How to Identify Athletic Talent At An Early Age

SPEAKER_00 1:23

We got a question today that all of you want to know. How to identify talent as a youth hockey player. How do you know if they're talented enough? We answer this one right away in this episode, so make sure you listen. I know I know it's a topic everybody wants to know. Also, if you haven't done so already, please give us a five-star review. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, if you can stop real quick and do that, we really appreciate that. The reviews really help us out. That's part of the algorithm of being a podcaster. Also, if you haven't done so already, uh check out our Facebook group, Our Kids Play Hockey. It's a private group with a couple yes-no questions. Grows every week. It's a very positive environment for uh youth hockey parents and players and coaches that really just want to expand their ability to coach and love this game together. So uh without further ado, let's dive into the episode that's answering this question how do you identify talent early on how our kids play hockey? Hello, hockey friends and families around the world, and welcome to another edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. I'm Leah Lias, and I'm joined by my best friend in the world, Mike Benelli, Christy Cassiana Burns is on assignment. Mike, I'm never gonna get uh old saying that. I love saying that. Uh today's topic is gonna be a pop-in one. It's how to identify talent at a young age. You have an eight-year-old and you want to know, how do I know if this kid's good enough to make the NHL, the National Hockey League? Today, we are going to give you the answer on how you can identify that talent at a young age. Are you ready for the answer out there listening? Those of you watching, are you ready? Mike has the answer. Mike, answer the question: how do you identify talent at a young age?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Um, you can't. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

And that's the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Thank you. Have a great day. Just eliminated every scout's job in the world under the age of 10.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

No, yeah, right here we go. So obviously, and obviously, today we're gonna discuss not why you can't identify talent at a young age, but how important it is and what to focus on at a young age to create talent or to create really productive citizens. This is gonna be a really fun episode. Mike and I have a lot of notes. We're gonna go by uh why you can't identify talent at a young age, at least not to the level we're talking about in the open here. Um, really, a big part of this episode is gonna be why it's important not to compare your kids to other kids, uh, and not just from the parenting standpoint. We're also gonna talk about uh how you never know who's going to turn into a professional athlete. We have some fun examples with that. Uh, we'll talk about uh, you know, the FOMO, the fear of missing out, especially, you know, it's rampant in the game today, especially at from might, squirt, pee-wee, the the tournaments or the showcases you may or may not go to. Um that that's becoming a problem, I think, in the game, Mike, more so than when I was a kid. Um, and then we're gonna talk at the end about just you know, enjoying the process and what that process or lack of process looks like. But Mike, let's start um with just kind of the quick why, you know, for the parents listening, just to remind them, there is no way to identify talent at a young age. You know, even if someone's gifted, you you just don't know where that's gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Right. And and you then we know that you can identify you can you can see talent, right? You can say, well, that kid's really talented. Like, oh, that kid's real that can could really do things that my seven-year-old can't, or wow, I can't believe that that little girl can throw the ball like that, like and she's six. Like, so yes, there is there are talented athletes, yeah, kids in in the age group. There's no doubt about that. And you can identify that, right? Everybody can say, oh, those are the best eight-year-olds today. You can see that. Like, that's why it's so easy to do tryouts, right? For kids, because you go, oh, those are the best eight-year-olds. There they are. And then, but it's it's the the the eye is and I guess the the the goal would be, well, the real secret would be can you identify the kids that aren't standing out at you? Um, and can you have a crystal ball and know, like, wow, there that kid has some attributes that can maybe turn into some type of a positive athletic experience. Um, and and then there are some kids that look great, right? And you can say, well, can you determine what that kid's not going to progress over the next 10, 15 years? That is, you know, that's really the science, right? Is is how can you how can you find those things out and can you identify them? And I think mo 98% of of uh talent evaluators would say you can't because it's just too early in a child's development to understood, you know, to see that.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, look, I'll say a few things on this too. Um, you're bringing up just physical talent. It it is just one piece of the a large puzzle to making it to the next level. There are, there are, I think it would boggle people's mind if they knew how many, let's just use hockey, NHL caliber talented players there are out there that don't make the NHL because talent is just part of it. Or if they do make the NHL mic, they're very there for a very short amount of time because there's a lot of other things you have to nurture and develop, like what type of person they're gonna be, accountability, character, community service, the ability to communicate. Like these are all aspects of a human that make you proficient at something professionally, doesn't even have to be the NHL. You know, the other thing you brought up that I thought was interesting here is uh, you know, I I think if if we said, okay, we're gonna have a big uh group of kids and we're just gonna pick the most accountable kids and the kids that communicate the best, the things I was just saying, uh against, you know, talents, people go, well, that would never work. Well, there's plenty of examples of this working. Now, if everyone has comparable talent, and what I mean by that is that it's not about the best player or the worst player, it's they they all belong in a similar room together. That's if you understand what I'm saying, right? That this comparable talent at a tryout. Uh, my belief, and I stand by this, is that if one team picked the most talented players and another team picked the most accountable players of equal talent or or comparable talent, the accountable team's probably gonna win. And I can show you examples throughout history 1980, Olympic gold medal team, 1998, Nagano, gold medal team. I mean, there there are a lot of examples. I mean, most Stanley Cup champions have a high level of accountability. Again, we're recording this right before the Stanley Cup final between the Vegas Golden Knights, the Florida Panthers, two teams that have never won a Stanley Cup before. You know what somebody pointed out to me the other day? How much these players are smiling right now and having a good time and are there for each other. You can visibly see it. Whereas, Mike, when we were growing up, you didn't see that. You saw Scott Stevens looking up, ready to murder someone, which again is part of the game at that time. But that's something I wanted to talk about is that you have to develop the person, not just the talent. It's great if if a kid has talent. That's wonderful. I I mean that. I love it when I see kids with talent. But if that kid's an asshole, all right, you know, they're not gonna go far. Right? So, Mike, go ahead, jump on that.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

