Oct. 12, 2023

The Ride To The Rink - Mastering Teamwork and Excellence with NHL Analyst Kevin Weekes

Kevin Weekes, a former NHL goaltender turned the NHL's top analyst on ESPN and NHL network shares the importance of an unwavering work ethic through stories of his personal journey to demonstrate that hard work pays off. Kevin is a living example of how an insatiable drive and determination can set a strong foundation for a career beyond the rink.

Kevin also highlights the power of teamwork, excellence, optimization, potential, discipline, and the indomitable spirit of grit and hunger. He firmly believes that these qualities aren't exclusive to the hockey but can make you a standout, a "unicorn" in any field you choose to venture into.

This episode of The Ride To The Rink is a clip from a longer interview with Kevin Weekes on WIN: Championship Traits For Life, a podcast on mental fitness hosted by Lee MJ Elias and JB Spisso powered by Pivotal Moments Media.

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00:52 - Work Ethic

06:52 - Sports Develop Excellence

WEBVTT

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Hello hockey skaters and goalies around the world and welcome to another edition of the ride to the rink.

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Got a special guest today.

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Kevin Weekes, many of you will know, paid over 350 games in the NHL between the pipes as a goal tender and following his career.

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You know him mostly today as a trailblazer in business and in broadcasting, where he currently serves as an analyst for the NHL on ESPN and the NHL network.

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There's no way you watch the NHL and do not see Kevin Weeks nowadays, and we were fortunate enough to have him as a guest on another show we used to do, called win championship traits for life, which is part of pivotal moments.

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So you can check the episode out.

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We'll link it in the description, but we took a little section here of Kevin talking about his will to win, his will to succeed and the work ethic needed to succeed, and then, on top of it, players, goalies, how he applied that work ethic that he learned in hockey to business, to broadcasting, and how it transcended just the game.

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And it brings up a really good point that we're going to discuss and hear Kevin talk about.

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Is that the ability you have to really work hard without anybody prompting you, without anybody having to tell you that that drive and that desire that you have deep inside, the ability to tap into that and then to apply it to hockey, can really help you benefit, not just in the game but in real life, because if you can do it on the ice, you can do it anywhere, and the top top athletes, the top performers, the top people do it all the time and everything that they do.

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So here we go.

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Let's listen to Kevin talk about this a little bit on this week's ride to the right.

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The biggest thing that I can tell you is and people probably speak about this more on my behalf because I don't speak about myself very often I get paid to speak about everybody else but for the purpose of the platform, like nobody ever, ever, ever, ever had to tell me to work harder, to try harder, to care more, to show up to practice, to go to power skating, to go to Goalie school, to go to Jack Goodlad Park and run hills to do sprints with my boy ish, to train, to do plyometric training with him back in the day, when people were laughing to lift weights, and everybody laughed and said Goalie is why you're lifting, to do anything like never.

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I never had to get prompted, never since I was six, as I told you, and I think that that really served me well because that was foundational and it was a part of who I was as a young kid, aspiring to play in the league and playing at the triple A level is, you know, at eight and playing at elite levels.

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All the way through through my time in junior in the OHL, through my time in the minors, minor pro and through my time in the NHL.

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And really for me pardon me that set the foundation for how I attack things and how I see things and, frankly, as a goalie, that imprint and that mentality you don't really have any excuses like you either stopped it or you didn't.

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It's pretty black and white and at times we wish it could be a little bit more gray, maybe the odd time, but for the most part this is how I'm wired and I think, from post-playing career right from the outset.

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And I could see that he's on here.

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We have one of our longtime producers that was at the NHL network at the time, who's worked for TSN Hockey Night in Canada you name it sports that he just finished doing the Olympics Garrett Hansford.

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So, gee, I see that you're on here.

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He was one of the first producers I work with at the NHL network when I started doing TV.

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So when I started I could have very well done television once a week, gone on Hockey Night in Canada, like you know, whatever our version of Monday Night Football back home kind of thing, and been like, yeah, I'm good, once a week is fine, and I did.

