The Ice Garden

My name is Mike Murphy. I am the Managing Editor of The Ice Garden (TIG), a women's hockey blog that has changed the way the game is covered since its inception in October 2016. The Ice Garden has built a solid reputation for being an indispensable source of news, analysis, and content of all kinds in the world of women's hockey. We are newsmakers, story breakers, and tireless advocates for the game we love.

On Friday, January 20, we learned that SB Nation would no longer be "managed and monetized" by our parent company Vox Media. In other words, our paid contributors will no longer be paid. Furthermore, we don’t know what support, if any, we’ll receive moving forward from what has been the only home we've known. Paid contributors will receive their last monthly stipend for February 2023. We are working against the clock.

We have spent the past half dozen years passionately telling stories of women’s hockey’s past, present, and future. It’s because of that passion that we believe our story and our work at TIG is far from over. The funds raised here will help us in our transition to being an independent entity.

With your support, TIG can pick up from where we left off without missing a beat and without our creators missing the compensation they deserve. Our operating budget was $850/month (down from $1150) when we received last Friday's devastating news. That number was nowhere near enough to fairly compensate creators covering so many aspects of the sport, but it is our mission to do what we can to change that.

All funds will go directly to our content creators or be used for creating our new online home. To be very clear, monthly stipends help keep gas in our cars to go to games and our site online. It's something, but it's not nearly enough. There are precious few places where women's hockey creators receive compensation of any kind and no one in this space is doing this work full-time. With our work at TIG, we hope to build towards that and so much more becoming a reality. Your support will help us do what we do best - cover the sport we all love.

Thank you so much for reading, spreading the word, giving what you can, and for loving the game along with us these past six years. See you at the rink!