No, well, that that and that's that's a huge component of the programs I work with, is is alienating and and and separating and segregating the talented, the quote unquote talented players from the other pool of eight-year-olds in your system. And what happens is those kids become, you know, and again, listen, there are plenty of people that will say, well, that we like this, right? But those kids become cockier, they become more arrogant, they become more entitled, they become more like, well, I am the best player because I was able to go to, you know, we joke around all the time, you see on social media like the CCM world invite, and you know, and and and you know, and they get the, you know, and it is it's you didn't get selected for that. You paid for it, and your parents were able to take those five days off of work and go do it. Now, again, I'm not taking anything away from the fact that the kids have talent, like they actually look like little pro hockey players. I get all that, but but like your to your point earlier, when when all of these players get to a place where it really means something, everyone's gonna have talent. They're all gonna be good. And then it's gonna be what are the players that can learn, you know, humility and teamwork and selflessness and all of the qualities that we would want in a player, in a person, anyway. Like all of those other things. Like I don't care if you're the great cellist, if you're, you know, if you're somebody, you know, or you know, we were joking around earlier that if you're that you want your child to be a uh podiatrist and they love feet when they're six and seven, and you just inundate them with more podiatry and more, you know, let's go, let's go to beaches and look at people's feet all the time. And and then, you know, they why don't you diagnose the foot? Like, and you do all of this, but the kid was in it, the kids in a capsule. Like they're not they're not associating with anybody else outside of their own little world of telling them how great they are. Eventually, that is going to catch up with the majority. Like I said, I get it. That's nobody on this, nobody that listens to this. I understand it's not your kid, but it's somebody's kid. It's somebody's kid. And it's it's and and and somebody, you know, that is in my opinion, and you've been around too, a lot, you know, thousands and thousands of kids. I've been around thousands of athletes that you know they miss that somewhere between six and fifteen, and they can't recover from it.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

And and and then the kid that has all the same talent, but that has all those great other locker rottes and hallway attributes and teammate attributes and outside interests, those are the kids that eventually um have the most success, whether it's hockey or not.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, I think it's important to remember, and you know, look, I'll say this. It's easy to get lost in the game as a parent of focusing about the next level, right? But I always try to keep close to my mind and my heart that the next level is life. It is not whatever league they play on, even if that is the NHL. All right. Um, I've said it before, and I'll say it every episode if I need to. I will never tell a kid ever that if their dream is to make the NHL not to shoot for the stars, it is their right to do that. It's one of the best parts of living here. All right. They have every right to dream. But as a parent, my job is to help them understand how to accomplish a goal or accomplish a dream, or more importantly, maybe that you might not accomplish that dream, but you should strive for it because failure is a great teacher. Now, with that said, um, we're gonna kind of merge into the comparing kids to other kids. So I'm gonna start from the very top. We look at those 0.1 percenters, the Connor McDavids, the Sidney Crosby's. We'll say Matthew Kachuk now. All right. Keep going on there, right? The Nathan McKinnon's really, really good hockey players and also really, really good people from everything we see. Every once in a while, Sidney Crosby's story will come out about how he paid for dinner or he took care of a kid, or went out of his way to deliver season tickets. These are quality, quality people that happen to be the greatest hockey players in the world. And I will probably never compare my kid to them because it's not a fair comparison to anybody. I don't need my kid to be Henrik Lundquist, Sidney Crosby, or whoever it is. I need him to be him, and I mean my daughter to be her. So I try not to compare in the sense of, hey, did you see what that person did? Or did you see what that guy did? It's it's all about how you word it. I'd rather have a discussion. Hey, Sidney Crosby did this great thing. What do you think about that? Tell me about that behavior. What do you think that meant to the person that he did that for? Now we're having a discussion. Now it's becoming learned behavior. A lot of times, Mike, at the youth level, I see um, and I don't think there's any malice with it, but I've seen parents say, Hey, did you see how your teammate skated to the net and did this thing? Right? It's about teaching, right? That I don't know if I don't know if that's a teaching moment for a kid. I think that's a fearful moment for a lot of kids of like, well, I can't, I can't do that. You know, so as a parent, I think you want to think about how you compare your kid to other kids and how you use situational-based learning to explain something. There's nothing wrong, Mike. Again, I want to hear your thoughts on this with saying, you know, oh, that player did this really great move. It's how you say it, hey, would you like to learn how to do that move? Maybe you can ask your teammate to help you, or maybe we can work on that because I know you're a great learner and I know you want to get better at the game. There's a there's a way to do this without putting immense pressure on your kids not to fail, which again is really the enemy. Okay, you do not want your kids to feel feel, sorry, fear failure. You do not want that. It is the greatest teacher. You need to embrace failure. Don't get me wrong, failure sucks, doesn't feel great. I'm not saying you need to jump up and down like when you fail, like I failed. But you do need to learn how to learn. Right. I think we take that from our kids a lot and we put them in positions of fear when we compare them to other kids and other things too. Mike, I'm saucing the puck back to you.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, no, well, and again, I agree. I mean, you're not, but you I think that's where I try to avoid as much as I can. You know, there is, there is, listen, there's a lot of like, okay, we'll use it to Trevor Zieguris, for example, right? Everybody does, everybody, like, oh my God, look at Trevor Zieguris, he does the Ziegoris, right? He's doing the Michigan, now he got now he has his own spin on it, right? And now every there's literally, I think every youth hockey practice I see everywhere I go right now in the last three months, before, you know, when they're when the kids get on the ice and they're doing their little, you know, getting warm-ups or have some free time, they are trying to do that drill or they're trying to do that skill. Everyone. And then, you know, somebody goes, Oh, if you really want to do that, do it this way, or look how this person did it. So there's there's so there there's certainly if a player likes another player, is um does something that is in a positive, right? Even even nine-year-olds to nine year olds, like sure. Yeah, look how look how that kid did that.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

But you're talking about it in an organic way, and that that's what I'm talking about, too.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah, you're not seeking it out. You're like, oh my God, you know, you play more. If you were able to do what he does, I'd tell you.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Be Trevor Ziegris. Like, nope, you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, it's more like, oh, wow, you're really good at that skill. You know, if you try it this way, watch how he does it. Look where his arms are, look where his legs are, look where his arms extend, like look where the stick is the blade is, like all that kind of stuff goes into you know just your ability to find your, you know, your own ex you know, exploration of that skill. And I think, you know, taking that opportunity for your kids is more like let them find it rather than go copy that.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Now, how do we teach that? Now, this is like the learning lesson for me. Like, as a parent, how do you cultivate that? Right. And and again, there's no perfect parents. We're just two two guys today talking about this, but it's creativity and exploring creativity and encouraging your kids to be creative. So when they see Trevor Ziegris do the Michigan, he is the best at that by far. He's just so smooth, it's like butter, it's unbelievable. Even I'm a fan, right? I want my kid to see that and not go, I can't do that. I want my kid to see that and go, Wow, I'd love to figure that one out, right? It's fun. Like, there's the rub, right? As a parent, how do you cultivate that? And I I have seen parents, Mike, um, and this one, this one sucks, but I've seen parents turn to their kids and go like, you'll never do that. Like it's like, what are you doing? I've seen that. You can't do that. Don't tell your kid that. Just you know, maybe would you like to do that? Like, like maybe we can learn how to do that. Mike, when I was when I was uh 12 years old, the coolest, newest thing in the league, and this is back at the time you can hold a guy's jersey from blue line to blue line. The coolest thing in the world was a guy could put the puck between his legs and shoot, which is ancient history now. You know, we'll just say 20 years later, it's more than that. You know, that was an amazing thing. We all tried it, we all got better at it, and now it's a it's becoming a common play, right? In fact, when when guys do it in the NHL mic, it's not I mean it's amazing still, but it's just kind of like, oh yeah, he put it between his legs. You know, there's a natural evolution, right? So I think encouraging creativity, encouraging your kids to seek out that behavior or and or not pressing them if they don't, especially at eight, nine years old, right? They they might not be there yet.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, and I think in the context of you know, letting your own, you letting your kids be their own child and letting the player be their own player, is that if they explore that and want to find it, it's different than you asking them to do that so they could do what the other high-scoring player does. Like it's no different than to say, hey, you know, the leading goal scorer on a team could do this, this, and this, you should be able to do this, this, and this. And it's as opposed to saying, hey, you know what you're really good at? You're really good at this, this, and this. Right. Let's keep working on that. And when you and if you really want to have some, you know, why don't you be the best at that skill and then let somebody else be the best at another skill, every player is gonna have to be the same player. And and and hopefully they're not the same player.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

