The following is a look at the machinations and plots behind the scenes at the Nation Network. If you don’t care/don’t want to know please click here to read a riveting piece about the Oilers overcoming an early season insistence on using the swarm defense. You have been warned.
Late at night while everyone is asleep in their beds, little elves are hard at work redeveloping the 9 site Nation Network. This will mean a new look and new functionality across the sites, especially NHLNumbers.com. Once this Herculean task has been completed and the sites are all working from the same technology playbook we will get back to growing the Nation Network in terms of writers, sites and functionality.
The Nation Network continues to grow year after year. Believe it or not we now see more traffic on a month to month basis in the US than in Canada and our sixth busiest city is now Helsinki, Finland. While we try to wrap our collective brains around those two facts and attempt to compute the direction in which we must head, work goes on mashing all our different outposts, 18,000 articles and 631,000 comments onto a new platform without losing a single precious word or well constructed comment.
We are currently 4 months into the redevelopment project working with contractors in Toronto and should start seeing some new babies pushed screaming out into the world in the next few weeks. From there we will begin work on the Nation Network App which will pull in data and articles from different sites and will include a sequel to the ever popular Clash of Clans.*
The team is growing too – we now count 56 writers on our roster and 6 FT staff at Nation Network World HQ and Car Wash in Edmonton and a second office now open in Toronto.** And today we are very pleased to name Thomas Drance as our Editor-in-Chief.
ALL HAIL TD
Thomas Drance – a legit good guy if ever there was one – was one of our very first contributors to CanucksArmy back in 2011. Despite the notable handicap of having to write about one of history’s greatest abominations of a hockey squadron he did an excellent job and was named Site Editor shortly thereafter. Then we lost him in a gunfight to The Score but won him back with promises of “being cloaked in immense power” working with a company that is “totally clothing optional.”
And today he follows in the footsteps of yours truly, Kent Wilson and Brian Sutherby being named our fourth Editor in Chief.
What say you Mr Drance?
“So today is my first day as the Editor in Chief of the Nation Network. I’m honoured and excited to be entrusted with the opportunity of managing Canada’s biggest independent hockey blog network, and I’m dedicated to preserving and improving upon what you all love about the Nations Network.
—
ANALYSIS
Fists fly forever?! Man, that’s dope. Please leave any comments you would like the new boss to peruse in the section below. And while Drance consolidates his power and shows little mercy to his enemies during the come up we will get back to tasering our contractors in Toronto.
Good luck Thom.
* Seriously imagine it did? That would be sick. That game runs my show.
** No actual office exists yet – just awesome folks working FT from coffee shops and their homes.
Led by a Canucks fan? I’m outta here.
But it was led y a Flames fan for years, so…
Even Flames fans have hockey knowledge, I have yet to meet a Canucks fan with any knowledge of the game of hockey!
Please prove me wrong TD
Evidently ignorance is bliss.
This is terrible news.
The professionalism difference between Kent and Thomas is going to be noticed.
Thomas has long been a pompous a$$ and wrote articles that were not to the standard of this site in regards to professionalism, whether it be blind biases, language, or conflicting outside activities.
Sad, sad day.
Best of Luck Kent.
/reads all my old articles
if all we have to do is match my level of professionalism, I think we’ll be okay
HAHAHAHA LOOK THOM IT BEGINS
*cracks open beer*
wait a second…fists don’t have wings!
First, welcome New High Overlord!*
Second, please wear clothes. In fact, the Nations sell them. Wanye, BM and Jeanshorts have left ‘rings’ on all the good furniture.
Third. There is a void left by cap geek. Please fill it. Preferably with candy, fancy stats and liquor.
And finally. Please add a ‘home delivery liquor store’ to the network for game nights which we can place orders on from this site.
*high as in mighty, not as in stoned… right? Right?
But they don’t sell pants or underwear so waist down it’s status quo.
So… commando it is! Is that just for game night or do I have to warn my co-workers?
And Nations… sell pants!
Great. Now we can look forward to more Oiler bashing content. As if it wasnt easy enough.
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-edmonton-oilers-are-a-useless-franchise
Well just remember when you read that piece he works for us Oilers fans now. In fact a good whack of the hockey internet does now.
BAHAHAHAHAH WE ARE WINNING
Do you have an inside bet with KLowe to see who can do the most amount of rebuilds??
Everytime you leave a comment like this it refreshes the page and loads new ads and we make $0.00024
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Hahaha
Well then, lets play ‘lets make a deal’!! I could leave alot more comments like that one!! And this one!
That’s not so much oiler bashing as it is reporting of the facts
A few choice excerpts from Thomas Drance’s Vice article linked above:
“…they routinely humiliate their foolish supporters, they’re favored by the misogynistic as well as the toothless…’
“Chris Pronger, like VICE Canada’s favorite cartoonist, and anyone else who doesn’t completely suck, decided ‘F**k it, I don’t want to live in Edmonton.'”
“‘No, it wasn’t Chris Pronger’s decision’ the Oilers fans cry, ‘it was his wife who didn’t want to stay here.’ Let this be a reminder that Oilers fans can’t wait to demonstrate how much they hate women.”
“They’re the f**king T-1000 of cocky for no reason fan-bases: short of a vat of molten steel, nothing can stop them!”
“Even though (relocation) would be a better fate than the continued mediocrity of the Oilers franchise, that level of performance is what the limp-dick Oilers and their hopeless f**king fans deserve.”
Yeah, this guy is the perfect candidate to run a network of websites that Oiler fans built. Stay classy, Drance.
Hahahaha can’t you see?!?! This guy is PERFECT!! We need someone to rival Lowe for fan hatred and this might be the only guy that stands a chance!!!!
At least you know where you stand.
S-a-t-i-r-e
If that’s supposed to be satire, he’s a terrible writer and my point still stands.
And Burnward, I think I hear your cows escaping. Grab your Stetson and get after them.
Very good choice. Level headed guy, intelligent, wise in the way of words and calculator. He’ll be crazy by Christmas!
Welcome Drance!