Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern

Concepts on HockeyJerseyConcepts.com can only be nominated for the COTW vote up until the Friday of that week at 11:59pm Eastern time. This deadline has come into question recently by those who have had their concepts seconded after the deadline. I hope to use this space to explain the deadline to you. It likely won't be up for debate and I hope you will understand why.

In case you weren't aware, I'm Ryan and I am the admin for HockeyJerseyConcepts. It's up to me to count votes, gather nominees, start and set-up competitions, maintain the blog and its pages, and generally make sure that everything you love about HJC is there for you to access. I sit down in front of my computer every Friday night at 10pm Eastern and begin this lengthy process. Every week it's about a 3-4 hour session. Common sense suggests that breaking up the session into mini sessions throughout the week would be the best thing to do.

I have a family. I have a wife and two young children. My oldest son is only three and a half years old and my daughter is a year and a half. Just like all children, they are filled with energy and are developing their minds and learning about their worlds. It's a very important time for their parents to be heavily involved in their lives. On Saturdays through Thursdays when the kids go to bed I devote my time to my wife. She's my best friend. This leaves Friday night as my night to take care of HJC.

That is how all the 11:59pm Eastern deadlines came about. I literally am sitting at the computer waiting for Saturday to arrive. When it does I close all the polls and gather all of the nominees and try to get all of the information posted on HJC before I go off to sleep. Throw in the inconsistent sleep patterns of two young children and I'm awake until 2am every Friday/Saturday night.

Allowing concepts posted on Sundays six days to be nominated for COTW and only allowing those on Fridays 7.5 hours to be nominated is not fair. Concepts will and have gotten shafted, but it comes back to Friday night is the only time I have to take care of HJC. This is just the way it is.

I am making a slight change which puts less pressure on myself to meet some middle of the night deadlines. Caz will be moving from Sundays to Saturdays. The update post will then take Caz's old spot. However Friday nights still remain as the only available time I have to really devote to HJC.

I've always thought of bringing in an "admin assistant". The biggest hurdle is that this person would have to be just as committed as I am. Essentially I would be asking someone to be available every weekend to help with vote counting and COTW nominees and gathering competition entries. Seriously, how many people want to use their Friday and Saturday nights doing that?

So I will listen to suggestions, but I've run a lot of them through my head and they all have their flaws. Nominating concepts for COTW on a Friday is not fair, but try to keep things in perspective. HockeyJerseyConcepts is a just-for-fun blog where the best concept from the entire year gets a simple $20 plaque. I'm not a programmer and HJC is not my job (I'm a chef). We all just have to make the best of the situations that are given to us.