You know what I said when I was coaching uh older kids, um, because it you know, when you get towards junior hockey, college hockey, pro hockey, you do have goal scores. You you have you have players that are there for that. And um, I I know on the momental training, I'll have players come in and I'll say, like, man, I just want to be like that. I just want to be able to score like that. And and I'm sitting there kind of knowing, like, you're me personally, I don't say this, like that player's not gonna get there. So, you know what I say? I said, You know what great goal scorers need? Great passers. You know what, you know what great goal scorers need? Guys that can get the puck in the zone. And then through these discussions and this kind of exploration, they'll naturally say to me, you know, I I can do that. Right. And I always say, and you I say this from I seem to say this from Mike all the way to semi-pro is how much is is a what's worth more, a goal or an assist.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Well, you're hearing it now, you're you're hearing it now in the NHL playoffs, and you hear, I mean, all these all these uh, you know, play-by-play guys and color commentators will talk about, you know, there's certain players when you look and and you see, like let's just use defensemen as an example. You see all these defensemen, and everybody at the youth level is trying to create a Cal McCart and an Adam Fox. But when you look at right now, go look at the Stanley Cup finals and the and the and look at the NCAA finals and look at the players that that have to be in championship situations. There are there is a need for meat and potato defensemen. I mean, there's there's a need for guys that don't spin off everyone, go down the end boards, do a couple of 10 and twos, right, and put the puck top shelf. There are guys that have to move the puck up the ice, right, get the puck out from front of the net, and not wrap the puck around aimlessly. So there's there's there's all kinds, and and and I think you go right back to being eight years old. You don't have to, every right defenseman doesn't have to rush the puck end to end. And I think what's happening is uh we're what we're doing at the youth level is identifying all of those kids. So we have a whole, and I get, I get it, you know, you you you'll you we can go back to other episodes where we talk about positionless play and that that there is no positions, it's five on five hockey and everybody's interchangeable. Yes, but at some point somebody has to play D and somebody has to put puffs in it.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And and and there are the ebbs and flows of all that. And I don't think we need to identify those kids at eight years old and say, no, no, all of our defensemen, let's say we're keeping six defensemen, all defensive players are going to have to be positive, offensive, rushing defensemen. And then say, no, you, you meat and potato guy, you you we don't want, we don't want to be basic. Yeah, you're you're so basic that we don't we're gonna cut you from the team and you're never gonna get you're never gonna enhance any other skills. So I don't know. When I look at it, when I look at an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old, uh 10-year-old, 15-year-old, identify the skills that they're really good at and then concentrate on enhancing those skills rather than trying to make them catch up to something, they're probably not, it might not even be in their DNA to do.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

You know, it's funny, Mike, you're bringing up actually another topic here for this episode that I didn't think about, which is just the natural evolution of the game. Uh, something to think about as a parent. If your kid is, you know, five to ten right now, you don't know where the game's gonna be in 10 years when they're graduating. All right, and the game evolves quick. And I'll give you an example. If you look at any rebuilding team in the NHL right now, I happen to follow one, they're they're starting defense first now, right? For a long time there was about getting goal scores. Now it's like, no, like we need to get D, and they're building from the back end. And I'm not just talking about the team that I happen to follow, right? And this is a reaction, an evolutionary reaction to the Connor McDavids, to the KL Makars, to the Nate McKinnon's that now they're gonna share up the back end. I'm sure goaltending will share up too. The game evolves heavily. Again, you do not have to go back far. You can go back 20 years to the Neanderthal era, which we called it, where guys were all 6'5, 220, could throw hands anytime, and they were freight trains down the ice. And that was the best players in the league. Right? And then you go back 30, 40 years, it's a totally different game. So again, obviously there's natural skill sets in hockey, skating, shooting, passing, hitting at the older levels, right? But you have to be adaptable. And especially at a young age, I think that's the best time to teach adaptation in the game. There's a reason it might. Every kid is supposed to play every position, including goaltender. Right. And when a kid starts to push back, Mike, and starts going, I don't I don't want to play defense today, or I don't want to play offense today, I that's a good sign. It means they're starting to figure out where they feel like they fit. Right? Like I I watched my son go through this. He just suddenly wanted to be a net all the time. Yeah, wow. Right. But my point is, you know, you still I tell them, you still have to play out, you still have to learn the game. That cohesiveness teaches you what type of player you're gonna be. It teaches you uh how to do better, you know. So again, kind of on the comparison note, if you're gonna, I don't want to say compare, but if you're gonna give reference. Is to other players, you know, don't just do the Wayne Gretzky. Don't just do the the the Kale McCarr. Don't do the Conor McDavid. Do all of them. You know, look at the third and fourth line of the NHL. Right? These guys are really important players, right? They don't score 50 goals a year. Uh so it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, but yet but yet they're the best players in the world. Like if you took them that if you took them in front of an adult league game, you're like, this might be the best player in the world. Like this guy's the best player I've ever played with. And I'm like, yeah, but and and and that's but so that's but they but they at the even at that level, right? Or especially at that level, they found roles, they found ways to say, listen, even earlier in my career, I was this, I've evolved to this, and now so I can continue to get paid and play, I'm gonna become this. And I think this is where you know we need to see that at, you know, when when parents have to just and you use the word a lot, and and and I think it it's it it's it it fits here well, is that that process of becoming a player changes from year to year, from team to team, from responsibility to responsibility. And as you get older, the process is more determined by how you fit into a certain system that's already in place rather than the system changing for you.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Right. Well, and and we've seen that happen to players and then fail miserably. Again, going back to the top level, you've seen players get traded and go from being 30, 40 goal scorers to nothing. All right. And and again, sometimes it's good. Yeah, it's yes, absolutely. Sometimes it's coaching, uh, sometimes it's player adaptability, sometimes it's both look, we're we're seeing this real time right now um in the NHL with the Florida Panthers, right? Going to the cup final. Arguably, I'm gonna keep transitioning here. Arguably, right now at this moment, when recording this, Matthew Kachuk is the hottest player in the league, right? I don't think anybody would disagree with me. I'll give you the date. It's 2023 and it's uh May 30th, all right? So we're right before the cup final. He's the hottest player in the league. Um, I wanted to bring this up because one of the topics we want to discuss here is that you never know. You just never know who's gonna become great. Now you can look at Matt Kachuk and say, Yes, that's Keith Kachuk, he was an NHL All-Star. This makes a lot of sense. Have you ever seen a picture of Matt Matthew Kachuk in high school? He is a pudgy kind of kid with you know, a fro, and you would just never think this kid's a hockey player, right? And I love it when people share these pictures of all these professional athletes, it's not just in hockey, you know, that they don't look like an athlete when they're 14 and their body's going through all these changes. It's just we talk about this on the show all the time. You just don't know how puberty is gonna affect your kid. Again, my first year of Pee-Wee, I was five inches taller than everyone. Everyone, it was great. I thought I was gonna be tall forever. By my first year of Banham, I was not even close to being the tallest kid on the team anymore, right? You just don't know how those those time that time period is gonna affect the changes in your body, which is why it's so important to cultivate the person as much as the player, right? These are children. We gotta remember these are children we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

