Five Year Blog Anniversary!

Believe it or not, it was five years ago today that I created Igloo Dreams. The first post was a crappy one, talking briefly an exhibition game against the Bruins. I didn't really know what I was doing back then... though I can't say I really know what I'm doing now either!

Five years is a long time to keep this little blog running as a one-man show. When I started, there were few (if any) other hockey blogs on the Pens. Pensblog hadn't started yet, and most every other prominent Pittsburgh sports blog hadn't been imagined. My inspiration was Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, the popular (and excellent) Pirates blog, and not just because it was written by a guy named Pat.

If you'll humor me for a minute, my favorite parts of the last five years are (in no particular order):

• Writing for the New York Times hockey blog as part of their original "Hockey Night in Blogdom" crew and royally ticking off Flyers' fans.
• Writing for Hockey Independent as I do currently every now and then.
• Having a friend do the fantastic header image for this blog.
• Sticking to my guns and writing because I enjoy it. I've turned down many offers for advertising, sponsorship and writing for other sites, mainly because I want to be able to write what I want, when I want with no one to answer to. I do this because I love it.
• Doing some pretty complicated statistical analysis, some of which I have yet to see reproduced elsewhere (which may be good or may be bad...). It wasn't easy to put together.

I know The Wife will sometimes tire of hockey and the amount of time it takes to watch as many Pens' games as I can handle, plus writing about them before and after. Each year at the start of the season, I think "I don't know if I want to do this for another entire year", and then I see the first minute of the first game and the drive comes rushing back.

So will there be another five years? I don't know. I do know that I'll keep writing as long as I enjoy it.