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Hello hockey friends and families around the world and welcome to another edition of our kids play hockey powered by NHL sensorina.
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I'm Leo Elias, with Mike Benelli and Kristi Cashano Burns, and today we are joined by a defenseman who had a nine year NHL career with the Bruins, flyers, hurricanes and Canucks it just rolls off the tongue the way I wrote that which was preceded by a four year successful career at Boston College.
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Today he is the hockey player development director for NHL sensorina and an ambassador for the Warrior for Life Fund and an ambassador for the Boston Bruins Academy Learn to play program outside played in the NHL.
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That is a fun, awesome resume.
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Please join me in welcoming Andrew Alberts, the show today.
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Andrew, welcome to our kids play hot.
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Thank you for having me.
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I appreciate that it was a long intro, but thank you, I appreciate it, andrew, believe it or not, that was not the longest intro I've done.
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I've had pages.
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Kristi and Mike have had to sit through me doing that for minutes at a time at some place.
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Your experience made that easy.
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We appreciate you being here.
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Well, thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to give you guys a little more information on sensorina and talk about my hockey background and hopefully give some tips for all the hockey moms, hockey parents, hockey dads and kids out there.
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Yeah, andrew, let's start there.
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I was reading up on you, obviously before the episode.
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Notice you're one of four kids.
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You grew up in the hockey hotbed of Minneapolis, minnesota.
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It does not get much more centralized in hockey in the US than that Was hockey on the table at birth.
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Was it something you found?
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Why don't you walk us through kind of the moment the journey began, sure, sure.
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So we grew up in a house that had kind of a swampy lake in the house and so when I was four my dad shoveled it off and kind of out I went, and that was kind of the start of it for me.
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But as I was a kid I had the opportunity to watch my uncles play hockey and so I had three goals to play D1 hockey up in Duluth, notre Dame, and for University of Minnesota, golden Gophers, wow.
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And so on my mom's side they're from higher range up north, if you're familiar with Minnesota hockey rain up there still does, and that was a hotbed for a lot of players coming out of Minnesota playing at the schools mostly around the Midwest there.
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So as a young kid I grew up watching my uncles play and they come over and play in the basement and there's stick handling and tow dragon around me, and so that kind of got me hooked.
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And then I had the great opportunity of playing on, you know, just the lake behind the house, and that's where, like the excitement and the love and the passion really started for me.
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Where it's it's no parents or coaches telling you what to do, it's it's a group of high schoolers and you're playing boot hockey or you're playing on skates and you're using a taped up ball or pocket, didn't even matter, but you're just having fun out there, and so that's kind of where it all started for me and, and you know, obviously I want to pass it on to my kids.
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Right, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because I think a lot of parents today don't put a lot of stock in letting their kids have that creative outlet and just go out there and have fun with no roughs, nobody telling you how to skate, where to skate, what to do.
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There really is a beauty in that and I and I'm glad you mentioned that because I think parents think they have to be constantly in a controlled environment for kids all the time.
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So what are?
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the benefits of that free play on the ice.
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Yeah, I'm glad you asked and we're jumping into it right here and it's great.
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But so, liam, you mentioned a squirts and you wait and you turn and your kids and I had the same same kids that played same level and in the beginning of every practice.
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That's what we do, is we give them that 10, 12 minutes and we throw out a different ball or a different toy and just let them, like, be creative, be yourself, go figure out a small game, a keep away game or a three on two or whatever it might be.
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Maybe it ends up everybody chasing everybody or coaches versus players.
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But one, it's fun, so the kids want to keep coming back and enjoy it.
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But two, it's letting them be creative and not be afraid to make mistakes, and that's the number one thing.
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Like kids are, so their day is constructed and their schedules are.
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It's wake up, breakfast, go to school, put a piano lesson or whatever it might be, drum lessons, and then to practice, and then dinner and then sleep, and so there's a schedule for every day.
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So if they have some free time to be creative and try new things and make mistakes, that's how they're going to learn and really start to enjoy the game.
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So we always try to do something different, to be in a practice, even at the end of practice, and make it fun and not don't let the coaches kind of get in the way, is what I like to say.
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Yeah, andrew, it's the time of year where I'm getting asked by a lot of parents of new hockey players.
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You know, hey, your kids skate so well.
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What do you do in the summer?
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Or who do you go to in the summer?
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And I say I spend 10 bucks at a public session once a week and I throw them out there and I let them chase each other and fall down and dance and have fun.