And we eliminate so many kids too, because of the way they look, whether they're tiny or light or heavy and and and and and and uh I don't know, I want to use the right word, but they're they're thick, right? So so and I think I think I think if you think of you, but but again, there's there's certain ways to then take that and build that's you know, build around that attribute of that player. But ultimately, the core is is the good the kid confident? Is he a good person? Is he a good teammate? Is all that other stuff can take care of itself? Oh, my kid didn't he didn't make the triple A, you know, uh invite team. Okay, great, but what did he do? Like what what are we doing for him?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Listen, let's use Michael Jordan. Let's just use Michael Jordan real quick. All right. We all we all I hopefully we all know the story of him getting cut from his high school basketball team, right? There's a few aspects of this. Now, now Michael Jordan, again, I'm not comparing anybody to Michael Jordan, he had probably more drive than most people on the planet. Okay, but do you know what the big differentiator was the year he got cut to the next year when he made it?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Probably his height.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yeah, he grew like five or six inches, right? You know, huge difference, all right. Uh, I'm not I'm not taking away from the story that that probably motivated him, they didn't make it, but he grew half a foot in a year. Yeah, all right. So it it plays, you never know. It's the point, you just never know what's gonna happen here, all right. And and I think his brother, or he says about one of his brothers, his older brother, that is his older brother's not that tall, right? He's he's not over six feet. He goes, he was a better player than I was. Yeah, you know, if he was my height, he would you would be talking about him, right? So again, these are not comparisons, these are stories to help our point.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, and the and again listen, and we've talked about this many times, right? There, that the the Matika Chucks and the you know, so these kids that are you that you're seeing develop now, right? They're they were they listen, Matika Chuk wasn't a bad hockey player ever, right? So uh, you know, so I in the in the in the scheme of of talent. Like these kids were most of these kids were always good. And we're not talking about the we're not talking about the one percenter, though. We're talking about the kid that wants to work through all of this other stuff, and then us as organizations picking kids based off of the snapshot they are today without any thought of what they might be, and then saying, Oh, we're great talent talent evaluators. Well, you're not, you're you're you're identifying talent today, but you're really not a great talent evaluator because if you were, you would be doing this you know, in-depth history of who the parent is, what the genetic makeup is, what you know, what other people have done in the past, what you know, what statistically, like where I would be talking to that kid's pediatrician and saying, hey, where are they projecting? Because pediatricians will tell you, oh, this kid's gonna be 6'3. Well, how? Look at him, look at him right now. No, I'm telling you right now, he's gonna be 6'3, he's gonna be 210, and this is who he's gonna be. Okay, that's a good thing for me to know if I'm picking for long-term success. If I'm just picking for today and I need the thousand dollars of the tournament, then yeah, pick the best, pick the kids that you see skate around the cones the fastest and then pick them. But for a parent, and I think we're talking to the parents here today, think about the fact that that's not the end of the road or the beginning of success for your child. It's just a snapshot in time. And I think the the the the theme here is to to to develop the whole player around that gift or detriment in the snapshot of today.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

