Support Noted Hockey
I’ve taken quite a long time to do this for a few reasons I’ll share in a moment, but I am adding a paid subscription tier to Noted Hockey.
This was something I planned on doing since I began writing here just over a year ago and I wanted to make sure I could produce enough to make it worthwhile to do and hope to have your understanding of why I am doing it.
The “why” of it is because this is what I love doing. Writing about the NHL, and more succinctly on the Buffalo Sabres, is something I enjoy doing immensely. Doing this takes up a lot of time, a lot of effort, and it means needing money to keep things going. Gas for the car, etc. I think we all understand what it takes.
I am always deeply sheepish when it comes to these matters, but I am asking all of you to help me keep this going. More subscribers mean more opportunities to get out on the road and write more stories. Driving to and from KeyBank Center or Scotiabank Arena or PSG Paints Arena is great and enjoyable to write about the Sabres or other parts of the NHL, but I’ll need your support to do that.
I have been so anxious about turning on paid subscriptions that when I went to get it going last week, I made myself physically sick about it. It is very daunting to do this, and I want to produce the best stuff for all of you, so here is what I am doing:
Most posts will be for paid subscribers. There will be occasional free-to-read posts, but I hope everything I’ve been doing will want you to support the site.
There will be bonuses for paid subscribers. There will be brief post-game podcasts that will only be available here and I would like to do Sabres road game watch-along chats either through Substack’s built-in chat tool (download the app to use it!) or through Zoom meetings.
Subscriber-only Q&A sessions. Being a person on the “inside” so to speak means having a different perspective of what’s going on with the team and the league. That’s insight I want to share with everyone and things with Twitter are getting a bit dicey these days so cultivating a community here feels like the right thing to do.
There are a few subscription levels available. It’ll be $5 for a month, $50 for a year (saving $10), or the Noted Founder level in which you get a yearly subscription but can pay more than $50 if you want to support the site in a more generous way.
The Noted Founder level comes with a bonus perk: It gives you the chance to be my assignment editor. Becoming a Noted Founder will give you the chance to have me write the story or column you want to read. After all, it’s the least I can do for anyone who wants to go above and beyond to help out.
If you like my work or if you tolerate my work but respect the effort I’ve put into it, it would please me greatly to have you join along with me on this adventure in writing.
For transparency reasons, I’ll share that any money made here, 10 percent of it goes to Substack for allowing me the space to be able to do this. Fair is fair.
I will also be donating 5 percent of subscription costs to the MDS Foundation.
When I began Noted Hockey in October 2021 the idea was for me to get back into things heavily after taking time to deal with the stress of being laid off. There was other stress back home since May 2019, however, when my mother was diagnosed with MDS. Late in 2021, shortly after I began the site, her health started to take a turn for the worse and she passed in March.
In that time and since, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about MDS and other blood cancers and discovered other friends and colleagues alike have been affected by it through relatives or friends who also have dealt with losing people close to them because of it. You can learn more about what MDS is and does at the foundation site.
I’ve wanted to do something to help out because it’s a helpless feeling losing a parent, and all the more painful when it’s to a rare cancer that doctors are still researching ways to treat it and how it even develops in the first place. It’s a devastating helplessness and I want to help do something and this was something I think can help.