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And I said that that is, you know, mine is some some little bit of instruction like that.
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That is everything.
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I leave them alone, let them learn how to walk.
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And I said I don't think there's been a better teacher.
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I said I can show them stride work and knee bends and all these mechanics all day, but at the end of the day they need to want to learn it In public session.
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I always said or free skate, whatever you call it, wherever you're at, is a wonderful method to do that.
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But again, as you said, you can apply that to practice.
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You can allow them to have fun, even when coaching at extremely high levels.
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We'd like to play games right at the beginning of practice just to loosen everybody up.
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It's always competitive at that level, right, but but something fun.
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Mike, I think you were about to say something and I apologize.
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I jumped in.
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No, no, it's all good.
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I mean, this is.
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This is exactly, I think, what happens to all of us right in the in the hockey world.
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We forget that that free play environment is something, unfortunately.
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We need to cultivate like we take it away from kids, like somebody.
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If, if, for instance, if parkour became a million dollar industry, right, then all of a sudden you wouldn't allow kids just to jump off things and jump on and hanging on to things, you be like no, no, no, you can't do it that way.
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You got to use your toe and distribute your weight this way so you can catch yourself like you know.
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So what we do with hockey.
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It's amazing to me like we use the example on the show to Andrew that you know if you go to a playground and you watch, you know and you let kids off on the playground equipment and go to the monkey bars.
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There's no parents instructing kids on what to do and how to do it.
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And you know the daring kids go on top of the, the.
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You know, on the top of the highest point and it's scary, right, but they do it and they figure out a way to climb up there.
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And then the kids that are scared and maybe don't have the confidence to don't do it, and they stay low and they stay in the tunnels and they, they crawl around the ground.
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So there's this whole thing where we take this away from our kids and hockey.
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And what your point was, you know, that free play environment.
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I mean, it's going to fit right into what sense what I think sensorina is to me.
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But this free play environment of the kids being to be in their own creative world and take out of it what they want to take out of it is so crucial later on, and every hockey, well, every sport expert there is says the same thing.
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But yet we do everything.
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We do everything to take it away, like we do everything that counter, you know, is counteractive to exactly what we want our kids to be, and that's creative, passionate, thinking outside the box type of athletes.
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And so it was great that you were able to grow up in an environment, and if you can manipulate that environment in your own kids, I would say do that as much as possible, no matter how many power skating classes the other group's doing.
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Right great environment that you grew up in, continue your journey.
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When did you know that you were that competitive hockey player and you had to follow your passion and your dream of making it in the big league?
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You know it's I never really got to the point where I thought I would make it or I'd get there, and it's I think I might be very different from a lot of different players where my mom's family was a big hockey family but my dad grew up playing basketball and baseball and golf and so that's where he was pushing my siblings and I so he didn't know a lick about hockey and my mom was pretty laid back and so I didn't really get the push or the desire from that parent side to say, hey, you got to do this camp or do that camp.
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And so, like Mike and Liam, you were saying, like, in the summers, I played baseball, I played golf, and I didn't touch my equipment until September, October, because hockey started back in November, back when we were little right, and so you just play for a short period of time.
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So, as I continue to play, I wasn't on the top teams.
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I was always a B player and so, as much as I love the sport and as much as I had that competitiveness within me, I was never really the best player and I was great on the pond, which I had fun doing right, but when it came down to serious team town hockey.
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I wasn't the best player and so I had the drive, but I didn't have that drive to say, hey, I want to go.
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I know I'm going to play in the NHL and this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to take these steps and go these skating coaches and shooting coaches to get there.
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It just it wasn't.
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That wasn't important to me at the time.
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It was having fun with my buddies and I'll kind of see what happens, and so that's kind of the mindset I had, which is very different for, I think, a lot of young kids nowadays.
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You know, I need to reiterate to our audience this man that is speaking.
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He has played for Team USA.
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He is a prominent college player.
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He played in the NHL for nearly a decade and here he is saying yeah, I played on B teams, I just had fun and I played multiple sports.
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Andrew, the nice part about this is you're talking to the right audience for this.
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We always tell our parents that listening that you're not crazy.
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It's the hockey world that's kind of crazy, right.
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So I love that you reaffirmed that.
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I do want to ask this too Were you 6'5 when you were 12, or did that come later?
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Well, so that's a great question.
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So I was 5'8 in high school.
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There you go, until my junior year when I shot up and I was 6'3, but just to go back quickly, when BAM's finished up, so I don't know, was it U15, u60, I don't know how they do it nowadays.
