A Letter To Our Community - We Need Your Help

Jan 22, 2023 - 10:22 PM

“These days I miss strangers
More than I miss my friends” - Death Cab For Cutie

Dear Stars fans,

On Friday, Vox, the parent company of SB Nation, announced its decision to completely de-fund practically every NHL team site, effective the end of February (you know, literally right before one of the busiest traffic times of the season with the trade deadline on March 3rd). Defending Big D is one of them.

To say it’s been overwhelming since the announcement that came with little warning to us would be an understatement. Many of you want to know what’s next. Where do we go from here? Will there be a Stars community anywhere again?

We want to know that too.

While I do not have the answers today, and have many more questions than semblances of answers for now, just know that we are looking at this as an opportunity. It’s a chance for us to continue doing what we want, how we want. We had been pushed for more than a year to do whatever necessary to increase our page views to make SB Nation more money while receiving even less resources than we had previously (which, let’s be clear here, none of us made anything close to a living wage doing this. Hell, many of us barely made enough to cover the subscriptions we needed to support the analysis we wanted to do here.)

We could have bowed down and gone with more “click-bait” style stories, but we’ve always held ourselves to a high professional standard. It’s one of the primary reasons we’ve built such a wonderful community and have been provided access to cover this team alongside more traditional media outlets.

As we continue considering how we can best serve the community that we’ve put our time, energy, and dedication to building over the course of the past 14 seasons, I wanted to take the time to say thank you. Thank you for supporting us, for reading us, for arguing with us, for telling us we were wrong, for giving us ideas and shout-outs for the work we put in to provide analysis of the Dallas Stars (and for that one time someone proposed to me in the comments). For recognizing that we did this on top of full-time jobs, and families, and personal tragedies, and pandemics.

To the Dallas Stars executives, hockey operations, front office personnel, coaches, and players that have given us your time and access: you are a world-class organization. We never could have become what we did without your support. The response we have received since the news came out shows the quality character employed throughout the organization. We hope you’ll stick with us as we go through this transition and look forward to providing the coverage this team needs in this hockey town. Because we are a hockey town.

To everyone who has ever written for us - Brandon, Brad, Erin, Brandon B, Art, Robert, David, Rob, Pat, and the others I’m surely forgetting - and our current staff: there are no words to describe how wonderful you are. There’s nobody I ever would have wanted to do this with than all of you. Your humbleness, insights, organization, dedication, and passion are unmatched. I love you.

Now, I have a favor to ask of our community members and supporters. If you could take this short survey to help us make some informed decisions as we assess what our future could be, we would be eternally grateful. We want to think about what you want and how you want it, the style and topics you like, and what you hope for as we transition our community in the future.

Just know, we have every intention of finishing out this season while we work on defining what is next for this community. We hope you’ll follow us on this journey.