You Deserve the Truth

Before we go any farther, let me give credit where credit is due.

Chief: You called it. Well played sir.

Call me a bitch. Call me “Favre.” Call me whatever you want. The fact is that I am indeed back and am feeling incredibly solid about joining forces with two guys that have come to be just like brothers over the past 8 months or so. I will admit that I enjoyed my month long break from the writing scene though. It was an interesting experience watching things like the Mike Modano and Ruslan Salei signings happen and not have to immediately jump on my computer and start banging out thoughts about it. You know what I did when the Modano news broke? No seriously, do you know? Because I sure as hell don’t. That’s some serious relaxation right there folks. I’d like to think I was out on a bike ride with the lady or busy knocking back a shot or two of Jameson, but I don’t think we’ll ever know. The point is, folks, that I was living it up and not worrying about a thing. It was nice.

Why was relaxation so easy you ask? Because I knew this was coming for a long, long time. That’s right kids, this whole plan has been in the works for months. That picture in Petrella’s post? Yea, that’s from H2H. We took it knowing full well exactly when we wanted to use it and what it was going to be for and we did it right under your noses. Just like we dangled out the teaser tweets from TPLhockey, basically handing all of you the name of the site months before it even went live. And yes, some of those tweets came from me as well.

“But what about leaving Motown Wings?”

Great question. There’s a reason we chose today’s date for the announcement and it’s not just because “Abdelkader.Hudler.Delvecchio” sounds awesome. For those that didn’t know, I was under contract with MW up until yesterday, 8/25. Being a man of my word, I was prepared to finish it out, until the folks over at Fanball said “Hey, we’ll pay you early and we have someone prepared to take over for you.” Boom. Sold. Fare-thee-well friends. You’ll notice, upon further review, that I never actually said I was “retiring” or “never writing again,” just that I was taking a bit of a break from things to focus on other aspects of my life. Which is absolutely true. I’ll still be focusing my efforts on real-life work, family, friends, etc. but that becomes much easier to do when I have two other guys on my team that I know will be churning out superb content on a regular basis. This was simply the best situation for me and that’s why I took it.

So i’m sorry for pulling the wool over your eyes a bit, but what had to be done was done. Now that everything’s out in the open, we can get down to enjoying the shenanigans, analysis and overall good times that you’ve come to expect from TPL, all on this brand spanking new site. Speaking of the site, I’ll be dropping a larger post on all of the new features and toys sometime tomorrow, so stop back by to check it out. The three of us have put a ton of time and effort into making this thing awesome, and we did it for all of you to enjoy. We’ve also got a ton of fun things planned for all of you, and the three of us will be rolling those out in the coming days, weeks and months. For the record, both Disch and I wanted to host a huge launch party in Detroit today, complete with booze, music and autograph/assault sessions with Todd Bertuzzi. Unfortunately, Petrella decided to get crazy and blow all of our savings on some fancy ritual that involves him getting a ring soldered onto his finger for the rest of his life. I’m just sayin…

At any rate, It’s good to be back and it’s great to finally let all of you in on what we’ve been working so hard to accomplish. I have to offer up huge amounts of gratitude and thanks to both Petrella and Disch for extending me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I hope that my presence here doesn’t wreck the site forever.

I’ve missed all of you, but that’s enough emotion for one day. So consider this our “hug it out” moment before we crank this thing up. This should be one heck of a ride folks, so let’s  get it going.

LGRW.