Announcing a change at the top

Greetings, friends. Writing about myself is not something I either enjoy or am particularly good at, so I’ll get to the point of this post: the time has come for me to step aside as Canes Country site manager. I’m starting a new job as a sports writer at The Wilson Times today, and it’s time for me to move onto the next chapter of my life and career.

That being said, steering the ship for Canes Country over the past year is something I’ve greatly enjoyed, and I’m going to miss it for sure. When I got laid off from my last full-time job at the onset of the pandemic, Brian was nice enough to offer me some work as the interim site manager, a role that, as you all know, became permanent last spring.

Working to coordinate coverage of the team throughout a very unusual period in the hockey (and sports, and overall) world was challenging (especially during last year’s condensed schedule) but enjoyable. I can’t thank Brian and Stephanie Driver, the head of NHL team brands at SB Nation, enough for this opportunity. I got a chance to see and do a lot of cool things in my time as site manager, including coordinating remote coverage of the 2020 playoff bubble and last year’s historic regular season.

I also can’t thank the staff at Canes Country enough for all of their hard work in my time at Canes Country. All of them helped me with their talent, hard work, reliability and story ideas as we all worked together to provide the best Hurricanes coverage they could to this corner of the internet.

I also want to thank you, the readers, for following along, engaging in lively discussions in the comments and supporting our work. Without you all, none of this would be possible.

As I say goodbye (in this capacity, anyway), I’m very excited and proud to turn the ship over to my good friend, and a member of Canes Country’s staff since the start of the 2019-20 season, Alec Sawyer. Alec is a very talented, knowledgeable writer and editor and he’s going to do a great job with this. The site could not be in better hands.

And, you’re all not quite getting rid of me. Alec was nice enough to keep me on staff as a writer, so I’ll still be around writing some stories, covering games, and, of course, offering my thoughts on the team on Twitter, just not nearly as frequently.

So, with that, at least as site manager, goodbye, and thank you, and I’ll turn it over to Alec.

Hello, all!

I am Alec Sawyer, and I’m super excited to be taking over as site manager here at Canes Country. I’ve been working for the site for two years now, under the great leadership of Brian and Andrew, and I’m pumped about moving into a new role here.

I can’t thank Andrew, a great friend of mine dating back to our time together at Technician when we were students at NC State, enough for guiding me into this position and showing me the ropes. Also, big shoutout to Brian for being incredible at this job when I joined the staff.

So, what does this change mean for Canes Country content moving forward? To be completely honest, not too much will change. The wonderful staff remains the same, and we’re going to continue to do our absolute best to cover this team in a way that is fun, informative and engaging for this community.

The day-to-day coverage will be pretty much what it has been, as we continue to jump into this new season. As for me, I’ll do my best to get out to practices, games and everything else to provide coverage, and the incredible staff of writers I have will certainly be out at things as well.

Thank you everyone for the reading you’ve done in the past, and thank you so much in advance for continuing to come to this site as a source for Canes content and community engagement.

Best,

Alec