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I was around there and I tried out for my high school team.
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So you try out for varsity and then after a day they're like, no, you can go down to the JV tryouts.
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And I, two days later, got cut from JV and I was like, oh, you know what, that's all right, I know my buddies are playing there, but I still know some guys that are playing junior gold Like that'd be great to play on that team.
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I could play with my neighbor it's a couple of years older than never a chance to play on the same team.
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Tried out for them.
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Go check the list at the arena like he used to do, got cut from that team and I'm like, oh, what is this Right?
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Like I think my hockey career is over and I'm playing junior A, which it is what it is.
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But I'm sure there'll be some buddies coming down, tried out for that team and they said, no, we're just gonna make it seniors and juniors this year we're cut from that team, and so all left was house hockey.
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And so me going from playing Bannum Bs to house hockey the worst league level I could play and you know, you're crushed as a player, right, right.
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And it ended up being probably one of my most fun years of hockey, because all the expectations were gone at that point, cause you guys, you're moving to the high school, you want to make high school and try to make a college team and whatnot, and so every expectation was gone.
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I was playing with a couple of kids who lived up the street, buddies of mine, and just no pressure from yourself, from your parents, and so we had a good team, I had fun, and that was kind of the bottom of the barrel but also gave me the opportunity to enjoy it more, right.
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And so there I was playing house hockey as a 15 year old, and then that summer I said you know what I want more?
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And so I decided just mentally, hey, I'm going to put everything into it this summer and see what happens.
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And I had to switch in schools just for the educational aspect of it, cause I was at Eden Prairie, where there are 4,000 kids in the high school to switch over to Benilde.
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There was, you know, 125 in my class and so then I went to Benilde that next year and rented some very influential people in my life.
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That kind of molded my hockey career and mindset.
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Jack Bladowick I don't know if you guys know that name, yeah, and Ken Paul he's been a legend Minnesota high school hockey.
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So I met those two and things kind of took off from there.
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But yeah, it's never a straight line.
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There's always going to be bumps and curves and dips and fall away down to the bottom and for me that was really important that you know I had that failure to learn from it and move on.
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Right, that is such a great message for kids.
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I mean there could be a kid listening right now who's going through something very similar Doors are closing, people are telling you you can't, People are saying you're no good.
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Yet what you did was you just adjusted your sales and you took a different direction and you made it work for you and you figured out how to navigate through those rough waters and still succeed.
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I think that's a great story and I hope every kid listening right now takes it, gets a big takeaway from that and doesn't get discouraged.
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No.
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And who the hell are these evaluators?
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What the heck's going on over there?
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It's a state of hockey, for God's sakes.
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You know it used to be all the, you know no.
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I mean, but we need to find them and say it, mike, that goes into like the politics and parents of hockey, right, like some kids is there to be certain places and they're not.
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But when it really comes down to it, as much as you want to get somewhere and achieve a goal, you just have to keep playing and believing yourself and do whatever it's going to take to get to the next level.
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Yeah.
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And I got Chris Myra, who's out here on the East Coast yeah, I play with my brother, yeah, and he's a big, big Jack fan.
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And I think, having that kind of like, think about the opportunity for you to go from where you were to go to a guy like that, which is just a technical, in-depth skating person, like somebody that could teach the mechanics of skating differently, right Then a lot, and even in Minnesota he was above grade, right.
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So having that opportunity, which, if you would have made that top team, you never would have left school, you never would have moved those programs, you never would have said I got to work harder, like you wouldn't have done all those things, like you would have said, hey, I'm good, like I'm a big kid and I'm better than most kids and I don't need to work on those little things.
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It really is, and again for the listeners, even in Minnesota you can get missed by the best evaluators in the world right, I just love your story.
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I love it, love it, love it.
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I was just saying to you not even 15 minutes in.
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We got to bleep Mike already.
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That's good, I'm sorry, kid no.
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
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I'm just getting passionate.
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No, you're passionate.
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I'm just getting passionate.
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I'm like this 15-year-old kid.
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How is he not making these teams Like I'd be, like they're going, oh, thank god, my kid's getting made, my kid's making it.
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I don't care, but my god, what a, what a.
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Mike, I'll say this to you and Andrew, I want to thank you for sharing that for multiple reasons.
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One and you said it too, we say this all the time there is no path, there is no right way to go, there is no team you have to make to succeed.
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At the end of the day when we've interviewed NHL players or players that have played at a high level really comes down to drive and passion.
