Patrick Donnelly joins New England Hockey Journal as new writer

Patrick Donnelly is the newest writer for New England Hockey Journal.

The past year has truly been a whirlwind.

Exactly 365 days ago, I was just over two months into my time as a postgrad intern at NCAA Digital under Turner Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery after graduating from Boston University in the spring. I probably was working on one of my weekly college features for NCAA.com.

Fast forward a few months, and I was covering my first event at Fenway Park. No, it wasn’t a Red Sox game, but rather, the Fenway Bowl between Louisville and Cincinnati. In a couple of weeks, the gridiron was gone – replaced by a hockey rink. I lived at Fenway for the first weekend of January, photographing, videoing and writing about the men’s and women’s college hockey doubleheaders at Frozen Fenway before doing the same for the men’s and women’s Beanpots a month later.

After making it through the college hockey regular season and most of March Madness, well, madness, it was off to Tampa to cover the men’s Frozen Four, where Quinnipiac took home its first national title.

Essentially as soon as I stepped off the plane back in Boston after a busy jaunt to Florida, I began my stint with Boston Sports Journal on a full-time basis. I had been freelancing with BSJ since the holidays, and it was time to be thrown directly into the fire just in time for the Bruins to wrap up their historic regular season and embark on what should have been a deep playoff run.

And after spending the last few months documenting the fallout from the Black and Gold’s first-round collapse, the start of their centennial season as well as covering some Sox at Fenway, the opportunity to become a writer with New England Hockey Journal and Seamans Media arose. I jumped at the chance.

I’m a North Shore kid (born and raised in Lynn, Mass. – you never come out the way you went in), and I know the hold hockey has on this region. It dominated the lives of so many of my friends growing up, and when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was strap on my rollerblades and play street hockey until it was pitch black in the neighborhood, and before I knew it, I was on the ice learning the game for real.

My talents would only ever take me as far as junior varsity at Malden Catholic, back when they were still at their Super 8 height as I quickly realized I was much better at talking about sports than playing. But the love for the game never changed. Middle school daydreams of playing in the Beanpot faded to hoping to cover a Beanpot championship at BU, which I was fortunate enough to do with the women’s team in 2019 and the men in 2022.

Few things are as pure – as genuine – as hockey is at its grassroots. Packed local rinks, parents and friends going ballistic when their own puts one in the back of the net. High school and prep players take every single game like it’s their last. Nothing beats it. It’s that passion that grabbed me when I first started playing, and it’s what continues to draw me in.

I’m thrilled to join a top-of-its-class team of writers, photographers and editors who have devoted themselves to covering everything this ever-evolving corner of the universe has to offer — be it the prep and high schools, the academies, the local superstars off to college hockey, the late-bloomers still fighting for scholarship opportunities and more.

I can’t wait to add to the coverage for both boys and especially girls hockey. New England is a thriving hotspot for girls hockey talent – Massachusetts just had nine women selected to the U18 World Championship team – and I’m ecstatic to be able to tell those stories.

Hope to see you around the rinks.