club has kept us all talking too, with staff changes, draft lottery wins, and uncertainties. That doesn’t even scratch the surface on the rest of the NHL and hockey world at all, which has been a firehose of discussion-worthy material in recent weeks.

All of this is to say, I expected to have a gap period to make this post make more sense within at some point. I don’t think one will come, though, so let’s just get straight to the point:

I’m shifting back to prioritizing public work in 2026/27.

Why Am I Coming Back?

When I put this blog up last August, I said the following about contributing the odd article or two throughout the year:

All the same, it’s hard to shake the hobby where I’ve been most comfortable over the years. I enjoy the process of outlining my thoughts. I enjoy the conversations that come out of them (at least, the constructive ones). I enjoy having reference points to go back to later. So in that sense, the itch is back, and I’m here to scratch it again.

That much remains true, and if anything, has only felt more evident over the past few months. Writing was my original entry point into the game and I live for the discussion that comes out of it. It forces me to think in layers, consider more viewpoints, and get more creative. I badly needed the time away from doing this regularly, never completely falling off the grid but taking a decidedly scaled-back step from the noise. But I feel like I’m more mentally equipped to dive into the discourse than I have been in years.

I also feel like the hockey media landscape, both locally and at large, is gearing up for another correction or vibe shift at some point down the line here, and I want to be a part of that. I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to the blogosphere and early social media of the late 2000’s and early-mid 2010’s, but I do think people are getting sick of the clickbait-focused, algorithm-gaming, AI-generating landscape of today. I think there are only so many hours in the day for a million reaction podcasts and I think relying too much on short-form video for analysis is going to leave people feeling a little empty. Not to say that all of this will go away or that there’s no place for any of it, but I can see there being an appetite for straight-forward, laid out, readable conversation again in our near future. I think I can contribute to that.

What This Means For Team Work

Generally speaking, the current plan is less of it, though not none of it.

The most apparent change is that I won’t be returning to the Markham Royals for next season. This is a decision I had largely made for myself midway through the season as the idea of shifting back to public work began to unfold, and one that I confirmed to the team earlier in the spring.

A huge thanks goes to the Hyman family for bringing me on board in 2023 and trusting me throughout the process, along with head coaches Mike Galati and Steve McSwain, and all of our fantastic staff and players over the past three seasons. I learned a ton from my time in Markham, both from our contending push in my first year followed by the rebuilding process over the past two years, and in learning the intricacies of operating a team on a day-to-day level.

I also want to thank and wish the best of luck to the new majority ownership group that’s taking over in Markham. I appreciated their interest in having me back for next year and have been helping them with the transition over the past little while, but my mind was already on this focus shift before the changeover had occurred.

Working in Junior Hockey since 2018 has been a great experience both from the perspective of learning more about the mechanics of the sport, and in giving me a way to stay involved in the game when I needed to focus myself away from the media end. I don’t want to leave all of that behind, but if I’m going to lean back into covering the pros more, I’m going to need some of that work time back.

I’m going to work out the exact mechanics of what that means in the coming weeks and months. Odds are it means me helping out some friends in the age group on a smaller scale to maintain some resources and involvement that will help out with the plan at large.

What’s The Plan?

So with that said, there needs to be a plan here. Without going into depth on every intricacy, the general idea in place is as follows:

• I will create a Toronto-hockey focused platform in the coming months. I will not rush launching this. The world has been just fine with me writing sporadically for the past several years, it can wait for me to put everything up when I’m ready.
• The primary public-facing focus will be news and analysis surrounding the Maple Leafs organization, top to bottom. That’s always been my bread and butter when I’ve been focused on the writing front, so we’ll focus on that. I’m sure I’ll have moments where I’ll want to talk about news around the NHL umbrella as well, but I’m not going to over-stretch and promise coverage-at-large, at least to start.
• I would like to work a component in to talk about the local junior and minor hockey scenes as well, bringing some of my tracking and scouting workflow to a more public audience instead of keeping it in the hands of one team.
• As mentioned in the first section, my priority here is written work. I’ve been asked for years if I’ll ever mix in a podcast or video, and while I’m not shutting that door, I’m not preparing for it. I’m all for guesting on other people’s platforms, and maybe there’s a day where I grab a microphone in a situation where I’m carried by a much more skilled co-host, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that outcome right now.
• I’ll have to figure out the balance of how much of the above will be done in person, and how much will be from afar. I’d love to be in the press boxes and rinks as much as possible, but there are only so many hours in the day and a lot of these schedules overlap, so I might be making best friends with a PVR next season. I’ll also need teams/leagues to be interested in having me around, which is easier said than done when you’re starting from semi-scratch.

Ideally, this new site (let’s be honest, it’ll probably be the 38th rendition of The Faceoff Circle), will launch before September, when the various leagues begin to shift to season mode. In the meantime, I’m going to try to be more active on here while I get back into routine. The Marlies run has given me a great spark in that sense, but I’ll start integrating more topics as we go here. The last thing I want is to come out of the bullpen cold. The best material from here will then be carried over to the new site.

I’m also giving myself a couple months of warning track here so I can enjoy the summer a bit. I’ve got some personal/real world odds and ends I’d like to get sorted out before I go head first into this, to put myself in the best position to succeed when that time comes.

Is This All Set In Stone?

Technically not, I guess. While this has been the idea in my head for months now, I’ve mostly kept it to myself and my closest friends, so no one’s really been aware of my status or intention.

If a substantial opportunity on the media or operations side suddenly came up that was more interesting than the above, I’d obviously consider it. It would be silly not to, and if you’re someone reading this with the power to create such an opportunity saying “hey, Jeff would be a great fit for X, maybe I should contact him”, I’m all ears. With that said, I’m running under the assumption of this being an unlikely outcome.

What I’ll Need From You All

Honestly, just your support when possible. I’m sure there will be resources and partnerships that I’ll be reaching out to individuals and entities about at some point (and if you want to jump the gun and reach out to me about ones I may not have even thought of yet, great), but on the public side, just don’t be shy to hit a repost button on an article, share it on another platform, recommend me to a friend, all that stuff.

A lot of times when you see media content “do numbers” these days its because it comes from a platform where co-workers share each other’s stuff. You don’t really get that luxury flying solo and I don’t want to self-promote to an insufferable degree like I did at times in my first go-around.

I understand the most important part of that will be creating work worth sharing, though, so let’s cross that bridge first.

Where To Follow Along

Until this new site launches, the best place to find articles from me will be here, so keep Hockey In Paranoid Times bookmarked, or at least back-of-mind for the time being.

If you want to follow along through social media, the best places to find me are Twitter / X (where I do mostly hockey yapping with some other stuff mixed in), Bluesky (where I yap mostly about other stuff with some hockey mixed in) and Instagram (where I mostly just post what I’ve been up to in the real world).

Follow @JeffVeillette on Twitter/X
Follow @jeffveillette.bsky.social on Bluesky
Follow @jeffler on Instagram

If any of the above has you feeling you should get in touch for some form of collaboration or even just general feedback, the best option for that would be to send me an email at jeff@veillette.me.