Kiddos, it was a good month.
Mile High Hockey enjoyed its highest number of users ever in the month of March, with 20,892 brilliant individuals stopping by for the non-stop hilarity of the Tanking It For Tavares campaign. Considering that the Avs are now the second-worst team in the entire NHL, the fact that the number of visitors, members, and commentators continues to increase here is testament to what a great community we've built. Well, you've built, since I've been in hiding for a while.
Most of this success I attribute to David's prolific and exceptional posting. I knew I was making the right decision when I recruited him to join, and I doubt anyone would disagree with me (especially not Dater, wink wink).
Even though the season is ending and the summer months are traditionally slower for hockey blogs, one of MHH's goals in the near future is to further expand our Avalanche coverage. The game threads and recaps are excellent, but there's more we can do and more we can talk about. You'll see more about this in the next few weeks.
Finally, just to give you perspective on how MHH stacks up against the rest of the almost-fully-complete SBN hockeysphere, I've compiled traffic rankings for all 29 sites. Two of them, Japer's Rink and Mirtle's From The Rink, don't make their stats public, but just assume they're at the top of the list. MHH is a little lower than I expected, but I'll just blame that on Peter Budaj. It's always his fault anyway.
| Name | March Total | Feb Total | % Change | ||
| 1 | Western College Hockey Blog | 50,902 | 40,185 | 0.27 | |
| 2 | PensBurgh | 41,955 | 18,635 | 1.25 | |
| 3 | Pension Plan Puppets | 37,655 | 25,145 | 0.50 | |
| 4 | Habs Eyes On The Prize | 35,169 | 26,125 | 0.35 | |
| 5 | St. Louis Game Time | 32,302 | 16,951 | 0.91 | |
| 6 | Fear The Fin | 27,900 | 14,867 | 0.88 | |
| 7 | Nucks Misconduct | 27,442 | 9,449 | 1.90 | |
| 8 | Canes Country | 22,749 | 16,626 | 0.37 | |
| 9 | Second City Hockey | 21,782 | 9,794 | 1.22 | |
| 10 | Mile High Hockey | 20,892 | 15,997 | 0.31 | |
| 11 | Stanley Cup of Chowder | 20,254 | 12,478 | 0.62 | |
| 12 | Broad Street Hockey | 19,042 | 9,593 | 0.98 | |
| 13 | Battle of California | 16,734 | 15,556 | 0.08 | |
| 14 | Die By The Blade | 14,153 | 6,998 | 1.02 | |
| 15 | In Lou We Trust | 14,111 | 6,844 | 1.06 | |
| 16 | Defending Big D | 13,996 | 6,575 | 1.13 | |
| 17 | Silver Seven | 13,502 | 991 | 12.62 | |
| 18 | Hockey Wilderness | 11,753 | 4,198 | 1.80 | |
| 19 | Winging It In Motown | 11,507 | 4,425 | 1.60 | |
| 20 | On the Forecheck | 9,164 | 1,212 | 6.56 | |
| 21 | Bird Watchers Anon | 8,936 | 5,512 | 0.62 | |
| 22 | Litter Box Cats | 7,976 | 4,555 | 0.75 | |
| 23 | Lighthouse Hockey | 7,616 | 3,477 | 1.19 | |
| 24 | Matchsticks and Gasoline | 6,910 | 1,271 | 4.44 | |
| 25 | Five for Howling | 4,706 | 2,884 | 0.63 | |
| 26 | Blueshirt Banter | 2,988 | 0 | ||
| 27 | Raw Charge | 1,761 | 0 |
You'll notice that every single hockey blog increased in traffic over the past month. SBN is enjoying an incredible uptick in traffic across all nearly 200 blogs on the network, and hockey is right there in the mix. That's great news. Even better news is that SBN is constantly working to increase the features of its platform and diversify the content sources for its blogs. Recent deals with Yahoo, the AP and Getty Images are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm excited about the coming months, and you should be, too.
So thanks, everybody, for continuing to make this one of the best hockey blogs not only on the SBN network, but across the whole Web. Keep visiting, contributing, and making fun of the Top 19 list. I just have to warn you that you're going to be pretty pissed when I finally knock that sucker out.