An Email Interview with Nick Bowins of the Hockey Collective

When it comes to hockey, there are a lot of brands that are doing whatever they can to grow and bring attention to our favorite sport.

One of those brands is the great Hockey Collective. Hockey Collective is the online hub for all hockey lovers, and it currently has 399,000 Instagram followers.

Patrick Scebba, founder of the Hockey Collective, and Nick Bowins, the Chief Operations Officer at Hockey Collective, have been sharing the game they have loved since 2012. Their overall goal is to provide the most entertaining, insightful, and informative content for not only the diehard hockey fans but also the fans who are just trying to get into hockey or are seeing it for the first time.

The brand also has a TikTok presence with 50,000 followers, about 13,000 Twitter/X followers, and recently started a YouTube channel where Bowins gets creative with stats, storytelling, and games. Simply put, this brand is ALL HOCKEY, ALL THE TIME!

Bowins was kind enough to take some time to do an email interview with me where he discussed how he and Pat got into hockey, how the brand got started, what they are looking to accomplish, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy reading this, and please be sure to check them out!

PH: Growing up, how did you get into hockey?
NB: I have been into hockey for as long as I can remember. My parents always say that from basically the time I could walk, I was on skates – or at least playing mini sticks in the house.

Growing up in small-town Ontario, Canada, we eat, sleep, and breathe hockey from a young age.

PH: Growing up, who was your favorite team and player? How about now?
NB: Running an unbiased hockey brand that tries to cover all 32 NHL teams and all the other men’s and women’s leagues as equally as possible – this is something neither Pat nor myself admit too often.

I am a diehard Toronto Maple Leafs fan, while Pat is a lifelong Montreal Canadiens fan. Working in hockey and running a brand like this, I have grown to focus more on individual players rather than a specific team, but the Toronto Maple Leafs will always have my heart. Mats Sundin was my favorite player on the team as a kid. Still, I also had a huge affinity for Alex Ovechkin and Pavel Datsyuk, having several jerseys and posters of both.

Nowadays, I am less invested in the Leafs’ success (as it only leads to pain), but I still catch the majority of their games. Auston Matthews is my favorite Leaf, while Cale Makar gets the honor of being my favorite non-Leafs player.

PH: At what point in your life did you realize that you wanted to be involved in the hockey industry?
NB: Honestly, from a very young age. Whether it was being a scout, a coach, an agent, a journalist, or, of course, a player, my goal was always to have a career revolving around hockey.

I was always the kid who watched every highlight from the night before as I ate breakfast before school, played mini sticks at recess, raced home to play road hockey after school, and then watched hockey all night. Hockey was always a part of the plan.

PH: How did you first start Hockey Collective? Didn’t you originally start it on Instagram? What made you decide to do that?
NB: When it comes to starting Hockey Collective, Pat deserves all the credit. He started the brand in 2012, right as Instagram took off. He ran the business and the content all by himself for about eight years until I joined him in the fall of 2020.

The grind and growth that he went through with the brand is amazing, and with how many people create content today, his starting so early and working so hard is the only reason we’re in a successful position today. He tells the story that he was posting hockey memes and Montreal Canadiens content on his personal Instagram at the time and his friends told him to stop filling their feeds with it, so he started a hockey-specific page – pretty crazy how that turned out.

In 2020, I had been working with JT Barnett, son of former NHL GM and Super Agent Mike Barnett, on another hockey brand called Triple Deke. Pat and I had known each other for a bit just through hockey media, and he convinced me to join him at Hockey Collective to take it to the next level.

When I joined Pat had just cracked 300,000 Instagram followers. He was already beyond crushing it on Instagram, so my focus was to grow other platforms, and grow the business side of things while helping continue to grow our devoted Instagram following. With 399,000 Instagram followers, 50,000 TikTok followers, 13,000 Twitter followers, and a blossoming YouTube account – we’ve been able to work together perfectly on that goal.

