The Ride to the Rink: What Your Hockey Team Manager Really Does

This episode is powered by NHL Sensorina. Hello, hockey skaters and goalies around the world, and welcome back to another edition of The Ride to the Rink. We hope you're enjoying wherever you're at listening to this. You might be in the car with your parents next to you and might be listening outside on your iPod or your phone or whatever you're using nowadays to listen to these. But today we've got to talk to you about your team manager. And we're kind of excited to talk to you about it because this is not a topic we've talked about before. To do that, we brought in our friend Christine, who is, we'll call her a super manager. She's managed some really high-level youth hockey teams. She manages two hockey teams during the season. Her kids are in the game. And we want to talk to you kids about how you can be great for your team manager and how your team manager is really a huge part of the team, right, Christine?

Yeah, I love being a part of the team. And um, it it's really fun to be able to do it and help you guys have an amazing season. And yeah, excited to be here today.

And Christine, a lot of kids might not really understand what a team manager does what's your job on the team?

Yeah, no, good question. So if you're ever wondering how your hotels get booked, how your tournaments get booked, how your practices get booked, everything to do with the ice, that's going to be on your team manager. They're going to be the ones making sure that you guys have the best experience you can through the season. So uh team managers are usually the ones that coordinate whether it's parties for your team, bonding on and off the ice, or even lunches or dinners when you guys travel. We're super happy to do it to make sure that you guys are having great weekends and getting to know all of your teammates.

You know, I was gonna ask, you know, as a player, right? What can we tell our players? What can they do? How you know, what can how what they can what can they approach you with? If they, you know, they're they're a player, and maybe it's not, you know, they want to go to the coach, but like what are some of the things that you think that would be like a player would be open and say, okay, the manager knows what's going on, they know the schedule, and you know, maybe maybe they want to give you the the best uh the you know recommendation on the playlist for the uh you know in-between uh period music. But what you know, what do you think players should be comfortable going to the manager with?

I I love playlist suggestions from day one. So absolutely. Um even we had to have a walkout song for our brick team. So what we had to do was have all the players vote on it. So I was the one that coordinated that. I love ideas. Um I think that if you're a player at any level and you have ideas, go talk to your manager. If there is something off ice that you guys want to do, like team bonding, mini golf or something, they're the ones that can see where it fits into the schedule and to make it happen. It might not happen just because it might not fit, but you know, it's always good for them, all the managers, to understand what the kids want to do. Um, also, if you guys love playing knee hockey, go tell your manager. Say, hey, is there a chance we can get an extra room at a hotel or is there time for this or that? You know, that's helpful. Also, like the managers are other parents on the team, they care about all the kids on the team. If you have a problem that you don't think needs to go to the coach and you don't feel comfortable talking to your parents about, you can always ask the manager. And they're gonna be the ones that can say, yes, we should talk to somebody else about, or maybe give you a different perspective. Like, I promise you, these are the people that want to volunteer their time for this. And so I do think that they're good soundboards. Don't be afraid to approach them with little or big things. Awesome.

What was the uh walkout song? I think that's a very important conversational topic.

Wow, that is a great um, so it was um the Kevin James intro about start your engines. Okay, uh, because we loved the fact that we were an American team playing at the Edmonton Mall. Um, and then Thunder struck on 2x speed after it was iconic.

That's a winner uh for multiple generations, what you just said there. Like you could come out to that song in the 70s, 80s, 90s today. Um, my last question for you on this for the kids specifically is what's something you wish every kid knew about what you did that maybe you don't always get to say? We know again, you made a great point. Kids, the way the practices get in those schedules, all those things, the manager's doing that. But you do a lot of things to help these kids and help these families, and you really care about the kids, Christine. I think that's one of the things that goes unsaid is how much you care about kids. But what's something you'd want to tell kids listening to this about managers that maybe they don't realize?

I promise the season's not gonna be perfect. I could tell you that right now. You're not gonna love every hotel, you're not gonna love every 8 a.m. game on the tournament. There are just some things that are outside the manager's control. Complaining about it is fine. You're allowed to complain to anyone you want. But just know that if you're upset about it, I'm pretty sure your manager is also upset about it, trying to make everyone's lives easier or trying to make sure that you guys can start a tournament later. So maybe you spend one extra night at home, but it's just not always going to be possible. So just be patient because they're working in the background to try to make this the best experience for you. But sometimes it's just genuinely outside of their control.

Kids managing sounds a lot like coaching to me. All right. A lot of people trying to do the best we can for you. And I think at the end of the day, kids, it just like Christine said, and we've all said, it's so important you show a lot of respect to that manager on your team. They're doing a lot of work on your behalf and they deserve your respect and they deserve you to have conversations with them and thank them. Go up to them and show some gratitude. Tell them, hey, I really appreciate you planning this stuff. That would go so far, I think, with every manager listening to this show. And if you're in a car and your mom and dad are a manager or team, just look at them real quick because they're nodding right now. They're nodding right now in agreement. All right, that's gonna do it for this edition of The Ride of the Kids. Kids, again, remember wherever you're at on your hockey journey, we believe in you. You should too. For Christine, for Christy, and Mike, I'm Lee. We'll see you on the next episode, everybody. Take care.