I mean, Mike, I would expand that. Grow them around the gift or lack of a gift, grow them into a human being, grow them into a person. All right, I'll say it again that that I think drive is an incredibly important factor in this process. Uh, and you know, it's okay if your kid doesn't have the drive. You just can't expect them to go beyond a certain point if it's not there, right? And you and again, how do you develop that drive? A lot of it's organic, a lot of it has to come from them as a person. And I don't think we realize sometimes how much we we can be a detriment to that by the things that we say. Then we talked about how to identify talent early. You can't, right? A kid's drive, a kid's passion for the game is so important. We're gonna get into that in a minute. But before we do, I want to talk about this next one on here uh for the parents. And again, if you're listening to this show, we know you're doing a great job. We know you're a great parent because you're here to learn, right? And we're just two schmoes talking about it, but we're creating this discussion. Uh shmo's with experience, I'll put it that way. Uh, the next thing I have on my list here is this FOMO, uh, fear of missing out, for those of you who don't know. Um, and this is an important one because uh look, there's a lot of the cash cow game in the game in hockey right now, um, that if you don't go to this tournament or you don't go to this team, that it's going to derail your development. Um, look, I'll say this those opportunities are insanely rare. They're usually extremely elite in the sense of USA development camp, and you're invited. You don't have to pay to be there, right? Uh for the most part, right? Depending on what you're looking at. Just be careful, parents, kids, everybody listening, at what you think is something you have to do, a mandatory event. All right. Uh, especially at the youth ages between five and twelve, right? This changes a little bit when you get older. I'll give that, right? I mean, you want you need to be seen when you're older if you're serious about the game. But there is not one squirt triple A elite showcase on the planet that we're gonna watch. Mike and I are gonna watch any though, you could get the greatest NHL scout in history that's gonna look at that and go, that kid is the one. All right. It just doesn't work that way, right? There's been maybe three players in history that you could say that about. That's it. All right. It's it's it's in and let's be honest, everyone knew with those players, right? So, Mike, let's talk about the fear of missing out and just why it's okay sometimes to say, you know what, we're not gonna do that one.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah, well, number one is anytime you have to pay for something that other people don't get to pay for or can't afford to pay for or can't participate in, is is already, you know, you're you're already, you know, cutting the pool in half, right? You're you're just you're eliminating so many other people that say, Oh, I'd love to do this, um, but I can't. And then you have the people that say, I'd love to do this and I can't, but I'm gonna do it. Like I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sacrifice all this other stuff to do this spring tournament that's gonna get my kid exposure. And or, you know, what I I laugh all the time, and again, I I I try not to be condescending about this, but like they'll talk about like, oh my God, what an experience for my six-year-old or seven-year-old. Like, what an unbelievable experience. And I'm telling you right now, just from my experience, that kid's not gonna remember that experience. Like when they're 15, like, what we do? We went to what? Like, oh my God. And you know, my mom and dad will remember it. And, you know, Facebook will remind us of it. But I think it's really not like, are they real, is that really something that's unbelievable for them as far as experience? Now, can it be a springboard to something else? Can it inspire them to want to work harder and be better? I uh or could it do the reverse and be like, oh yeah, you know, you always hear like it's almost like when I go fishing, right? If I go fishing and I don't catch any fish, you're probably gonna see like a picture of the sunset. Like, what an unbelievable sunset. You're not gonna see a picture of the huge fish because I didn't catch anything, right? You're gonna see, you know, thinking like, oh, Mike didn't catch any fish. Why? Oh, because the sunset looks great. You know, like I just want to, I'm reflecting in the moment. And you'll see that from you know all these posts, right? That the kids will go to a tournament, they'll have they'll be, they'll lose, you know, six games by a score of you know 87 to two, but yet the experience was that they were looking for. I'm like, I don't know anybody that pays $1,100 to go have an experience to get your butt kicked, you know, for a full weekend of kids that are better than you. But that's where that fear of missing out, I think, really gets taken advantage of by these organizations that know, well, if you go to the Eastern, you know, select elite exposure camp, you know, and and I and I will say this, listen, there are plenty of, there's there's plenty of evidence and there's plenty of uh uh information out there of seeing a kid, many, many kids, when they're six and seven, eight years old, and people are like, oh my God, this kid's gonna be good. He's gonna be good, right? But people forget that for every person that everybody said, Oh, this kid's gonna be good, only one of those 20, oh my god, this kid's gonna be good. And that's already based off of the kids that are already selected as the best kids at that age group, anyway. Like, so it's a skewed uh system, but I do think it's getting worse and worse and worse, yeah, because of the the the ability for us to have social media, see all this in our faces. You know, like you said it earlier, like I don't think this ever happened when we were this age. Well, it didn't happen, number one, is because there was no profitability in promoting it, right? Because people wouldn't know about it anyway. And there was no like in your face, like I remember growing up that uh Empire State Games was huge in New York State. Yeah, I remember and the Empire State Games was like the like if you were 15 years old, like you had a if you didn't make the Empire State Games, you probably weren't gonna play college hockey, right? But the kids that didn't make the Empire State games didn't even know they existed. Like, so all of us that made college, you know, played college hockey and didn't make an Empire State game team, we're like, I didn't even know there was an Empire State game. Right. But but now everyone knows that elite select camp. And if you're not there, they think, well, then there's no chance for me. Only because that's what the pictures and the stories tell us.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Well, and I'll say this too, uh, and I'm gonna dive into that a little bit, just so you know, uh, or or as you said, I should say, those great players when they were 10, 11 years old. You know, I I knew I knew a guy, I'll just say this. He played in the AHL, could have played in the NHL. He was that talented. All right, he's probably the most talented player I've ever skated with, and I've I've skated with some talented players. Yeah, uh, he never made it, and he stopped playing at like 21. He was so burnt out from people telling him he had to be a hockey player, and it's just he just didn't want to be that anymore. It was too much pressure on him. And and I remember he had the hardest shot I have ever seen in my life. I I watched this man concuss a goalie with a shot. I'm not exaggerating this. This guy could have played and he was so burnt he couldn't do it. Pressure from his parents, pressure from his family, pressure from I remember his girlfriend about having to make it, right? These are the things you don't see, right? Uh and it makes me wonder. I didn't know him when he was 12. He was good, but it makes me wonder what were people saying to him at 12 years old? Right? Man, that kid's gonna make it. He's gonna, he's definitely gonna make it, right? He's gotta make it, he's gotta make it. Well, if you if you're gonna make it, I bet you nobody ever asked, do you want to, do you want to play in the NHL? Yeah, right. I bet you nobody ever asked him that. All right, it might be might be applied. You might think, oh, of course he does. Well, you just don't know. Uh what was that? Was it Ricky Williams, the NFL player? Right? The greatest running back in history, and he just you know he burned out, just like didn't want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

He wanted to sit at home and well, it's a lot easier too to to give up and and when you and say you're burned out when you have uh you know $10 million.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

That's very true, too.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

But I think I think it's but you know, it's like I was like, I'd be burned out too. Who has to get up in the morning?

SPEAKER_00 37:30

I don't want to do this anymore.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

But there's a reason why those those athletes are who they are, right? Because and there's a lot, listen, there's a lot of people that are not athletes that are the same way, right? So many, man, many more than athletes that they have that inner drive and that inner passion. Right. And and it goes down to show you that if you can build, you can, you know, we talk about this uh in this whole fear missing out piece, is you can build, you could, you could take rip passion out of a kid just just as just as it's delicate successfully than then putting the passion in. Again, there are times when a kid sees something goes, Oh my god, I love like I want to be that, like I want to do that. Great. But if mom and dad say, Hey, you should want to be that, yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Well, and again, you got to put yourself in the mind of a child. When a parent says that to you at eight years old, it's gospel, right? You're you're a god to your kid at that age, all right? You really are, right? So it's like you have to do this. They're gonna say, you know, okay, I have to do this, right? Uh again, you you talked about passion. Passion's delicate at that. I mean, it's really more delicate than you than you think, right? Now, a kid who a kid who has it and wants it, at some point that's gonna take over, right? It doesn't matter what you say, but it's a delicate thing, and you can really say things accidentally or on purpose to to really derail that, Mike, as you said. So I think it's just about being conscious to that and to help them develop the passion and you know, not letting your own anxieties as a parent, you know, go on top of the kid, right? You just gotta let it evolve, you know. And and again, the the next thing I have on the list here is just reminder to enjoy the process or the lack of a process. That's the way we wrote it, right? There is no real process, the the process is just developing the person. Look, if the talent's there, that's actually the easiest thing to develop. Now I'm thinking about the talent's the easiest thing to develop if you have it, right? If you don't have it, it's not as easy, but it can be done.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

