PuckShots Christmas Message 2021

Christmas, mercifully, has at last arrived. Joanna and I would like to thank the Thunder Bay minor hockey community of players, parents and coaches & managers for their support in having fun and safe photo shoots this year. We felt a bit out of sorts getting going as we only shot 7 teams during the 2020-21 season but we’re already at 77 for this season.

Supply chain issues.

It seems like everywhere we look there are “supply chain issues”. Cars are in short supply. People are asking double the retail price for a PS5. Even the plastic hockey card cases we get are backordered until Summer 2022. We saw this extend to minor hockey too as many teams were delayed in receiving all their jerseys and/or socks which in turn pushed photoshoots back. We had zero shoots in September and about half the normal amount in October but then had our most photo shoots in November and December ever!

Better late?

With the late start date, we ended up putting our “Christmas cutoff date” way earlier than we normally like. It’s easy to stock up our schedule with photoshoots but the photoshoots are only like 10% of the job. I’ll be honest, the stack of teams still needed to have their proofs posted feels taller than Zdeno Chara. So if you’re one of those teams, we thank you for your patience. We’re diligently shortening that stack day-by-day and unlike the past few years, we won’t be away for 2 weeks on a beach in January.

Thanks again to you all! Have a Merry Christmas and we’ll hopefully see you at the rinks in 2022!

~Travis Ulrich & Joanna Herbage