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I went on the NHL network literally Monday night, tuesday night, wednesday night, thursday night, friday night, sorry, monday night, tuesday, monday through Thursday, thursday, friday morning I would fly out from Toronto Airport, from Pearson west coast by coastal to do the late west coast game for Hockey Night in Canada.

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So, be it Calgary, edmonton, vancouver, if they were on the road, it's LA, arizona, you know this is pre Vegas, any of the other California teams, et cetera.

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So really I started doing five, six days a week right from the jump when I started TV and I wanted to approach that the same way I did playing, with the same respect for the craft I knew there was.

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It was a new day one, it was a new kind of path of my career, it was a new skill set and I wanted to be as good as possible and improve as much as possible as quickly as possible, and that kind of set the tone for my TV stuff and learning, which we'll get into as we go here, and and everything else like entrepreneurial stuff, real estate, my, my apparel company at the time, which you kind of started winding down due to COVID, no five hole apparel all those things kind of were born out of that same spirit and drive that I had, a commitment that I had as a player.

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I just started applying them in other areas of life as well.

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You know, Kevin, I want to follow up on that, because I remember the moment when I got done playing and it was almost like a spark.

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I kind of had this realization of well, you know, I choose to do this, I don't have to do this.

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And then I remember thinking, man, I can apply everything I put into this game to other things.

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And it was like the world opened up.

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Right, Yep totally.

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Yeah, yeah, it was like an explosion and and you know, I got into, just like you, so many different projects and and I think so many young athletes don't realize that.

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You know, it's not uncommon for a young athlete to identify through the game they play, right.

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It's part grown up.

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It's part of maturity.

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But you know when I work with athletes, I want to get your take on this.

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You know I tell them like remember, you choose to play, you can love this and it's intense at times, but everything you're applying to this game you can apply it to school.

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You can apply it to your family when you get out of school.

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You can apply it to other things.

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You know what is your advice to maybe any young athletes listening, or even current pro athletes listening on that, because I think sometimes people wait for the last second to do that.

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It's really something you can start earlier on.

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Yeah, totally is.

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I think, one of the best things, some of the best things you can learn through sport, in elite sport, our teamwork, of course.

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Excellence, high performance, optimizing your performance, potential, reaching your potential, work ethic, discipline, attention to detail which you'll hear me reference all the time and hunger and grit, right, right.

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I'll say it again grit, good plug there.

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Right.

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You know what I mean.

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Those are things that you learn inherently and I'm telling you this I learned these things at six years old, seven years old.

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Our late coach in minor hockey, Mr Armstrong, with the Toronto Red Wings guys, we're going start on the goal line, go to the blue line and back.

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I didn't go to almost a blue line, I went to the blue line and back.

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And you learn those things as a youngster.

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And for me, I think for anybody that's played sports, let alone played elite sports those are the things that I take and apply to everything, to your point and for a lot of the athletes that are out there now, those things don't only occur or they're not only applicable when you're inside the lines or inside the boards or on the football field, as I said, on the diamond, on the track, in motor sports or whatever volleyball court, like.

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Those things are applicable anywhere and if and or when you apply those, those are differentiators and you might as well embrace the fact that you're different from the jump, Like you're already a unicorn to begin with.

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Embrace that, Don't be ashamed of that.

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Embrace that.

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That's part of why so many people want to watch you play.

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That's part of why so many people want to listen to Kanye West or Beyonce or Taylor Swift or Dirk Bentley or whoever it is Jay Z Like.

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You're a unicorn.

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That's part of what makes you excellent at what you do.

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But you don't only have to have excellence in one field.

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You can transfer that same level of excellence in the same, a lot of the same kind of foundational bedrock.

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You can transfer that to have excellence in other things, If and when you apply them.

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And those things, believe me, they're differentiators for sure.

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All right, that's going to do it for this edition of the ride to the rink with the great, the wonderful, the magical Kevin Weekes.

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Again, you can hear that full episode of win championship trades for life wherever podcasts are heard, and you can listen to all the ride to the rinks and all the Eric Hockies and all the Eric Hicks play goalies at our kids play hockey dot com, or wherever podcasts can be heard.

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That's going to do it for this week.

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Thanks for tuning in.

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We'll see you next week.

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Skate on everybody.