Baugh: Avalanche in a championship window, and I can’t wait to cover it

DENVER, Colo. — I had never considered becoming a hockey writer until June 2019, when the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins faced off in the Stanley Cup Final. I had graduated from the University of Missouri a month earlier, and the Boston Herald newspaper wanted someone to help cover the games in St. Louis.

Excited to write about a championship event, I said yes in a heartbeat, and it turned out to be one of the more momentous weeks of my professional life.

For one, as I stood in the media workspace ahead of Game 6, my phone rang with a call from The Athletic’s Daniel Uthman, who offered me a position as Missouri football beat writer. And secondly, it planted seeds about a career path I hadn’t previously considered: covering hockey.

I loved the ability to talk to any player in the dressing room, and found the players smart and their answers insightful. Plus, how could I not get drawn in watching the likes of Alex Pietrangelo, two-way standouts Patrice Bergeron and Ryan O’Reilly, and Zdeno Chara playing with a broken jaw? By the end of the series, I didn’t want to stop writing about the sport, and I was able to help out with a few NHL stories while covering Missouri.

Now I have a chance to write about the sport on a full-time basis: I’ve moved to Denver and am humbled with the opportunity to cover the Colorado Avalanche.

Before getting too far into my excitement about this challenge, I’m so grateful to everyone who read my coverage of Missouri. Columbia is such a special place and one to which I’ll always feel indebted. I made many of my best friends there — both in college and after graduating — and as hard as I’ll try, I don’t think I’ll find the likes of Broadway Diner, Harold’s Doughnuts or Booche’s in any other city. (That said, I’m open to all Denver food recommendations!)

To everyone who read or commented on my stories about the Tigers, thank you, and I hope my coverage of Missouri gives Avalanche fans a sense of how I approach my work. I strive to both report deeply — I traveled to the hometowns of quarterback Kelly Bryant and coach Eliah Drinkwitz, for example — and talk to as many people as possible to write the best story. Sometimes that leads to challenging reporting, like when I looked back on Missouri players’ 2015 strike. And in other instances, it brings me to lighthearted stories, like when I wrote about players’ dogs.

Now, for the first time in my life, I’m living outside of Missouri, and I couldn’t be more excited about the team I’m covering. Ryan Clark, who is now The Athletic’s Seattle Kraken writer, did an outstanding job writing about the Avalanche, and I look forward to continuing our publication’s coverage in Denver. The Avalanche have an electric young core centered around Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and general manager Joe Sakic has put together one of the most complete rosters in the NHL. The team has high expectations, and rightfully so.

While I’m excited to cover a team with one of the best players in the world and a legitimate chance to win a Stanley Cup, I don’t take the responsibility lightly. Using observations, reporting and analytics, I’ll work to bring readers insight they might not have had otherwise, and I will search for feature angles that will shed light on the players and the team.

It’s going to be a weird, pandemic-impacted year but one that should still provide fans with quality hockey. The Avalanche share a division with top-tier teams in Vegas and St. Louis, so coach Jared Bednar and his team will have plenty of challenges in the condensed 56-game season.

My grandpa played hockey as a kid, and my dad grew up in Detroit idolizing Gordie Howe. I feel so fortunate to now be able to cover the sport myself, and I can’t wait to see what my time on the Avalanche beat brings.

(Photo: Perry Nelson / USA Today Sports)

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START FREE TRIAL Peter Baugh covers Mizzou football for The Athletic. He has previously been published in the Columbia Missourian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star and Washington Post. A St. Louis native, Peter recently graduated from the University of Missouri. Follow Peter on Twitter @Peter_Baugh.