There's nothing more that I hated, there's nothing that I hated more than watching a really talented player that didn't have the same drive and passion as I it sucks because I wasn't talented. I was like, damn. I said, like, don't you want this? Like, I don't know. I mean, I'm good, man. You know, like like don't you want to like I don't understand? Like, how how are you not just taking this talent and doing something with it? Like, I am doing something with it. I love playing guitar and I'm I'm you know, I love hanging out by the fire. And I go, well, that's weird, you know. But that's what that's what their passion was. And I think that's what I find myself all the time with my own kids, even like, like, don't you want to do that? Like, whatever it is. They're like, nah. I'm like, really? It looks like so much fun. I don't think it's fun. I go, well, it should be. It's fun for me to watch you do it. So I think it's like I I think it's one of those things where you know, you know, you're you're it's that, it's that is there have to be a process. Like, I deal with mostly right now in my in my working life, dealing mostly recreational, up and coming parents and players, people that are new to the game, new to the sport, new to competition, new to the like the fear of what hockey could be, um, and and what the and the horror stories they hear about it. And the fact that I would say most of them, if not all of them, I talk to have no preconceived uh you know path for their kid. They they they literally are in the moment. They're in, they're in like their their their inner self is like, I'm just here on Saturday morning to see my my kid wanted to come play hockey, Mike. There's no there's no end game for me here. It's that the end game is I hope they have fun when they get off the ice and they're smiling. Like, so I think it's so refreshing to see some of these parents because I think there's there's more people out there than the crazy people we deal with all the time. I was gonna say part of the crazy people.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Some of some of the best, uh I shouldn't say best, some some of the most relaxed hockey parents are the ones who didn't play hockey.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

They're like, I don't even know. Their kid picked it up for the first time. It's amazing to me that they can skate.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Right, right. And again, look, you're you're either on either side of that aisle. I I remember I learned this myself when when my daughter started playing soccer, a sport I very I look I know very little about, and I was so relaxed watching her play soccer and as a young little girl, just because I didn't know anything. I was like, ah, she's having fun. And then I remember I remember having this thought of like, Wow, why am I not like this at my son's hockey practices? Now they're both playing hockey, and I'm pretty relaxed. I'm pretty, pretty happy just letting them do what they do at this age again, nine and six for context. But again, look, I'm very focused on helping my my son and daughter develop their passions, doesn't just have to be hockey. When I see my son or my daughter get passionate about something, even if it's dumb to me, right? I I gotta reiterate like even if it's something like I don't find any interest, like Mike, you just have no interest in this. I want to cultivate that they like it, and that if you work hard at whatever it is that you're doing, you can be great at it. Excuse me. I fully expect them to lose interest in some of these things, right? But I'm cultivating the hey, if you if you like that, work hard at it. Because if you work hard at it, you'll get better at it. They'll learn to apply that to whatever they want to apply it to as they get older, right? You can't force your kid to do these things. You cannot, we Wayne Gretzky said this. You cannot force your kid to practice beyond a certain point because it comes detrimental. All right, they have to want to do it, they have to want it. If if your kid is gonna be great or good enough, I'll put it that way, they need to be showing you and their coaches signs of I want this and I'm gonna I'm gonna wake up early and work out, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take 500 shots in the garage after school, I'm gonna focus on this because I love it. You can't force that into a kid. In fact, forcing it will have the complete opposite effect. Now, again, you have to parent your kid. All right, you got to discipline your kids. That I'm not I'm not saying you just let it go for a free-for-all. You got to create structure for your kid, but they have to develop this on their own organically.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Yeah, and listen, I'm no child expert. So I I I just I think it's for me, it's more, you know, throw it all out there, you know, it if you find passion in it, I'll support that.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Yeah, whatever it is, right? Within reason.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Yeah, whatever it is, real. I mean, honestly, unless it's, you know, getting high or something and and uh, you know, uh real passionate about opening up a bottle of vodka at seven o'clock in the morning, be passionate about it. I mean, but to me, to me, it's just like, hey, you really like this, you like theater, you like drama. Listen, some of the best hockey players I've had, you know, growing, you know, as a coach, have oh have always been like top in the debate team, top in the in the theater department, top in music class. Like they've always found, they've always had, and they're, you know, again, I coached mostly high school hockey. The kids are good hockey players, but they weren't gonna be pro hockey players. Um, you know, they had no aspirations to do that or the talent, but they did have the passion. And the same passion came about of them trying other things and doing things that I, you know, wouldn't have said, oh wow, this person really, I can't wait to go watch this person. But then when you go see them and you see the passion they have in whether they're the lead in the school play or they're passionate about a uh uh, you know, kung fu or taekwondo or some other or archery or whatever they were, other things outside of the little bubble we're in when we're coaching hike hockey. Right. Um, I think that's where I think that's where parents can really put their foot down and say, listen, my son, daughter have all these different passions. And I want to get them to experience all that. So yes, I'm gonna have to forgo the three clinic, the three tournaments in in June, because they do have other passions, my you know, and and and let them explore that if they're not. No good at it, fine. But if they don't get the chance to explore it, then you're doing everybody a disservice because all the work that I'm doing should doing to try to develop that seven and eight and nine-year-old is all for naught if the kid's not playing at 15. Like it doesn't even matter anymore, right? So what's the point?

SPEAKER_00 45:31

It's it's an interesting point that you're making, Mike. You know, you know, again, I just want to stay on passion for one more second. I I still get off the ice today. And I remember thinking, I just still love this so much. I mean, I really mean that. I love it so much every time I get to skate or be on the ice. Now I knew that when I was younger, and I'm very blessed that I'm I'm a professional in the game, right? Because my passion brought me there. I never played in the NHL. What I'm saying is that passion can bring your kid to lots of different places, right? In the game, outside the game, anything in between. Develop that. If you really want ROI on your hockey experience, I mean you can apply this to all sports. Teach them how to develop passion and work towards that passion, whether it's in hockey or not. That will pay off later on. I I remember, Mike, again, you know, after college, so many of my friends just trailing off their dreams. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. Sometimes it's financial, right? Sometimes it's economical. All right. The ones that loved it came back. Right. But my point is, is that I could I I look back now, I realize it's they just didn't have that self-esteem to kind of continue to chase it.

