The Ride to The Rink: A Parent’s Guide to Hockey Evals and Team Decisions

Hello, hockey skaters and goalies and parents around the world. Welcome to this edition of the Ride to the Rink. It's Lee and Mike with you today. Now, this show is primarily for kids. And kids, you can listen to this one today. But this is going to be a little bit more of a parent edition of the ride to the rink. And I'm saying this because, kids, I actually want you to hear what Mike Bonelli is going to talk about, too, when it comes to evals and tryouts. So, again, we're talking to your parents. So, kids, you know how your parents listen to the show with you and kind of glance at you and go like, are you listening? Are you listening? Kids, today I want you to roll reverse, okay? I want you to sit up in your chair right now. I want you to look at mom and dad or your guardian and say, are you listening? This one's for you. Because Mike Bonelli is about to talk and drop some knowledge on evals and tryouts as we approach that season. And it's always a very popular topic around this time of year when we're recording this. So I'm going to gently and softly sauce the puck over to my co-host, Mike. And then I'm going to dive for cover because Mike's about to go. I'm just kidding. Go ahead, Mike. Talk to the parents first. You know, it usually is a rant in my head, but I think that, you know, the conversation for players and parents, and we talk about this a lot on our regular show, is, you know, being in the moment and understanding where your feet are at right now and not chasing all of these other letters and development programs, all this other stuff. And I'm speaking more if you're sixteen years old, fifteen years old and below. And you just have to understand if you're not a player right now and you're a parent that's not getting your phone's not ringing off the hook for your kid to go sign up and getting offered free tuition and an airplane and free uniforms. If you're not that parent, you're not that kid right now. then understand that the expectations for you to develop are that you need to be in the right environment, put your child in the right environment for them to find their own way. If you keep chasing what the other, again, we have to just admit and look in the mirror, am I that elite athlete that's getting called every day, getting asked to leave my program and go to another team, getting enticed with all of the bells and whistles? If you're not that kid, then be really conscious about the program you're in so that you can develop, have a ball, make great friends, and just be in a good environment for you to keep loving the game. If you keep chasing stuff that you're not ready for and nobody thinks you're ready for, but you, that is where the pitfalls are. And that's where we see players really start to fall off because they're just unhappy in the environment they were placed in. Yeah, and that's where the seeds of burnout are built, Mike. If you're always chasing something, how do I say this? Not obtainable, I don't know the right word. If you're chasing something that's not realistic for right now, okay? And again, Mike just said it. What's realistic in your head and what's actually realistic for where you're at currently in your development. That's the key phrase that I have to add on to this. Have a conversation. Mike and I are adamant that When you're in season, there's a lot of the grass is greener on the other side thought processes from parents. I hear it. As a coach, I hear it. As a parent, I hear it. I really take the time to sit down, ask yourself, is my kid in the correct place for development? Will putting him on a higher team help him develop or will he or she fall behind? That is one thing you have to think about. Two, and we'll come back to it. Two is this. I'm not saying, I always say this every year. I'm not saying there are not situations where your kids should switch teams or might want to switch teams. Sometimes it is not a good fit, but really take the time to make sure you're not just emotionally making that decision. And that, you know, again, apples to apples, right? If you're making a lateral jump, You're probably going to get a very similar situation, right? And I hesitate to say this because they probably aren't listening to the show. If you're listening to the show, I'm trying to say you're probably not in this bucket, but you have to look inward as well. Sometimes it might be you. It might not be the program. It might be you and how you're approaching hockey, all right? So, look, I have to do that. Mike has to do that. We've all got to look because when you're in a compromised state, Everything looks better. Everything outside your team looks better, right? Go ahead, Mike. We'll keep going back and forth. No, and let me just give you the diaries of a hockey director, too. Understand this. If you're the parent and the player that's going to fifteen different tryouts during my tryout, I am less likely to respect the fact that you want to play for me, and I'm not going to do what you think. I'm not going to negotiate with you to play on my team. If you're going to be the parent that's openly going to say, I'm going to other tryouts, then you've chosen to go somewhere else. If I'm already saying, hey, come there. We love you. We want you. You're on our team. But the minute you go, and I think this is really like goaltenders have this all the time. You know, those players that are on the bubble, like the minute you go to another program and say, oh, I don't value the program on now, you've kind of forfeited your right to demand to be back on the team you're on. If you love that team and you want to be on a team, you know, we actually, it's funny, we just had an episode where we talked about, you know, what are some of the attributes of a great athlete and parent to a program? Ask. If you're the parent, go and ask and say, my son loves it here. He wants to be here. I know tryouts are at the same time. I want to be here. Does he have a good shot of staying? most coaches and directors will say, we love your son. We want to keep your family. You don't need to go anywhere else. Yeah. Now you might not make the triple a team and the double a team of the a team, but we're going to place you in our program. I'd say eighty five percent of the time. Take that deal. Yeah. And don't run and go to seven different trials, because when you do that, you're getting miss the opportunity you had right there in front of you. And if I'm a hockey director and I'm going to say, well, I don't care. I gave you the opportunity because now it's every man for himself. So I think just understand that we're in tryout season. It's the wacky world of negotiating. But eliminate the negotiating by saying, I want to be here. I want you to want me. If you want me, I'm signing up today. Yeah. And a few caveats on that, right? The trust on that goes both ways. If an organization promises you that or offers you that and they don't come through, you