My lack of blog updates is probably becoming conspicuous at this point. This is the time of year when news disappears. It's playoff time and teams aren't really thinking about jerseys — or next season, for that matter. Because of that, I've been focusing my energy on other aspects of Icethetics.

The Voting Tournaments

Our third tournament — Olympic jerseys — is starting to wind down. We've reached the final four sweater designs and by week's end, we'll have our medalists. So what's next?

The NHL Tournament of Logos makes its triumphant return next Monday! But before we can open the first poll, we need to seed the bracket. In past editions of the NHLToL, the bracket was seeded randomly.

Not this time. The seeding process for this tournament has already begun. The way it works is simple. I set up a Facebook photo album with all 30 logos. You "like" all the logos you like and the ones with the most "likes" get seeded higher up.

So be sure to head over to Facebook and do your part to seed the NHLToL bracket!

The IceHL Expansion

The other big deal around here will be the expansion of our fantasy hockey league, the IceHL. For the uninitiated, the IceHL Project is a league we built from the ground up. Icethetics readers selected cities, named teams and designed logos and jerseys through a series of polls beginning in 2008.

Over the years, we've expanded the league and made improvements through rebranding. This summer, though, two big things are happening. First, our two conferences, IceHL East and West will each swap a team. The Regina Renegades (of the West) were relocated to Philadelphia last summer putting them square in the IceHL East.

But the conference relocation was delayed a year to avoid upsetting the balance of the ESPN fantasy league. It's happening now so one of the East teams needs to move to the West. The IceHL East team that finishes in last place this season will earn that distinction and will then need to be relocated and rebranded.

The other (bigger) thing happening is the launch of the IceHL World — a third conference in our growing fantasy league. We'll be adding eight new teams to the family from around the globe. All of this is explained on the IceHL blog.

Not to worry, I'll still be here to keep up with news coverage on the blog. Just don't expect as many features or cover stories as you saw earlier in the year. I wish I could give lots of time to every section of Icethetics, but I'm only human — and then there's that pesky full-time job, of course.

I'm doing lots of behind-the-scenes work to prepare for this summer's logo tournaments as well as all things IceHL-related. So, in other words, the blog will take a backseat for a while. But rest assured, if there's something worth reporting, I'll be all over it.

Hope you enjoy everything that goes on here this spring and summer!