unknown 46:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

And I'm gonna say this again there are a lot of factors. If you got to put food on the table, you gotta put food on the table. All right. I'm not I'm not I'm not denying anyone that works hard for a living to provide for their family, provide for their parents, or anything like that. All right. But but passion, even for that, is something that can be cultivated. All right. You know, I wrote down here, I wanted to give this uh this thing. I wrote again, five to 12 years old, develop passion, 12 to 18 year olds, reassess. That's all I wrote. It's just reassess where your kids at if they want to do it. Uh, you know, but I wrote this down. I wrote, I talked about, you know, equating this to your job. Right now, what's funny about youth anything as a parent is, and I don't I don't know how conscious we all are to this. We we tend to default to our own parenting, like how we were parented. And it could be, I love how I was parented, I'm gonna do it that way, or I screw my parents, I'm gonna do it the opposite way. But we default back to that when we raise our kids. It's completely natural, it's absolutely the way things run. But think about your job, right? And think about your jobs and think about your bosses, right? We've all had a great boss, we've all had a horrible boss. Hopefully, some of you have had a great boss, right? Think about the way they got you to be passionate about your work, which you may or may not have cared about, right? The jobs you hated or the jobs you hate, if you're in one of those right now, it's probably not the work. It's probably the people you're around. It's probably the lack of motivation, it's probably when they come to your desk and put their finger down and go, hey, you didn't do your job. Do better. Sound familiar? I've heard parents say that. Now the jobs that you loved, it's the people. I I you're doing a great job. Hey, how can I help you do a better job? Hey, we need to reach this goal this uh this quarter. You know, let's do it together. How are we gonna get this together? Right? That sounds like a coach. A good coach. All right, we we we default. It's yeah, we're talking about consciousness a little bit here. You gotta be conscious to oh wow, I I'm doing that because my mom or dad did or didn't do that for me. Right? It's all we know. We're raised that way, right? You default back to it. But again, just think about where you work for a minute, whether you're passionate about that work or not, or think about jobs you have now and in the past. What made it great? What got you motivated to go to work every day? I I refuse to believe the answer is always no, nothing gets me motivated. Because it might just be getting money to put something on the table. But how you're inspired at work, you personally think about that. Are you doing that with your kids? And you can say it's not a job, it's it's it's you know, no, it's not. But I'm just talking about basic motivational practices of getting you inspired to wake up and be part of a team every day. It's important. So I a little exercise there, right? To teach drive accountability. Accountability is sorely lacking in the game today, unfortunately. All right, we we've had episodes about that. Mike, we talk about the car ride home, which you probably should not coach your kids at all. But if you're having that conversation, are you pointing fingers at the coach, the other team, your teammates? If this kid passed to you, you would have got a goal. Or are you teaching accountability? Well, you know, you didn't get that puck too much today. What are we gonna do? Work on that. It's very important we teach our kids accountability right now.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Yeah, and you see it, you see it in all walks of life, right? So I think it's a matter of again, use sport, and we've talked about this a million times, it's just and I and I really live this, right? That you try to use sport as the vehicle to teach all these other things. And if they happen to be, you know, they can s extend their time in that sport or sports or around kids, around, you know, good people, um, great. I mean, that's even that's better for me. I mean, it's it's uh you know, it's definitely self-serving to get my kids on team sports or any sport that enables them to, you know, uh create environments where they're you know being, you know, they're they're they're they're getting healthy, they're being active, they're using their brain, they're using their passion, they're learning how to, you know, uh, you know, find ways to to deal with stress and and and deal with you know the highs and the lows of the game. And I think that's where um you know we aim to be. And again, if you're if your process is, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna develop a division one slash pro athlete, and that's gonna be my singular focus, then great, go at it. I mean, yeah, listen, if that's who you are and you can do it, more power to you. You can afford it.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

If a person hasn't reached this point of the episode yet, Mike, they've stopped listening a while back.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, they're like full of, you know, you know what they say. But I think it's more of like it's it's to me, it's like to put yourself if you want all those things. I just really believe this. If you really want all those things anyway for your kids, it's going to happen in the in the way that you can do it where everyone around you benefits from it, and the kid will flourish. The kid will just find a way. Uh, do we have to push kids sometimes? Do we have to guide them better sometimes? Do we have to redirect them sometimes? Yes, there's no doubt about it. I mean, we're again the the the strategies we used in the 80s are different now because we didn't have all these other distractions. I'm a big believer that that there's no way that I I'll tell you right now, I don't even I I dread to think about what would have happened if like all these other things were available to me when I was growing up, to not have to just go outside, be bored out of my mind, and create like the the environment I wanted to create just based off of you know picking up some boards and and moving things around and and and tying ropes to things I probably should have been tying ropes to and swinging off you know different areas of the of the yard because it could have been it would have been too easy just to sit in my room. And you know, so it is a hard, it's a harder thing, but we also have to remember too, now we just have to control that and understand that just because it's the same thing, right? When I was growing up, if the neighbor had a the best jungle gym in the world, I don't know if my parents would have gone out like, oh my god, we got to go about and buy the best jungle gym in the world.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

Right. You know, it would have been go down to that kid's house.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Go to that kid's house, you know. Wow, you could create your own jungle jungle gym. Why don't you create your own environment that you want to create? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Like that, that that this is the Gen X kind of fertile upbringing that that so many people had of go outside and figure it out. Right. And uh now we're in a position where there's so much information, there's so much to see that I think some of that creativity might be getting lost in the process.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

But me, even the fact that all these posts that I see, and I try to avoid looking at them, like I try to almost like like block some of the stuff that's going on because I see some of these. It's not even the parents. Well, I know it's the parents posting, but it's all every eight-year-old has an Instagram account. And it's you know, at so-and-so. And I mean, you know, managed by no, some of some of them actually say managed by mom or managed by dad, but some make it look like that's the kid coming up with this stuff, and then your kids look at it and go, no, no, no, that kid is not coming up with this, they're not videotaping themselves. This is just a parent building a professional, you know, out, you know, uh kind of environment around their kid because they want them to be a pro. Right. And I'm like, okay, well, that's fine. That's you, that has nothing to do with me. But the people I work with, I'm like, don't you don't need to worry about what that person's doing.

SPEAKER_00 53:58

Right. Well, and again, that it comes back to even just self-esteem in general, right? Is is and the whole theme of the episode of why not to compare yourself with somebody else. That's really what the theme is today. All right. Your kid is your kid, they're a separate whole human being, right? That you know, I we joke all the time in my house. Oh, that you know, that aspect of my son is coming from me, or that aspect of my daughter is coming from you. Truth is this they're not me, they're not my wife, they are their own person.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

All the positive stuff is my side, but but the butt you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

It's amazing she always says it's your family. Yeah, my wife says it's your son when she's when she's mad at him. Your son did this, not our son. No, joking aside, right? They're separate whole human beings. And and our our our our at least from my point of view, the goal is to to help raise them or create the parameters for them to become a good person. So I'm gonna round this out, Mike. I'm gonna come right back to the beginning of bookend the episode. The question: how do I identify talent early? In hockey, it's tough. You can't. However, how can you identify talent early? If you look at this at a higher level of person, does the kid pick up the pucks at the end of practice? Do they shake hands? Are they accountable to themselves and their teammates? Do they have a learning mentality? Are they creative? You can start to see that type of talent early. You can also crush it out of a kid if you're not careful. You can crush it out of it. If you see a kid helping, teaching, trying to be a good teammate, being accountable, say something to that kid about how you're doing a great job doing these things. Cultivate that. That is true talent. Physical skill-based talent, while it's a gift. I wish I had more, Mike, I know you do too. Right? It is a maybe tenth of the puzzle, if if that. It's super important, but it is not the whole thing. You can't just focus on your kid's skating ability at six or seven years old or the ability to shoot the puck high on a Mike goalie that can't get his glove up above the post. Right. Make a good person. That's how you identify talent early. If you agree with that or disagree with that, we would like to hear from you. Please feel free to email us at team at our kidsplayhockey.com. I mean that. If if if you have uh a different thought on this, we would love to hear about it. We'll discuss that on the air. We're just people talking, trying to create the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 56:25

All you all your dads that confront me in the hallway when I see you at the rink that say you're Mike, I listen to your podcast and like, you know, you're full of crap. I'm like, oh, well, let's hear. I am that happened, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 56:36

Does that happen to you?

