As is common among the thousands of posts I have written about the New Jersey Devils, the headline gives away the main point right away. I am announcing my own departure from All About the Jersey. I am going to be stepping down, stepping back, and stepping away from writing about our favorite hockey team: the New Jersey Devils. This will be made official at the end of May. I am telling you this ahead of that time. This is not my last post, but this is a “see you later” post. I will explain in a bit.
I am very blessed that I am able to write this post at all. Nevermind in this manner. What started in 2006 as In Lou We Trust on a Google-supported Blogspot platform transitioned to ILWT moving to SB Nation under the management of James Mirtle in 2008. We’ve grown massively with an actual staff and, eventually, actual checks as the Devils continued to make the playoffs regularly and went almost all the way in 2012. We’ve marched on as the Devils entered rebuilding times; rebranding as All About The Jersey in 2015 and somehow getting through a Global Pandemic to stay relevant. We’ve continued to have our say as the Devils have taken steps forward while surviving the purge of the hockey division on SBN in 2023 and onward to this current day. For me, I have been writing about the New Jersey Devils for a few months shy of 19 years. Mostly with too many words.
And those words were, well, mostly all about the New Jersey Devils. The very first thing I posted in 2006 included options for who can replace an injured Scott Gomez. Injuries, player and team performances, detailed game previews and recaps, prospect profiles, draft picks, free agency, hirings, firings, reactions to news, all things Ilya Kovalchuk (goodness that alone was a lot), hockey analytics from its early public days, and hopes for my favorite team to be better. I’ve been too critical, I’ve been too positive, I’ve been wrong, I’ve been right, I’ve made sense at the time but proven wrong, I’ve had takes that started poorly but proven right over time, and I’ve been misunderstood- which has usually been my fault.
I’ve done all this without having played the game, getting a co-sign from someone else who did, or getting a meaningless degree. What blogging as a whole showed in the 2000s (and still shows to this day!) was that one did not need to be a Certified Expert or have a journalism degree to have a point, perform research, ask questions and record the answers, or have an educated opinion. I’ve never been a journalist. This has never been a stepping stone to something else. I’ve done this because I wanted there to be a Devils blog I would want to read. I realized in 2006 that I’ll need to do it myself if I wanted it. So I did it. Everything since then has been strength to strength.
As an aside: This does not make me massive success. Not in a world where a former Broad Street Hockey blogger is a GM of a NHL team. Eric Tulsky has never played the game at the pro level. His squad has a shot for the greatest trophy in sports and his name will be on it should they win it. I cannot get there. Or to where Tyler Dellow, Sunny Mehta, Tim “Vic Ferrari” Barnes, Rob Vollman (Hi Rob!), Bruce Peters, and others have got to go: actually working in the League.
I’ve done a lot. Not only here but on podcasts, doing original research into how much time a clearance kills on a PK, and even contributing to books with the Hockey Prospectus annuals. And, most of all, there is now an actual community of The People Who Matter for this site: the Devils fans. Supported and carried by fellow fans writing about the Devils like I have. Devils fans that “get it” from Thibault ”Tibbs” Deshayes and Steve Lepore to Matt Ventolo and Kevin Sellathamby and Tom Stivali to Handsome Mike Stromberg and Ryan Stimson to Karen Meilands and Jerry Tierney to Brian Franken and CJ Turtoro to Jenna Verrico and Devin Yang to the current group of Chris Fieldhouse, James Tracy, Jared Moore, Gerard Lionetti, Alex Potts, Jackson Baird, Ian MacLean, and the mighty Nate Pilling. And many more from the past. In fact, let me list what I believe is the full list: Rob Watson, Josh Weinstein, CJ Richey, Matt Evans, Nick Gerli, Shane Kinsley, Nicholas D’Alessio, JT Sroka, Matt Mowrer, Matt Torino, Trevor Post, Christopher Moxley, Nick Varney, Steve Wozniak, Ryan Grosso, Alicia Strauch, Jeff Ulmer, Stephen Schnoor, Matt Crovo, Elliot Christophers, Caleb MacLaughlin, David Sarch, Dan Rozel, and Tyler Bleszinski (if only for writing about the A’s instead of the Devils).
And hopefully, there will be many more to come to contribute here. I’m forever thankful for their help in what has been a hobby for me that I treated somewhat like a job. I am equally thankful for all of the others who have made this possible. From James Mirtle, who hired me all the way back in 2008; to the SBN/Vox media team for their Chorus platform; to those like Timo Seppa formerly of Hockey Prospects and the NHL and currently on video; to resources like Natural Stat Trick, PuckPedia, PuckIQ, and Moneypuck that have done wonders to help elevate hockey knowledge online (not to mention all of the old sites like Behind the Net, Extra Skater, Sports Club Stats, NHLSCAP, War on Ice, CapGeek, General Fanager, Hockey Analysis/Puckalytics, CapFriendly, etc.); to my real life jobs being more than OK with me writing about hockey on the side; to the people in my life tolerating my writing about hockey; and, most importantly, to people like you for even reading the site at all for as little or as much as you have done.
I am proud to have built a site for Devils fans by Devils fans that is more thoughtful about its takes, opinions, suggestions, ideas, hopes, and criticisms. I could not have done it without all of you. Now it is time for me to step back from this site.
There are two main reasons as to why I am doing this.
