Yeah

... uh, and, and, and, and, and put them in the spotlight is great.

And that, and yeah, Nick, Nick shared his message with me, is just like, it's yeah, it's great.

Like, it's good for me, but it's also helping all the others.

And I remember when we were d- that we started this during COVID, and we launched a shirt that says, like, "Support your local donair shop." And that's, like, probably one of the most Edmonton sayings I had.

I was with the, uh, guys from Athena who provide most of the meat for most of the shops-

Soon

... real, real soon.

So how do you-- I mean, what's your reaction when you see people, you know, with the Daily Faceoff name taking over and they assume like, "Hey, is everyone wearing suits?" Like all of that stuff, like where do you come out on maybe that kind of confusion of how people think this brand evolvement might go?

Well, I think, you know, you have to kind of change the word negativity and switch it to just passion.

These are people that were passionate.

You know, our mission as TNN, like the, the, the parent, you know, our parent brand that connects our hockey, basketball, and baseball together, is to build community through sports content.

And so, you know, when it comes to Oilers Nation Tyler, uh, and many other of the cast members here, uh, you know, we built a really passionate community and, you know, we, we flipped a switch and made a big change, and the, the big issue, uh, and, and for, for, for good reason, although it didn't feel right, is we couldn't bring them along for the ride.

Um, normally we like to, you know, let people in behind the scenes on things that we do, especially major things that we do, uh, and you know, we couldn't do that with this, uh, because there's just sensitivity, right? Like you, you can't tie up social accounts, um, because we're changing social accounts, right? So if we, if we brought people along for the ride, next thing you know, you know, DFO Edmonton or DFO Toronto would have to be DF- DFO_ _Toronto 123456789.

And so those are the realities of things like that.

So for the viewers, for the readers, how can they expect to see any sort of improvements? Is there anything tangible you can let them nibble on now that like, "Hey, in the next year, we think we can deliver you more of this"?

Your thoughts on this one initially, then we'll sort of drill down.

[smacks lips] Uh, well, initially my thoughts were this is a pretty emotional exercise for us, 'cause we started this journey in, uh, 2007, uh, launching, uh, you know, a, a passion blog about our favorite team, oilersnation.com was started.

And it was interesting to see kinda how this scaled out, uh, across other markets, which we realized we actually had a business on our hands.

And then along the way, we were able to bring on Daily Faceoff into the fold.

Uh, you know, it started as a fantasy site.

Uh, but, you know, it had this really strong brand that, uh, had an ability to build a league-wide content strategy against.

Uh, and we started doing that, uh, with, with heavy, heavy lift and, and effort, uh, about five years ago.

Hmm

Yeah.

See, it works, though.

Like, who among us has even missed the word Twitter? I say X.

Did you X me? Let me repost your X.

This is how we talk.

Name changes are fanta- Facebook called Meta.

Cooper's an animal.

What blew me away was when there was the private event downstairs during duck gate, and the person was retiring, and they too liked rubber ducks.

[laughs]

We can't grab, we can't, we can't grab that stuff yet until we actually flip the switch.

So that's the unfortunate part of all this, so you're kind of seeing the other side of it.

Um, but yeah, no, it's...

You, as you guys know, and like we talk to, like, lots of people across the country, like, there's just, there's always so much confusion.

We always had, we always caught ourselves having to try to explain everything, and, you know, we're trying to explain the hockey vertical of, of, of the Nation Network.

It's like, well, in Calgary we're this, we're Cal- in Vancouver we're that, in Edmonton we're this, and then we've got this league-wide brand called this.

Yeah.

Right.

Like, just crazy confusion, and we were just ignorant and not willing to acknowledge it existed, 'cause goddammit, we're passionate.

But, uh, nine months ago, nine months ago, December, uh, we kinda came to the realization that we've kinda hit a ceiling.

Like, we've pushed this like knit together, amazing network and community of brands, um, but we've hit this, like, ceiling.

And if we wanna go and unlock the next step and un- be able to unlock more things that we can do, unlock more things you can do, um, that we needed to kind of reconfigure, uh, and evolve things.

And, uh, yeah, it took...

Like, the reason why it took until August from when we just started thinking about this in December was like, it was an emotional process.

Yeah.

But, but talk to us about this video with your business partner, Jenny.

Yeah, so similar situation, Jo.

Like we're, we're, we're, f- like the River Valley, if, if downtown is sick, so is the River Valley.

We are so connected, right? And, you know, accessibility to downtown is accessibility to the River Valley by car.

Um, and this summer's been very interesting.

Uh, still seeing lots of bikes, but not seeing lots of cars.

So, you know, in summer where it's super important for us to ramp up, um, to get through the winter, 'cause, you know, the, the next problem we need to solve in Edmonton is remembering like winter's not going away, and it's always there.

You've guided it through a sale, and there was a big, uh, do you call it a rebrand, a refresh? What went down yesterday?

[laughs]

... uh, to talk about this.