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Oh, yeah, yeah. I get that all the time. I I get I got because I because I get it from a perspective like, oh, well, you're involved with this club or you're involved with that club, or you do this. I go, yeah, but that's not but again, but I try to be the rational human being in all of those places. I guess do I work with quote unquote elite nine-year-olds? Yeah, I do. I I work with a lot of do I work with beginner skaters? Yes. I just work with kids. Like most children that want to learn how to play hockey, I'll work with in that moment. Do I see potential in kids? Yes. And ask those kids, am I driving into their head that your talent means nothing to me right now? Like how talented you are skating-wise is so minuscule to where you need to be later on down the road. Is that if I see you, you know, go out into the parking lot at nine and you drop your bag at the at the bottom of the stairs, hey mom, can you throw my bag in the back of the car? And and where is my you know, where's my power aid? You know, hey, where's my bio steel? Like, I'm like, that to me would would not cut you, but would would give me uh, you know, a chance to say, now that's where I'm gonna, that's where I'm gonna watch.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Yes, everybody can see that that kid can scale.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

That's how you identify talent.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Everyone can see that you could that kid can skate. Everyone. But I could tell you right now, what everybody didn't see is the fact that cat that kid's just an ass. And like, and and the and the parents are allowing him to be that way. And I guarantee he's probably that with his teachers, he's probably that with his his grandparents, he's probably that with his teammates. And that to me is so much gonna be more impactful. It's the same reason why I ask organizations that I work with to work with all their ages in a in a in a you know, all their levels in a particular age group together in stuff that you do, like team building exercises and off-ice training and all the other stuff that doesn't require you to be able to balance on one foot better than the other kid, because the eight-year-old is an eight-year-old is an eight-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

I'll I'll tell you this. I notice, I don't say anything, but I notice when a parent doesn't prioritize the team building that we do. All right, now get listen, conflicts come up. That's okay, right? I got football practice, totally get it, right? You you made a commitment to a team, I get it. But when I have a parent like, oh, now today we got a you know, it's it's kind of a BS. I notice that you you're not prioritizing this development. You're telling me that that skill development is more important than your kids' mental development at that point. Again, when it happens over and over again, I'm not talking about the one-off because uh almost every parent.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

When it when it when it's a when it's a when it's a regular thing, like I see coaches that blow, like I know at the high school level, the coaches that blow off like team building exercises and character builder uh workshops and opportunities for kids to my hard mind community service. Like if you're gonna blow that off because you don't think it's important, it is the most important thing you can do. Barnone. It's the most important thing you can do. And so the fact that we don't we spend five percent of that in our youth hockey environments is still beyond me. But again, this is why we're here. This is the mission, this is the goal. And I think and the and the people that do, you know, your point, chime in, ask for advice, ask for other resources. I love the fact that when those people ask on Facebook or Instagram, we can provide them that information because if you want it, give it. If you don't want it, then don't listen.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Yep. For those of you listening, I can't tell you how many emails and messages we get of just, you know, hey, thank you for letting me know I'm on the right track. I mean, we get those a lot. I remember one of one of the biggest compliments I got, just real quick, Mike on an office, was uh I remember a parent was pretty antsy to leave. Like, like they just they had to be somewhere. It was early on in the season. And I started doing the team building, and I remember I looked at him and said, Look, if you if you have to go, like you know, now I was like, and he looked right back at me. He's like, you know what? They can stay for this. This is this is that was one of the biggest compliments I ever got. He saw the value in the team, the team building. Um, one final note here, just talk about people, type of person you are. Let's just use the Matthew Kachuk because he's hot right now. Uh, I don't know if you saw his interview after they won the uh Eastern Conference. Did you see the first people he thanked? First things he said. No, I don't know if you saw it. First things he says, you know what? It was the head of his own team. He goes, talk about his brother who was watching, his mom, his dad. Like the first things he said was to his family. And it was just it was just gratitude. So happy that I my family can watch this and be here. I can do this with my family. Then he started to thank his team, right? And then Sergei Babrowski, who's been fantastic, the goaltender.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

He knows where he's grounded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

He's grounded, right? So that was cultivated by his father. You can you can say all you want. His dad was an NHL player, an all-star. He didn't have to do any of that. It was cultivated. He's a good person, at least it seems that way on the TV. All right. So, again, I also want to thank all of you coming up to Mike and telling him you know he's BS after the uh episode. Thanks for listening. We value your listening. Continue to listen.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

Oh, I do get a lot of nods, though. I get a lot of nods. But the parents don't want to come up to me because they don't want the other parents to see that they're talking to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

It's amazing. It's amazing to me. Mike, Mike, I'll come up to you. I'll quote you. I'll follow you. I'll follow you to the rank any day, Mike. But look, that's gonna do it for this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. Uh again, all the episodes are online. Uh, I just want to give another thank you to all of you listening. Our our viewership and listenership just grows weekly. Uh, we really appreciate all those five-star reviews on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening. Uh if you haven't done so already, again, I'm gonna just keep saying this. Join that Facebook group. It's a private group called Our Kids Play Hockey. You have to answer a couple yes-no questions to get in. Uh, kind of the discussion continues there. It is not a toxic environment in any way. We mobbed that pretty well, which is which is let's just say few and far between nowadays. So if you're a parent looking to join a positive hockey community, uh check that out. Uh, but with that said, uh, we're gonna jump out of this one for Mike Benelli. I'm Leah Lias. Thanks for listening to Our Kids Play Hockey. Have a great week, everybody. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. Make sure to like and subscribe right now if you found value wherever you're listening, whether it's a podcast network, a social media network, or our website, our kidsplayhockey.com. Also, make sure to check out our children's book, When Hockey Stops, at WhenHockeystops.com. It's a book that helps children deal with adversity in the game and in life. We're very proud of it. Thanks so much for listening to this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey, and we'll see you on the next episode.