It’s time to begin a new chapter in Die By The Blade history.
I’m excited to announce that beginning August 15, 2025, Die By The Blade will be incorporated as an expansion site of Expected Buffalo, with founder (and former DBTB editor!) Chad DeDominicis taking the reins to help move this site into the future and ensure that there will always be a home for Sabres fans to gather on the Internet.
This is an exciting moment. Since leaving Die By The Blade, Chad and his team have grown Expected Buffalo exponentially. They are trusted voices in the hockey analytics sphere, with boots on the ground right here in the 716. Well-versed in the comings and goings of the Sabres organization, Chad and Anthony are also well-familiar with this site and what it’s meant to readers since 2007.
When I started writing for Die By The Blade in 2017, I never could have imagined the journey this site would go on over the years. Years later, when Die By The Blade went independent after Vox dropped most of its NHL coverage, there was only one thing I could do: focus on keeping the site alive, whatever it took. It meant creating an LLC, something I went into with zero experience in but made it work. It meant crowdfunding, creating subscriptions, using Google Ads to get revenue to keep paying our writers & editors as well as the (few, but necessary) bills that came in. And you all – our readers, our commenters – have been critical in keeping this site alive and helping us get to the next day, and the next, and the next.
I’ll spare you all the silly little details that no one cares about, but ultimately, it comes down to this: At some point, for personal reasons, it became clear to me that the best thing I could do for myself and for my family would be to step away from Die By The Blade. (And before anyone asks or assumes, my decision has nothing to do with the team’s performance over recent years. I swear.)
But anyways… it’s not that easy, right? You can’t just walk away from something like this, for a myriad reasons. I’d poured my heart and soul into keeping this site alive. Eventually, I knew that I needed to find the right leadership to hand the site off to – and then Chad stepped up. Instantly, I knew this was the right move. Chad is someone I know, someone I trust, and someone who will care about this site and this community.
So what does it mean? First & foremost: if you’ve currently got a subscription to DBTB (through Stripe), it will be terminated as of tomorrow, August 2. A keen eye will also notice (or maybe not) that the Google Ads that pop up from time to time have disappeared. The new chapter of this site may look a little different, but it won’t be following any sort of subscription model or utilizing the Google Ads revenue like we’ve been using to help stay afloat.
Personally, I’ll still be around for the next few weeks and to help with the transition as needed before I quietly fade into the background. (To be clear, I’m not leaving Buffalo, and I’ll still be following the Sabres, regardless of whether or not I’m writing about them.) Our Top 25 Under 25 voting ends today, so you can look forward to that content coming very soon – and much more beyond that to come.
This has been one hell of a ride with its share of ups and downs, but I’m excited for what’s next – and I hope you are, too.