Hockey In Paranoid Times is a personal project from Jeff Veillette. Created in Summer 2025, HIPT combines occasional hockey coverage and analysis with a public diary.
Like a well-built forward line, the name Hockey In Paranoid Times has two wings of inspiration.
Firstly, it’s a music reference – specifically a nod to the 2005 Our Lady Peace album “Healthy in Paranoid Times”, which I always felt had a great name (though, if I had to pick a favourite album of theirs, I’d definitely go with “Spiritual Machines”).
Secondly, it feels like a great encapsulation of our moment. We’re moving towards a world where screen time dominates real world time. One where algorithmic social media encourages anger, panic, and divisiveness, rather than the curiosity and community that it once represented. Everything is content, and to cater to shifting demands, the majority of that content has pivoted to multimedia rather than the written word.
What is still written is locked behind digital gates, buried behind a slurry of dead internet in search results, or increasingly, not written at all – rather the auto-generated, factually and structurally questionable fever dreams of plagiarism-trained language models.
In other words, the perfect time to go against the wind and release a modern take on the classic blog format. There’s no aspiration here beyond staying in practice and remaining connected with a favourite old craft, but if this site creates some discussion, enjoyment, and inspiration in the process, I’ll consider that a bonus.
About Jeff Veillette
On the surface level, I’m Jeff, a 33-year-old born, raised, and still residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
On a creative level, I’ve spent the majority of my life working in the hockey digital sphere. I began my journey with building my own blogs, message boards, and other platforms in middle school. When trying to chase trends for web traffic didn’t work, I fell back to passion, beginning to create hockey platforms, such as The Faceoff Circle and Leafs (and subsequentially, Marlies) HQ.
Eventually, I moved on to bringing my work to other companies, regularly creating for the likes of The Nation Network, SB Nation, Better Collective, McKeen’s Hockey and contributing to many others. Along the way I spent over a decade as a credentialed media member in the American Hockey League, covered many National Hockey League events, collaborated with countless brands, and reached millions of readers over the years as a writer, an editor, and a manager across various roles.
I also helped shape much of the early landscape for hockey on social media. This included operating the first successful hockey highlights account on YouTube, becoming a Top 100 user in the peak era of Digg on the back of hockey content, becoming one of Reddit Hockey’s original moderators, helping establish the ground floor in the early makings of “Hockey Twitter”, and more.
More formally in the social media landscape, I worked with Five Hole For Food, a charity that used travelling ball hockey games to raise over a million pounds of food for food banks across Canada across it’s five-year journey, and spent a year in multimedia creation with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
While I’ve continued to work in the creative sphere on and off in recent years, my curiosities formed in writing have also gotten me involved in hockey operations. Presently and primarily, I work as the Assistant General Manager for the Markham Royals of the Ontario Junior Hockey League (OJHL), in my third year with the team and seventh in the league. I’ve also consulted with and contributed to teams at the Professional, Major Junior, and Minor Hockey levels.
Outside of absorbing myself in working within the game, there’s not a ton to write home about when it comes to me. I’m a pretty lousy ice hockey player, and a pretty good ball hockey player. I listen to a lot of music, play a few video games, have an affinity for gadgets and tech, try to be decently active, and enjoy when I get to spend my free time with friends and family. If there’s going to be one negative to this blog, it’s that most are going to realize I’m a significantly more boring person than the internet made me look over the years. But hey, that’s part of the fun, right?