I began writing about Michigan State hockey during the 2013 season, when Chris Vannini added me to the team at The Only Colors. I was two years post-graduation with my undergrad degree, working a sales job that had me contemplating a car wreck every morning driving Highway 6 in Grand Rapids, and the chance to cover a hockey program that I have attended hundreds of games for was exactly what I needed at that time. The losing didn't make it any less fun to cover the team and try to spread awareness in the nascent days of "MSU Twitter."

Doing that for three seasons, while my counterparts covered the Rose Bowl, College Football Playoff, and a Men's Final Four made the joy of writing and sitting down to write a drag, but it never got in the way of watching every game. Paying for B1G+, tweeting through two coaching staffs, believing in Danton Cole (a man I wanted hired in 2011), then accepting I was dead wrong in 2020. Questioning if this program could ever rebound, now in a tougher Big Ten Conference, starting a newsletter to mainly get to cover recruiting (where hope lied eternal), and quitting that as it just had no juice in the dying days under Cole. All of that, yeah, I watched every game, I rooted every night for the Spartans, but the confidence in the program I knew in my childhood ever returning was gone.

Then Adam Nightingale was hired.