need to recognize that too. I'd say that's more on the rarity side. Okay. The other thing too that I'll say too is, Parents, kids, you got to hear this. We recognize when you're jumping team to team to team. We see it. And it's not a feather in your cap when it's, oh, I played for three different teams over the last three years. When you come to us with that, you'll probably jump here next year. We notice that. So the point I'm trying to make is this. If you're chasing a certain experience over and over and over again and not getting it, Got to look inward. You got to look like, is this a realistic thing that you're chasing? Another thing I'm going to bring up that Mike brought up is it's about the right questions. Do not say to a coach, and this has happened, I'm speaking from experience, or a director, convince me to stay with your program. Do not say that. That is not particularly their job. All right. It's I'd rather you say, look, these are my concerns with your program. Can we have a discussion about this? Because it's actually freaking me out a little bit. That's a fair question. All right. Maybe you don't know some of the decision making things that we do. But don't say that. Hey, convince me to stay like like if you're thinking that way. It's just not a great question. I'm not saying it's unfair. It's just not a great question. All right. The better question is, I want to be here. My son and daughter want to be here. Right. What do we need to do to stay here? Right. Don't don't put me in a position of, oh, I've got to offer you something to stay because that's what it looks like. Like like like whoever gives you the better package is where you're going. Right. We're talking about youth hockey. All right. Not not division one NCAA athletics, which is a mess. The other thing I'm going to say to Mike, just to say this and again, kids and parents should hear this. Don't chase a record. Don't chase to be on just the winning team. I see this after every season. The priority, I know it feels good to win. The priority is your development as a hockey player. Obviously, the priority is having fun and making sure that you're enjoying the game. But you want to go where you're going to develop the most. You're going to go where the coach is going to help your son or daughter become the best hockey player possible. That's not always the winning team. In fact, I could make a claim, not always true, but most winning teams, you're not learning as much on those teams as the team that is struggling or five hundred. Right. Again, we all want to win. Don't go wrong. And every kid deserves to have winning seasons. I want to say that. Like, I mean that. OK, but if you're having winning seasons every year, you're actually dooming, dooming your kid because they're not going to face adversity. They're not going to face that learning environment. It's important. Find the right coach. Find the right place to develop. That's that's what you should be looking for. Right. Right. I think a lot of a lot of Yeah. And I think a lot of coaches have that Nick Saban mentality that, okay, we won last year, but now this year's team is a new team, right? Like those four players left the goalie left. I got a new defenseman. That is not the same team. That's a different team. If one player leaves a youth hockey team, at ten you, that is not the same team. So think about like it's the environment, it's the coach, it's the it's the it's the location, it's the amount of ROI you're getting every time you have to get in the car and turn the key and go to a place to train. That's what you're looking for. That's the that's the carrot. The carrot is every time I get in the car, am I getting the most out of my development so that I can be the best when it matters the most? Right. And it just doesn't matter at ten and eleven years old. It doesn't. I'll say this in my closing statement, Mike, and I'll give you the final word is like one of my kids is in a pattern with his organization where kind of every other year the team is going to be very good. And every other year the team is going to struggle a little bit just just just in terms of how how the rosters and how the age groups work. Now, the question that I get a lot as well, they might not win a lot of games next year. And I honestly tell them it's not really my concern. It's are they going to grow? It's the coach's job to help them develop in that situation. Will they be able to compete is actually the question. Because if your kid's losing every game by one goal, they're competing. If you're losing ten-nothing, that's not good. If you're losing five-nothing every game, that's not good. But they'll be competitive. And it's in that cauldron, in that forge of fire, that development can really take place. So if you're asking me as a coach, I kind of like that some years are good, some years are more of a struggle. Because that's going to teach my kid and all the kids some adversity. It's going to have to make the coaches sharpen up on what they're teaching to develop. Like, I like that. All right. I like that. So anyway, it's just food for thought. Parents and kids, again, we say it all the time. There's no two journeys that are the same. I'm not saying if you win every year, it's a horrible thing. That's not where I'm going. It's just some food for thought on how you approach this time of year. And again, when emotions are high and when the stress is high and the FOMO is high, you can make bad decisions if you don't take a second and step back and really look at what's going on. Mike, I promised you the final word and I meant it. You go ahead. I just really want everybody to understand that when you go after what you want, you really have to look at and know who you are. Just know who you are as a player. Know who you are as a parent. Know what you can handle. Know how many different places you have to be. Really look at the structure of the program you're going after. And sometimes you're going to look around and you'll go, you know what? The rink I'm in, the people I'm with, the organization that I'm already on, it's really good. And it's, and it's doing what I need as a parent. And that's to put my son and daughter in a healthy environment, in a fun environment, in a place where they want to come back to every day. And I can eliminate all of the stress of this time of year by having to listen to all the other noise around me, make your decision, get in your lane and find a way to have fun. That's going to do it for this edition of the ride to the rink. Mike Benelli, again, dropping some gold. Think. Think. I think that's the motto of the episode. Just take a minute and think. All right, kids, listen. Thanks for listening with your parents. I hope you can sit up now and say thanks for listening, Mom and Dad. And remember, for the kids listening, no matter where you're at in your hockey journey, parents too, we believe in you. You should too. We'll see you on the next ride to the rink, everybody. Take care.