PH: As mentioned above a few times already, your Instagram feed is killing it as you currently have 399,000 followers. Does that surprise you at all? Why or why not?
NB: We take great pride in our Instagram as it is our biggest and by far our oldest platform. We have people on there who have been counting on our coverage of highlights and news for 10+ years at this point.

With just two of us running the brand part-time, our focus is always on quality over quantity, which has led us to where we are today. We could go crazy and post every single piece of news daily, but that would be too much for the casual audience.

On the flip side, if we did not post any news, people would find other trusted sources. For us, it has been about finding a happy medium on the number of posts, and then ensuring the content quality is always held to a higher standard than you would see anywhere else.

PH: When did you decide to expand to produce merchandise?
NB: As mentioned earlier, my job was to help expand the business side of things, AKA start being able to monetize the online success Pat had cultivated. We worked on getting things set up during Covid, but of course that was a tough time to be creating an apparel line as supplies were low and so was disposable income for most.

We officially launched our website and apparel line in May 2022 during the NHL playoffs as that is our peak online engagement period. We now have a fully functioning online store with 110+ products offered.

We do not push it or promote it too much as we have such a diverse followership and do not ever want to feel like we are solely trying to make money at this – but for our loyal audience, it is a great way that they can support the brand and show others that they are a part of the community we have built.

PH: How do you come up with ideas for your merchandise? Take us through that process.
NB: The majority of our apparel ideas stem from memes or storylines that we see or share frequently on our social media. The Hot Stick shirt comes from one of our best-performing videos on Alex Ovechkin’s iconic celebration, while something like the Baaabby Orr shirt comes from our comments section arguing over if Bobby Orr is GOAT Defenceman.

Pat also gets the credit on some of the more simplistic and fashionable designs, as he is very into streetwear and fashion culture, and can replicate designs for us that match what’s cool in culture at the time – such as the small logo oversized t-shirt.

PH: I am not sure where you folks are at right now, but are you folks trying to make this a full-time gig? If so, what steps are you going to take to make that happen?

NB: That is always a goal of ours, but being in the online hockey media landscape for so long, we both know how tricky that is. We both currently have full-time jobs and love what we do.

I am the Chief of Staff at a rapidly expanding tech company, while Pat does social media and content for TSN and BarDown. Speaking for myself, having something outside of my daily job where I can sit down and get creative and make fun engaging content out of the hockey games that I was already going to watch that night, is an amazing thing. I get to spend my days learning at a job I enjoy and then, on the side, have this amazing creative outlet about the game that I’ve loved all my life.

We will see where the road takes us. Social media and sports coverage are ever-changing, and there will always be opportunities to do what you love.

PH: What are your goals moving forward with the Hockey Collective? Tell us how you plan to achieve them.
NB: We have got a million ideas. With just two of us working part-time on the brand, it comes down to prioritization and focusing our efforts.

We have had tons of great help over the years – interns who worked on specific platforms, friends who have helped edit or create graphics for apparel, etc. But for us, it is about finding a way to continue growing and expanding while still bringing our audience what they have already come to know and love from us.

That is why something like our YouTube channel is so exciting to me right now. We have grown to almost 1,000 subscribers and amassed 168,000 views in the last 45 days, solely from a new style of content I have been creating. We have not posted about it on our Instagram or TikTok, so this is a net new audience of hockey fans who are organically enjoying what we are creating.

Once we blend this new content creation with our existing audience on Instagram and other platforms, I am excited about where that can take us. Long story short – I focus on being on-camera, bringing personality, and sharing my opinions and knowledge, as opposed to sharing just news and highlights from a brand page. That is the goal for 2024 and beyond.

PH: Is there anything else that you want to share with us hockey fans?
NB: Hockey is an amazing game, but not enough people know about it or get to play it and enjoy it. I hope that hockey continues to grow in non-traditional markets, not only in North America but around the world.

As it does that, I hope all the loyal hockey fans who follow our pages, interact with our content, and read great articles like Patrick Hoffman writes do their part to showcase what makes our game so special and help welcome all the new potential fans to our game.

Hockey as a sport is at a critical growth point – my wish is that every Hockey Collective follower does one thing to help take hockey itself to the next level.