Welcome to the junior jungle

The best parts of junior hockey aren't always written down. Hopefully, that is about to change.

As with any good blog, the goal of Buzzing The Net is having a fun conversation about junior hockey, on junior hockey fans' terms, with a level of snark and semi-sophistication (flatter yourself, much?) thrown in for good measure. One sneaking suspicion is there is an audience which is arguably underserved by the media. They know who they are: they love reading about the teams outside their local market, want to know about players beyond their NHL draft status and just love soaking up the culture of the game, watching a hometown team full of hopefuls trying to make it to The Show.

The six Canadian NHL teams might command the media's focus (and charge an arm and a leg for tickets), but at the end of the day the CHL is more accessible to sports fans. The 51 Canadian-based teams and nine U.S. counterparts in the OHL, WHL and QMJHL (the O, the Dub and the Q) play a pretty entertaining brand of hockey on most nights. It's our goal to bring each team's followers a little closer together, assuming that's possible with those on either side of the Kitchener-London divide.

{YSP:MORE}There is already great hometown coverage of most major junior teams. The benefit of doing a site such as this will be the depth and width of coverage. As the hockey blogfather himself, Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy shows, there's an ability to delve into areas that might not appeal to a mass audience, but inspire fierce opinions among hardcore fans.

It's early yet, but hopefully over the balance of the league playoffs, on through the Memorial Cup and into the off-season, this blog will take on a life its own. That was the case when I had the privilege to blog for Yahoo! at Fourth-Place Medal during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

In case you're wondering since I am a relative (more like complete) unknown, two decades as a die-hard Kingston Frontenacs follower and having developed The CIS Blog, another site dedicated to Canadian amateur sport, should address any concerns about my bona fides. This is going to be the kind of challenge which should be a lot of fun, and hopefully you'll come to see Buzzing The Net as a great place for a junior hockey fix, full of the off-beat, the quirky, the analytical, the gut reactions, the breaking news.

We're just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.

Any feedback or tips, please drop a line to neatesager(at)yahoo.ca.