This morning, The Copper & Blue surpassed 1,000,000 page views.

The Copper & Blue started in April 2008 as an off-shoot of a lot of different things; my desire to write, my love of hockey and the Oilers in particular, and my boredom with trade school. It's gone through various incarnations; I wrote it alone on blogspot until November 2008, before accepting work at Oilers Nation. After a while, I found that I wanted to do more than one post per day, and in March 2008 I returned to the site and started posting regularly.

It didn't take long before I was approached by James Mirtle, one of the most prominent early hockey bloggers, and the man responsible for SBNation's hockey division.  He convinced me to bring Copper & Blue over to the SBN family of sites, and in April 2009 we relaunched here.  I decided early on that I didn't want to be the only voice of the site, and I'd targetted three other writers, all of whom are now involved with the site: Derek Zona, Bruce McCurdy and Scott Reynolds.  Each brings a unique perspective, and each has in his own way challenged the way I look at the game or helped improve my depth of understanding.  I was thrilled when they joined the site, and what they've done with it since has surpassed anything I could have expected.  Along the way, we did the world a favour and got Ben Massey writing regularly about the Oilers again.

I've had less to do with the site over this last season than I'd ever intended, but if anything I think it's better now than when I was more involved; with a richer perspective on all things Oilers (and occasionally, all things hockey).

But our readers know that, and really, it's our readers I have to thank for getting us to this milestone.  It's a significant one; to have 1,000,000 views of our articles in a little over a year is absolutely incredible.  Thank you for your encouragement, your perspective, your criticism, and most of all, thanks for reading.