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Obviously some athleticism you have to have the ability to play sports at a high level, but if the drive and the passion's not there, it's not going to happen.
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And the other thing I've noticed too is that it's easy to have drive and passion if you love the game, when you're playing on the team you want to play on.
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But I really think that it's cultivated and it's made in that molten lava of not making the team and not succeeding, because that's when you really realize man, I love this and I want this.
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That's the moment that dreams are born.
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I'm not trying to be poetic here and again.
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Even with that, there's no guarantees, but I think it's important to notice that and I really appreciate you sharing that.
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No, I think.
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If you look at every top individual, I think at some point one of them faced adversity, and so it's kind of fun to ask people hey, at what point did you know, or what point did something happen where you flipped the switch?
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So you kind of think it was like your favorite failure, if you will Like, hey, what's the favorite part of your career that happened where you had to?
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Hey, all right, I got to make a mindset or change whatever I'm doing and pivot to get to where I want to go.
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So there's a lot of juicy stuff when you ask somebody a question like that.
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Yeah, look, I can tell you right now that my decision point to want to work in this game and be involved in this game and make this game, my life was off of a team I didn't make.
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It was that year I made the decision.
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I was like no, I want this.
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So I totally equate to that.
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And again, look, you might not like this comparison, but that's eerily like the Michael Jordan story where you didn't make the high school basketball game.
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You can't do that that's not allowed.
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I just did.
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I just did it, you can throw Tom Brady in there too, but we don't get to do that in these guys.
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Andrew's not going to be in a Dunkings commercial anytime soon, no so.
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Andrew, you mentioned juicy stuff.
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Give us some juicy stuff about your NHL days.
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What was that like?
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I mean, we all can just imagine how grueling was it, how fun was it.
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You're living the dream.
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What was that like?
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Well, you just said it, You're living a dream and you're almost in like fantasy land, right?
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Because you go from playing college doing something you love to somebody paying you money to do something that you love, which is great.
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You find out it's a business very quickly, which is fine, but one year in the moment it's almost like all right, I want this to last.
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I'm just going to and for me, I'm a guy.
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Put my head down, work out, work hard on the guy cross me next to me.
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Whatever it might be, I'm not losing a spot because of my effort, right.
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My attitude.
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So I showed up every day hardest working guy on the team, and it's funny because my teammates will tell me that I'm the hardest practice player they've ever seen.
00:18:08.362 --> 00:18:10.381
But I take that all the time.
00:18:10.381 --> 00:18:13.402
I'll own that right Because I practice like I play right.
00:18:13.402 --> 00:18:14.700
It's a compliment for you, yeah.
00:18:14.700 --> 00:18:18.325
And so two things you can control are effort and attitude.
00:18:18.325 --> 00:18:20.382
So I showed up every day a smile on my face.
00:18:20.382 --> 00:18:22.922
I'm going to make the best out of what's going to happen today.
00:18:22.922 --> 00:18:28.861
And I kind of just rolled that wave for the first couple of years of my career, right until you start to establish yourself.
00:18:28.861 --> 00:18:34.366
And I had the just, I don't know how lucky I am.
00:18:34.366 --> 00:18:41.148
I had Zdenen Ochara is one of my mentors, right, my second year.
00:18:41.148 --> 00:18:42.619
I had Brian Leach my first year.
00:18:42.619 --> 00:18:46.557
So, guys that I looked up to Hal Gill my first year.
00:18:46.557 --> 00:18:57.144
Guys that I could try to emulate big guys, lot of reach, smart players, and so working with them in my early years was great.
00:18:57.144 --> 00:19:00.038
And again, it's like fantasy camp, right, you're showing up for the rink every day.
00:19:00.038 --> 00:19:03.663
And you got Zdenen Ochara big Zs like hell.
00:19:03.663 --> 00:19:04.325
I want to play with you.
00:19:04.325 --> 00:19:06.281
We're going to be together.
00:19:06.281 --> 00:19:07.701
We're shut down this line, this and that.
00:19:07.701 --> 00:19:37.461
So I gained a lot from those guys as my career went on and then ran into some troubles with concussions and whatnot, but continued to play and dropped back to be more of a 4, 5, 6 guy towards the end of my career, which is still fine, because any day in the night chill is a great day, right, but you meet a lot of people, a lot of teammates, a lot of good relationships and we had a great success in Vancouver and got to the San Diego finals.
00:19:37.461 --> 00:19:39.623
Obviously we lost here to Boston, which I'm reminded every day.
