First let me start by congratulating Dobber on five great years of providing the best Fantasy Hockey Resource available. What started as a dirty thought in Dobber's mind has evolved into a virtual thesaurus of fantasy geek gold, and I'm proud to say that in some small way I helped contribute to the humble beginnings and also believe my departure had led to many less complaints over articles that were less than politically correct.

I remember getting the original four writers together to get Dobber a plaque commemorating his 1 millionth visitor to the site, and now he is nearing 70 million hits (although 53 million of them are Dobber himself logging in). Regardless, when you create something that now averages over 180,000 hits a day, you have done something special. Well done my friend (by the way, despite being Dobber's first ever employee, at a salary of $0 per article, the cheap prick still doesn't send me the yearly guide for free).

Writing for an online site such as DobberHockey.com was easy in the beginning, as virtually every topic was virgin and every idea was untouched. Hell, you could do three pages on how important the "un-cool" categories (plus/minus, faceoff wins, shooting %) were because most people focused on point production. With the change of pools being run online, and the unlimited point formats that were available, articles like this were easy to think of each week. Now I look at the site and see some of the wizards that write articles like "Top Shot Blockers In Day Games After Having Cheerios For Breakfast And Getting Laid Before The Game".

The landscape for information has changed so much in five years that I honestly believe many of us over stimulate our research and by draft time, we are second guessing every pick. It is because of this information overload that I believe Dobber has been so successful, and the reason for this is despite all the great articles and information, Dobber still provides his readers the most important aspect of Fantasy Hockey – the gut feeling. Back in the day we could make predictions and it didn't matter … we only had eight readers. Now, with 180,000 hits a day, you can't afford to be wrong very often, and Dobber isn't. (I won't bring up the argument we had a few years ago about Ryan Kesler becoming an 80-point player one day)

When I look back on my time at DobberHockey, I remember checking how many hits my article had gotten, and if it was over 100, it was cause for celebration. Mind you, the time I offered to remove the DobberHockey logo from in front on my wife's naked chest if I got 500 hits on my article that week, I believe I had over 2000 by noon. By the way, I think I still may owe some of the original reader's a peek. My all time favorite article was one of the last ones I wrote which was about all the different characters you will find at a live draft. If I am remembered on DobberHockey at all, I hope it will be for that article as it led to the most feedback and discussion I had ever received. I even heard it had been plagiarized on different sites and much to my amusement, I received it as an attachment in an email from a friend about a month later, with a unknown name taking credit for writing it at the bottom. I can only imagine the material that is "borrowed" from the site now.

In closing, I would like to apologize for not making this article as edgy as most, but I felt the situation called for a slightly more serious approach to acknowledge what Dobber has accomplished in five short years. Seventy million people is like the entire population of Canada visiting the site 2.05 times. Seventy million people is like a small village in China. As I am writing this, the gimmicky counter (Dobber's note: only counts two-thirds of traffic) at the bottom will probably roll over to 45 million, and if I know Dobber, it will continue to climb and remain the standard by which ALL other fantasy sites are judged. As for me, I will go back to my hectic life of raising two young boys (sports suck once you're a parent don't they), running my business, and making a run at my third straight husband of the year award. However, I may just pop in from time to time, when the feeling hits me, and Dobber needs to hear it like it really is.

Congrats Buddy,
Burnsy