Hi folks, Nick here. Long-time WIIM reader, first-time WIIM writer-of-words.
I’m incredibly excited to join the wonderful team of contributors here at Winging It In Motown. It’s not hyperbole to say this is a dream opportunity for me. I’ve been following the Red Wings since… well… as long as I can remember following sports.
I was raised just south of Nashville by a pair of Michigan transplants, both loyal Wings fans. It just so happens that around the age I became more interested in the sports they had on their TV than the Thomas the Tank Engine playsets in my bedroom, a rag-tag group of hockey ruffians led by the likes of Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, and Vladimir Konstantinov happened to be getting a lot of play on the Morgan family television.
The more games I watched with my parents, and the more hockey knowledge I picked up about, the more I fell in love. Some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around watching the sport with my favorite. I have vivid memories of my straight-laced grandmother going “GET HIM” when we watched “March 26th” unfold on ESPN. I can remember the exact sequence of Steve Yzerman’s 600th career goal that happened ten rows in front of me during my first ever visit to The Joe. I can remember my mom running out of our “computer room” shrieking to tell us Dominik Hasek had just been traded to Detroit. And — years later — I can remember a college-aged Nick running through a sports bar parking lot in Franklin, Tennessee in ecstasy because Marian Hossa couldn’t get that rebound past Chris Osgood at the end of Game 6.
Even as I began my professional career in sports journalism, the Red Wings remained front of mind. In my time at Bowling Green, KY, I would bring my personal laptop to our editing lab so I could watch the Wings game on a bootleg stream. While working in Atlanta, I would have NHL.com pulled up so I could keep track of scores while in the press box at Hawks or Falcons game. And in Cincinnati, I… ahem… “got sick” the day of the NHL Draft. Priorities, man.
Eventually, I had the bright idea of “hey, if you’re going to blow off your job for hockey stuff, why not just make hockey stuff your job.” And that, friends, is what brought me here to SBNation and Winging It In Motown.
I’m looking forward to getting cover the team that was so instrumental in my sports fandom. But more importantly, I’m looking forward to getting to interact with YOU — my fellow Wings fan! I’ll be sharing a fine balance of analysis, opinions, and dumb dad jokes in a variety of different pieces. So be on the lookout and say hi!
You can follow Nick on Twitter — @_nsmorgan. You can also check out his work at our Nashville Predators SBNation affiliate, OnTheForecheck and watch him daily on the Locked on Predators podcast.
