After a long time in newspapers, I'm excited to figure out what's next.

I've been fortunate to be in one place my whole career until now. I started with the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, and two owners later, we were under a big umbrella with several other dailies as Hearst Connecticut Media.

It was a great place to tell the stories of people and institutions, digging into what has made them what they are and where they'll go next. It was also a great place to work a beat, covering one team or one sport day-in, day-out. I love the weird in the mundane, and the mundane in the weird, like the pandemic virtual swim meet. I love finding the stupid detail that puts you there, like the time I wrote that the football coaches' office on the second day of practice was full of "anticipation, enthusiasm and boxes." I covered the American Hockey League full-time for almost 20 years. I covered high school sports for Hearst's vertical, GametimeCT. During the pandemic, I even covered breaking news and town government. Especially since 2019, it was a little bit of everything.

• This year was the 50th Reunion for Hopkins' 1975 championship baseball team, and most of the team returned for its get-together. What a blast to get to listen in (and to see the team's coach, who coached and taught me back in the day, too).


• Hopkins graduated the last of four sisters who arrived with a family tie. The Banks family came in as legacies and left a legacy in athletics.

• We put together the story of goalie Tristan Lennox's 14-month-long odyssey from Reading to Allentown.


• I profiled Chris Terry, future AHL Hall of Famer, as he took over the franchise's scoring lead; I also profiled a local all-star educator.


• We put together a package about the goalie who designed his mask with one of the premier mask artists in hockey: his dad.


• And I talked to a few players about hockey in the unusual 10:30 a.m. games in front of thousands of screaming kids (including the classic 50 Cent story).

• Obits are an honor, and I was honored to get to know football coach Mike Ornato, though sad that it happened only after he died. I was more fortunate to get to know a local lacrosse coach as he spent his final season with his team. We wrote several stories on a tragic crash that took the lives of a state hockey player and his grandfather; it was still heartwrenching but more hopeful the next year, when I got to write about the player's sister joining his high school team in his honor.


• All that writing about government during the pandemic paid off when we had to follow boards of education. It also made following up on legislation routine, like when the state stuck a clause preserving Thanksgiving football into a bonding bill ("pork barrel without the pork" was a beauty).


• One of the state's top athletes decided he was going to play football and lacrosse at Notre Dame. We profiled him as a high school senior a few months before he pulled it off.


• I enjoyed writing about the bond between a standout lacrosse goalie and his dad, who coached him to success. (Josh was also a standout football punter. I'm sorry I wasn't around to write that one, or the story of his third lacrosse state title in June. I did catch up with him earlier in the 2024-25 season when I covered a game for The Ruden Report.)


• I had fun telling how a city boys volleyball team was reborn. I talked to a couple of his high school coaches about New York Rangers goalie and local guy Jonathan Quick when the team went on a playoff run in 2024. And when a local team won the prestigious Quebec International Pee Wee Hockey Tournament, I talked to the coach and dug up a few fun facts.


• I covered Quinnipiac's national championship in men's hockey (and got a little wet). I got a wild detail from its coach, Rand Pecknold, about a test that might have changed his and the program's entire history. And I got to spend an afternoon with players from Quinnipiac's first team under the billboard they bought to honor the champs.

Caution: You will get wet on this ride pic.twitter.com/drO1KLV2ap

— Michael Fornabaio (@fornabaioctp) April 9, 2023

I've been a writer since I started a "newspaper" in fifth grade. Covering pro hockey was about as "do what you love and you'll never work a day" as I could get. I love the game, of course, but I love the minutiae, too, the weird statistical coincidences, the strange procedural hoops of transactions, the technicalities in the rulebook that create unusual situations. (Don't let me get going on the Three-Minute Major.) April and eight first-round NHL playoff series is my Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

(I do love Christmas, though, and spending time with my family all year. And their dogs.)

I grew up on Oldies radio. I'm furious that it only played one Small Faces song (and that it was that one). I watch too much television. I still watch Survivor mostly because my Mom did, too, and our post-episode talks were as close to sports talk as we got. My hockey blog used to include as many Simpsons references as possible.

I miss my hockey blog. I'm gratified that people tell me they do, too.