The Hockey News' David Alter saw his 440-game attendance streak snapped when he was unable to travel to Minnesota for a Toronto Maple Leafs game, but the experienced journalist has made his mark in the industry and continues to carve out ways to advance in sports journalism.
You don't need to be Phil Kessel, Brent Burns or Keith Yandle to have an ironman streak in the NHL.
In fact, you don't even need to be a player.
In a time when it's rare to see team beat reporters travel to every road game, you can expect to see David Alter.
Despite close calls, The Hockey News' Toronto Maple Leafs site editor had gone over five years of making every Leafs regular-season and playoff game. That's five years of frequent trip-planning and budgeting for the experienced reporter.
But he couldn't help but wonder whether a stormy March 15 would be different.
Alter arrived at Toronto Pearson Airport on the Sunday to board a flight to Saint Paul, Minnesota, for a Leafs road game against the Wild. That would have been his 441st consecutive regular-season or playoff Leafs game since the last regular-season game of 2020-21.
"I was (at the airport at a) normal time, a couple hours before, but the whole time, I thought this might get cancelled because all the reports online were that no flights were getting in," Alter said. "About an hour before the flight was going to board, I got a notification that it was delayed by 30 minutes, and then about 15 minutes after that, I got the notification that it was cancelled."
David Alter Fortunately, Alter was able to go home from the airport rather than be stranded away from Toronto. He watched the game from his house and received a little time off before going back to his usual routine when the New York Islanders came to town on March 17 without missing a beat.
After David announced his streak ended on X, he received tons of supportive responses across social media and the hockey world. Those who reached out included some Leafs PR staff, BlogTO, Luke Fox, former Leafs center Scott Laughton, and Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.
Friedman's response was especially significant to Alter because he looked up to him during his time at Western University.
"One of the things I was really appreciative of was (Friedman's 32 Thoughts podcast) talked about it for quite a bit," Alter said. "For the acknowledgement I got from guys like Friedman, that meant a lot to me. I appreciated it because that kind of helps validate why I was doing it.
"The industry is so tough, and there are very few places that travel anymore, and so for me, it was kind of my way of showing that, yeah, you can still do this, and if you're conscious about cost, and you do it as a business, you can be successful at it."
Alter also mentioned that his streak was never intended to be as big a deal as it became.
"I never intended to do 440 straight games," Alter said. "This kind of started as, 'Hey, I wonder if I can do all 82 in one season,' which I'd never done before. I talked about the streak a little bit, but I didn't make a big deal out of it until it was over."
As a new streak starts, Alter's coverage of the Maple Leafs continues, which he says hasn't been much different this season despite the team underperforming and ending its nine-year post-season streak.
"Covering the team's been the same, but obviously the jump in enthusiasm from the staff that you're talking to is just not the same as it's been in previous years," Alter said.
"The only challenge of this season was a lot of these games kind of feeling a bit irrelevant because the Leafs not making the playoffs has been so evident for a while now."
Despite Toronto not being in the playoffs for the first time since the 2015-16 season, Alter won't rest much, even after the regular season ends on April 16.
"What I do doesn't really shut off. There's always news," Alter said.
"The beat never stops producing content even though the season's over. There's still work to do. You're just not moving around, having to be at as many places physically as you've had to."
Roderick Bawcutt is an intern at The Hockey News.
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