Veteran Telegraph sportswriter Tom King works on one of the many stories he filed from Minneapolis in 2002.

NASHUA, N.H. – A career sportswriter who has covered more games and events than many people could possibly attend in a lifetime, Tom King knows his way around the stadium, arena, field, athletic complex or whatever game venue he’s working on any given day.

King, a near 40-year veteran at The Telegraph in Nashua, New Hampshire, (a sister newspaper of this publication), truly does shine in local sports circles, but he also is a fixture at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where he has covered the New England Patriots for the past 30 years … and counting.

This week, he is in much-warmer Santa Clara, California, preparing to cover his 11th Patriots’ Super Bowl appearance.

Throughout his award-winning career, King has honed his skills at finding precisely where to find the best interviews, whether they’re high school kids and coaches or household-name franchise NFL players, who also have a talent for suddenly vanishing when the notebooks and microphones head their way.

So, that’s why it was so odd to see King, who is believed to be the only New Hampshire sportswriter with 10 Super Bowls under their belt, break a sheepish smile while recalling his experience covering the Big Game, particularly Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005 at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville.

“Oh man, Jacksonville … I got completely lost,” he blurted, with a chuckle and eye roll. “I ended up walking right out of the stadium.”

The game – a pretty, 24-21 Patriots victory over Philadelphia – had just ended, and King, the deadline clock ticking in his head, set out on a brisk walk to the Pats’ clubhouse.

As it turned out, he’d inevitably joined the wrong scrum of humanity, the one made up mostly of fans hustling out to either celebrate or mourn the Pats’ third NFL championship in four years.

“I’m supposed to be in there talking to the players,” King said. “And here I was in the middle of a whole bunch of fans.”

King’s practice of following the Patriots through the playoffs and into the Super Bowl began not as part of a grand plan, but an idea that gained traction after the Jacksonville Jaguars upset the Denver Broncos in the first round of the 1996 playoffs.

“They (Telegraph editors) were thinking about sending me to Denver, but when Jacksonville won, it gave the Patriots home field the rest of the way,” he said.

Thanks to the Jaguars, it became a no-brainer: All King had to do was drive to Foxborough twice – for the divisional championship game against Pittsburgh, then, assuming a Patriots win, for the AFC championship game.

Nobody really saw the need to plan beyond that; after all, the Patriots’ lone Super Bowl appearance was a dozen years earlier in 1986, and they were trounced by the Chicago Bears, 46-10.

But a Pats victory forced the decision: Should we send Tom to New Orleans?

The newspaper did, and King departed for his first Super Bowl, a Patriots-Green Bay faceoff that set up a perfect local-angle storyline, he remembers.

“Don Davidson was mayor (of Nashua) at the time, he’s a big Green Bay fan,” King said. In addition to working a couple of stories with Davidson, he began his practice, which he continues, of trying to ferret out Patriots fans from these parts, and ideally, from Greater Nashua … and well beyond.

Super Bowl XXXI was notable also for a little side drama: It was known even before kickoff that Pats’ Coach Bill Parcells was jumping ship, headed for the New York Jets.

The media command post was next door to the Louisiana Superdome, King recalls, housed in a Hyatt hotel. “It wasn’t as big as it is now,” he said. “There was a lot less media. I remember we did everything by fax.”

Contrast that with Super Bowl XLIX, the 2015 battle with Seattle in which the Patriots prevailed, 28-24, in Phoenix.

The Wednesday before the game, King said, the Patriots set up a media availability session.

“I got up at 6 a.m. to get a shuttle bus,” he said with a laugh.

When he returned late that afternoon, weary and in need of a break, King said he saw “two guys just sitting there, having coffee.

“One had a Patriots shirt on, so I walked up and asked where he was from. He said, ‘I live in Scottsdale … but I’m originally from Nashua,” King said with a laugh.

With all the interviews he’s conducted, or stood in on, over the course of 10, going on 11 Super Bowls, one of King’s favorites came during the run-up to the 2015 Patriots-Seattle clash.

He’d just finished one of the occasional radio shows he did with a Seattle station (“they sort of latched onto me,” he said), when he noticed a larger-than-usual media gaggle surrounding one of the interview stages.

Holding microphones and standing side by side were Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll, a two-fer not to be missed.

“Carroll was up there cracking jokes, trying to get Belichick to laugh,” King recalled. “And he did.

“It’s the best I ever saw,” he added, describing the back-and-forth between the legendary coaches as more comedy routine than interview.

Other standout Super Bowl memories for King include walking in sub-zero temperatures in Minneapolis, and on the media shuttle to the game hearing an official say, “You can be sure, the NFL won’t have the game here again. The corporates aren’t happy.” And getting on the elevator after Janet Jackson’s infamous “Wardrobe Malfunction.”

“I had missed it as I went downstairs to the media work room at halftime in Houston, and when I went back up in the elevator, it was myself and two NFL officials. One said to the other, ‘They assured me nothing like this would happen.’

“I had no idea what they were talking about, but I found out soon enough.”

But the one that stands out was the morning after the Patriots’ big comeback win over Atlanta in Super Bowl LI, also in Houston. Tom Brady was named MVP, which meant he had to receive the award from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who had suspended him the first four games of that season due to the Deflategate scandal.

“I made sure I had a front row seat,” King said.

This year, perhaps even more than escaping New Hampshire’s bitter cold and snow-covered streets, King is looking forward to seeing how the Patriots cap off what has been a surprise run for what could be the team’s NFL-record seventh Vince Lombardi trophy.

“The feeling I have for this trip is the same I have had for the other 10,” King said. “And that’s one of extreme gratitude to the company for the opportunity to bring our readers all sorts of versions of football history.”

This story originally appeared in the Feb. 4, 2018, edition of The Telegraph. Also contributing to this updated report is Matt Burdette, a longtime colleague of Tom King and former editor and publisher of The Telegraph.