But it's, you know, we've been, we've been at this since 2007, and it's kind of been this thing where we just started all these different brands, and as, you know, we launch with Others Nation, we move to Calgary, we do Vancouver, we go to Toronto, and then we bring on brands like Hockey Fights, we bring on brands like Daily Face Off, and you kinda ha- it's just kind of like this Frankenstein house of brands that we're trying our best to knit together and connect.

And we felt as a business we hit this ceiling, um, and we couldn't-- We had to figure out a way to kind of punch through it, and this process started in December.

And we spent nine months or eight-ish months trying to formulate, how do we break through this? This is probably something we should do.

What should it look like? How should it sound? And, you know, we arrived kind of six months into it being like, you know what? We should bring hockey all under one brand and connect the markets to that one brand so that if someone's a supporter of DFO Vancouver and they're wearing something in Toronto, someone will see that DFO or Daily Face Off brand and understand what that is, and understand maybe as a Toronto fan, they're connected to it.

And so just bringing everything into one house, uh, it's, y- you know, once, once we got to that point, we were just very excited about what this unlocks.

But can you talk a little bit about what Daily Faceoff, uh, provides and what we're gonna see within all the rest of the company that's, uh, that's under the DFO umbrella?

That's cute.

It's, it's, it's funny.

Cause like it's, we're, you're always a kid inside.

Uh, and that's super important.

So when I, when I, when I read that comment, I'm like, shoot, that's kind of like moving off of like, we're not changing who we are, but it's, it's kind of true.

We're just, we're the same people.

And we just, you know, we're wearing a, a different hat.

makes so much sense because blank.

[laughs]

... uh, to talk about this.

But it's, you know, we've been, we've been at this since 2007, and it's kind of been this thing where we just started all these different brands, and as, you know, we launch with Others Nation, we move to Calgary, we do Vancouver, we go to Toronto, and then we bring on brands like Hockey Fights, we bring on brands like Daily Faceoff, and you kinda ha- it's just kinda like this Frankenstein house of brands that we're trying our best to knit together and connect.

And we felt as a business we hit this ceiling.

Um, and we couldn't ...

We had to figure out a way to kinda punch through it, and this process started in December.

And we spent nine months or eight-ish months trying to formulate how do we break through this? This is probably something we should do.

But can you talk a little bit about what Daily Faceoff, uh, provides and what we're gonna see within all the rest of the company that's, uh, that's under the DFO umbrella?

Yeah.

Where we're like, "I think we need to make a change." You know, we've hilariously, just out of happenstance or if that's even the term or luck or whatever, we created this, like, crazy network, and it was born here in Edmonton.

oilersnation.com Limited was incorporated November 27th, 2007.

Uh, and you know, we launched this blog, uh, thinking that, you know, there's, there's fans that aren't being represented.

Uh, you know, being a, being a fan of your team is, is a fun thing, and it's, it's more than, uh, you know, just reading articles from media experts or pundits telling us what to know or think.

And we wanted to create a place and a community for people to share their voices and get, you know, analytical, get silly, um, and kinda have it morph into this community and ecosystem where, you know, it was a blog and then social accounts and YouTube channels to events and travel and f- community fundraisers and all these things because, like, that's, you know, what being a sports fan's all about.

It's about supporting your team, your city, uh, one another.

Consistency across the board.

No, that's okay

... uh, being community-minded, community engagement, like, you hear that with even the Nation, it's one of our core values.

Um, you know, the, you know, k- being community-minded and, and, and building, uh, a company ar- around community.

And those, those core values are the same thing we have, uh, with Little Brick and Dogpatch is com- community focused, community engaged.

And the only thing that we could think of that matches our core values to do is to help.

Even though, like, we're down, but, like, we'll just figure it out.

Uh, and the one thing we have is strong platforms, right? The, the, the following we've been able to create with Dogpatch, Little Brick, Edmonton, River Valley.

Yeah

[laughs]

Uh, and, uh, he, he, he's, he's built such a wonderful tool, and now he's got this big plan and content plan that he wants to build around Puckpedia, and this is really where our paths merge.

So he provides an amazing tool for us to better serve our audience, and then I think we're gonna collaborate on some interesting content opportunities, uh, with, with him and his website and his distribution.

Like, the website is a beast.

It takes, um...

Right now we generate, uh, and sometimes I get my wrist slapped for using raw data, but, uh, who cares, uh, we do about 250 million pages of our website.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause the guys will make more for making less, which is definitely a disadvantage.

[laughs] Uh, what about game five and the way they played gives you the most hope going into tonight?

They are starting to believe they have a chance.

They, the critical mistakes that we were seeing, like, the, just the weird panic stuff, like, that stuff was, like, gone away.

It seems that they've calmed down a little bit.

They've got a sense of conviction.

Uh, they're obviously always taking advantage of the chances and, you know, that first period, they, they need to try to find a way to extrapolate that over 60 minutes or at least 40 minutes because they didn't give Anaheim a chance.

So they've shown that they can dominate the Ducks.

Yeah?

No, it did not feel good.

It just never felt good.

No.

It was, uh, you're always uneasy about it.

You're pissed.

Like, it, it just never felt good.

It felt kinda good in the last couple weeks 'cause we were, we were putting together, uh, a string of games, but-

How much better do you feel right now?