Bucky's 5th Quarter expanding hockey coverage for 2013-14 season

We have very exciting news this morning, as Bucky's 5th Quarter is thrilled to announce we are expanding our hockey coverage with two additional writers this season. Matt Masterson will be coming on board to help with coverage of the men's program, while Nicole Haase is joining our team to cover the Badger women.

While B5Q's roots are on the fan side, we've always prided ourselves on the professional coverage we bring to people that crave Badgers news. We don't believe in half-assing things here, and that's why it was incredibly important any people we added to our team were exceptional.

We were lucky enough to find two.

Matt joins B5Q after covering the Badgers the past few seasons for the Daily Cardinal, one of UW-Madison's two student newspapers. When I explored the possibility of adding an additional men's hockey writer, Matt was the first person I contacted. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when he agreed to supplement our hockey coverage this season.

Based out of Madison, Matt will be able to cover weekly press conferences as well as home games at the Kohl Center as his schedule allows. Given his journalism background and love for hockey, we feel we've added a blue-chip recruit to our staff.

The addition of Nicole is one that is long overdue. Given the success of the women's program at Wisconsin, our lack of coverage the past few seasons has been, quite frankly, embarassing. While we can't do anything about the past, we're hoping to make it up to you by giving Nicole the reigns to cover Mark Johnson's club for us.

On top of being a regular at Badgers men's and women's games, Nicole also covers the Milwaukee Brewers at our fellow SB Nation website Brew Crew Ball. Nicole helped me out with some Olympic coverage at my previous writing gig, and we're hoping she'll be able to do the same with all the Badgers expected to be over in Sochi next February.

To wrap this up, we couldn't be more excited to have Nicole and Matt join our hockey staff. I didn't want to add anyone to our team if he or she wasn't an't exceptional fit. The fact that we found not only one but two can only mean positive things for our readers this season.

Please help me in welcoming our new additions, and make sure you're following @NicoleHaase and @M_R_Masterson on Twitter.