First, it’s getting harder for me to do this. I started the blog – I am including the old In Lou We Trust days on Blogspot – back when I was still in graduate school at age 23. I’m now 42. Up until recently, I have had no issues coming up with topics or things to look into about the Devils and write about them. Sure, there have been occasional bits of burnout and writer’s blog. However, in 2025, it has been more frequent. Enough to tell me that it is not something that will just go away. My energy for this is waning. And I do not know if it can be replenished. Rather than continue to grind through it and risk reaching a really bitter end where I grow to hate writing about the Devils, I believe now is the time for me to step back. It is better to leave on good terms than not.
Second, related to my continued aging (which I do not recommend), my life has grown outside of the site. I have a career. I have love again, and a family that can grow. I have goals for the future. And I’ve realized the hard way that I do not want whatever time I have with my family and what little of my own leisure time consumed by a second quasi-job. It has become a candle burning at both ends at time. How I write is how I talk and how I think so becoming more succinct is not really going to happen. And it is as much mental thought as it is real time and effort that gets expended on this site. I do not want to shortchange the important people in my life because I need to write about the Devils. They are, in my real life, the People Who Matter. And that group includes me. Therefore, I need to step back for myself and themselves.
Those are the main reasons why I am stepping back from writing about the Devils here at All About the Jersey. So why now? To pull the curtain back a bit, I made the decision back in March – which I have been thinking about for months prior – and told the staff in private back then. As there was a season going on, I figured it would hurt the site to leave immediately. There were playoff games to be played and, hopefully, some successes in those playoffs. The focus needed to be on the Devils games, which could and almost did run into May. Alas, that did not happen. I did not want to linger long through the offseason either for the reasons above. Therefore, I suggested and was granted termination at the end of May 2025 by SB Nation/Vox Media. This would give the AAtJ staff a chance to focus hard on what has traditionally been a heavy-viewed time for the site: the month of June and July 1. The NHL Draft and free agency are that big of a draw. Even bigger than a Stanley Cup Final based on the old stats from 2012 that I am hopefully recalling correctly. That is why I am leaving by the end of this month as opposed to later.
This is not the end of All About the Jersey.
I am very happy and quite proud to state that. The site shall continue. In the old days of blogs and sites, when a founder leaves, that’s usually it. Not so here. This is not John Fischer’s All About the Jersey. This is All About the Jersey – a blog by Devils fans for Devils fans.
I am equally happy that the site will continue under the management of Chris Fieldhouse. He has been taking over behind the scenes and will be officially in charge at the start of June. There will be posts about pending free agents. There will be prospect profiles. There will be continued posts reacting to the Devils, wishing they would do something or something else, and backing it all up. Chris will decide the future of AATJ as he will take it over – which is another blessing. I’m confident in the site continuing in his hands; leading the helping hands of the other writers.
In short: Chris will be in charge and he will set the status quo.
What will I do? I will still support the Devils. I still have my season ticket in Section 1, Row 16, Seat 5. The fire inside me still burns in passion for the Devils. That will never change.
Obviously, I will not be writing about hockey here. It would not be fair to Chris and the staff for me to stick around as a commenter or visiting contributor like Tyler in the past. If I interact with AAtJ, it will be as a distant reader. That change has to be made.
Will I do something constructive about all of this fandom? I am not sure. I have ideas in my mind for things I could do in some determinate future. Maybe I will write about the Devils on my own and at a more agreeable pace. Maybe I delve into making videos about the Devils. Maybe I get into streaming; taking questions about the Devils while I do other things. Maybe I dust off the microphone and do a podcast again. Maybe I go entirely offline with the Devils content and I make my family suffer as I talk in detail about the Devils to them. Maybe I just stay quiet except at my seat in Section 1. I could do (or not do) a lot of things. All the same, my time here is done. That is for sure. Before I decide to do anything else or nothing more, I am taking a break first. It’s been nearly 19 years without much of one. I need one. I will do that first.
But it will wait another week or so. I’ll have one hockey related post on Sunday. Next Friday will be my true last post at All About the Jersey. I have two favors to ask of you, the People Who Matter.
First: Please ask any questions you have for that last post. It can be about me, the Devils, the site, what the Devils should do, what they have done, past posts I’ve written, what is happening in the ever-changing world of hockey, running a hockey blog, and whatever else you can think of. I want to use May 30’s post – my actual last post here – to answer as many as I can. After then, I will not be around to answer them or turn a question or a comment into a post I think is worth the People Who Matter’s time. Please put your questions in the comments to this post. I will pull them and answer them for May 30. As much as there are the haters and the losers (of which there are some) out there, I am blessed and thankful to have any readers at all – much less people actively comment on the site for as long as they have. I am pretty sure some of you were around when I joined this network in 2008. The least I can do for all of you is to listen and respond to what you have to say one more time.
Second: Please archive the site. I have written a lot and it would be appreciated if a record of it was backed up. Ideally with the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. Elsewhere would do too. Sure, many links within the posts here have become dead links. And some videos embeds no longer work. And with the transition of the comments to the Coral system, the old comments went away. But if there was ever a post you like – or even one you want to rub in my face – please archive it. If nothing else it is objective evidence of what I’ve done for close to 17 years at SB Nation and nearly 19 years in total.
I am sincerely thankful for all of you, named and unnamed. Whether you have written with me, auditioned to write for the site, asked me a question or had something you wanted me to support, had a positive or constructive comment, said “hi” at a game or wrote an email, or even just read it all these years. Thank you. I am blessed to have been even a small part of your day. Please support Chris, Jared, James, Gerard, Alex, Nate, Jackson, and Ian going forward. Like you, they are All About the Jersey. And the hockey never stops at All About the Jersey.