00:19:39.623 --> 00:19:48.143
I see a Bruins logo and everybody I see they always give me crap but it's all good, so it's a whirlwind.
00:19:48.143 --> 00:20:03.279
But I think one of the reasons that I stayed there sorry, long-winded answer here, but one of the reasons I stayed there is that I never and for better or for worse, I never felt I belonged in a way, just because of where I came from, and it was like I said, it's like fantasy camp every day and I never felt.
00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:04.784
I belonged in a way, just because of where I came from.
00:20:04.784 --> 00:20:28.814
I think that that internal kind of like pressure on myself to keep, you know, proving myself every day is what allowed me to stick around for so long, because if you ask a lot of my teammates and buddies, it's not my skill level that kept me there, you know, it's probably my skating and my work ethic and my attitude, and so if you can be a good teammate and fill a role, you can play a long time.
00:20:30.246 --> 00:20:30.365
Yeah.
00:20:30.365 --> 00:20:32.173
Well, andrew, I'll tell you a couple of things based on your answer.
00:20:32.173 --> 00:20:34.854
Everybody wants to hear from you today, trust me, especially our audience.
00:20:34.854 --> 00:20:36.592
There are no long-winded answers for you.
00:20:36.592 --> 00:20:38.951
You could do this episode solo and we would all love it.
00:20:38.951 --> 00:20:41.704
The other thing, too, I love that you touched on it.
00:20:41.704 --> 00:20:48.888
You know sometimes that fear of whatever it is being cut, not making it I'm not good enough.
00:20:48.888 --> 00:20:52.708
Well, I still think it's healthy for people today to kind of dive into those and explore them.
00:20:52.708 --> 00:20:56.615
It can be a massive asset right to people succeeding right.
00:20:56.615 --> 00:21:03.673
You know, you hear stories especially about athletes from yesteryear, about I just didn't want to get cut and that's why it works so hard.
00:21:03.673 --> 00:21:09.733
I think there's a lot of different ways to do it, but at the end of the day it comes down to that work ethic that you spoke about.
00:21:09.733 --> 00:21:15.277
Like, if you don't have that, I'm guessing most players at the NHL level work pretty hard, right?
00:21:15.277 --> 00:21:18.184
Unless there's so much God-given talent that maybe they don't have to.
00:21:18.184 --> 00:21:20.637
But even then you find those guys work hard too, right?
00:21:20.637 --> 00:21:21.280
Yeah?
00:21:23.808 --> 00:21:34.614
I think, if you want to speak to talent and work ethic, if you look at any GM, any coach Mike, you coached Liam, you coached Christy I'm not sure if you coached well, but you get to the higher levels.
00:21:34.684 --> 00:21:35.469
Just a hockey mop.
00:21:36.105 --> 00:21:53.530
Yeah, but I would take a kid that works so hard all the time and he's a dog on Pox and he's all over the ice, then a kid that has all the talent in the world that, because that's going to run out right, unless you're a high-end player right, which some of those guys get to the NHL.
00:21:53.530 --> 00:21:54.433
But it does take hard work.
00:21:54.433 --> 00:21:56.852
But there are third and fourth line guys.
00:21:56.852 --> 00:22:00.728
So if you're a young player out there and you're not on the top line, you're not scoring all the time.
00:22:00.728 --> 00:22:01.150
Guess what?
00:22:01.150 --> 00:22:10.288
You still need third and fourth line guys for every single team that are going to be grind away and play smart, play good defense, win face, get Pux out of the zone, get Pux in.
00:22:10.288 --> 00:22:15.855
So if you're not a goal scorer out there, don't think that you're not going to make it.
00:22:15.855 --> 00:22:23.549
There's a different type of player, there's a different position that needs to be filled on every team as you continue to move up through the ranks.
00:22:23.911 --> 00:22:26.090
So, yeah, Well, andrew go ahead, mike.
00:22:26.684 --> 00:22:28.430
No, no, I was going to say Andrew.
00:22:28.430 --> 00:22:36.517
It's similar to the way we talk to these kids coming up now 15, 16, 17 year old players that everybody can't be.
00:22:36.517 --> 00:22:44.999
Adam Fox, like you need players to play D, even in the world of positionless hockey and all this free flow.
00:22:44.999 --> 00:22:48.054
Everybody's on the offense, everybody's on the defense.
00:22:48.054 --> 00:22:51.635
The fact is, everybody's not on the defense and somebody's got to play D.