The Ride to The Rink: A Thanksgiving Tradition from Our Hockey Family to Yours!

Happy Thanksgiving hockey friends and families around the world and welcome to a

holiday special edition of our kids play hockey as we do every year. We know it's

Thanksgiving or around Thanksgiving when you're listening to this. We always like to

just come on the air as Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday and that's when this

is debuting. And first off, just give thanks to all of you, the listeners, the

viewers of our program that have created this incredible space where our kids play

hockey is a top 25 podcast regularly, have listeners all over the world,

not just North America, all over the world. Our stats show is new countries, new

states, all the time listening to the show, and really to celebrate the greatest

game in the world, which is hockey, which if you're listening to this, your kids

obviously play. But from the bottom of my heart, just to start this up, I know my

co -hosts are going to say the same thing. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for being

here today. And with that said, I'm going to bring in the two greatest co -hosts in

the history of podcasting. No one trumps these two people. Christy Casciano-Burns

and Mike Bonelli, just giving a little thanks today, obviously, to our listeners, my

friends. Christy, we'll start with you. Happy Thanksgiving, Christy. Thank you. Happy

Thanksgiving to everyone. And I am thankful for both of you. This podcast,

when we started it five years ago, we had no idea if it was going to be

successful, where it was going, what it would do. And I'm so grateful for the

impact it's had on so many hockey families. We don't even know the numbers.

We know you're out there. We know you're listening because we hear from you. And it

is so gratifying to know that the three of us have pretty significant experience in

this crazy world of hockey. And we have been through so much.

We really have seen it all from every level, at my case, college level,

travel hockey, mites. And to be able to use what I've been through,

what I've experienced, that veteran voice and both of you joining me, I think it's

pretty powerful and pretty impactful. And I'm really grateful for that. So thank you

to all of you who have been aboard for the five years. And I'm grateful for all

the new listeners and all the young hockey parents out there who get the advantage

of listening to what we've been through and not having some of the hardships that

some of us have been through, learning the hard way. You can avoid a lot of the

mistakes that we've made. So I'm really grateful that we're able to share all of

this with all of you.

Yeah, I mean, I'll echo Christy and Lee, you know, just as far as, you know, being

thankful for the opportunity to you know reach you know thousands of hockey families

uh every week and for the number of years it's actually pretty uh pretty humbling

too when you think about you know all the opportunities we have to i know most of

my personal fans that that contact me wish i was better on video uh but you know

you can only you can only work with what you've given um you know so but i think

you know if you're listening and you're tuning in and you're reacting to us uh

that's awesome I know I'm definitely

all these great guests that we keep getting, you know, that Katelynn brings in here

and Lee and Christie and, you know, everybody that reaches out to us that want to

get on the platform because they know we can reach the people they want to reach

out to. But that helps us. That helps me. I mean, my personal, you know, education

in hockey has been so much further advanced because of the guests that we have on

here that I could ever imagine going out and doing on my own and trying to

research. I mean, I used to pride myself as a young coach of really going to

basically every coaching clinic there was in the world, and even non -coaching clinic,

just educational opportunities. And, you know, we've been able to bring those to us

now, which I love. You know, it saved me a lot of airline travel and trains,

planes, and automobiles. And it gives me an opportunity to have, you know, be a

part of a program and a platform that brings people to us so then we can now

spread the word of what we're trying to teach in our own hockey community. So

definitely thankful for all those kind of things. And thankful for Caitlin. Let's not

forget. Our glue.

100%. The fact of my microphone's working right now is because of that Katie. Let's

give A shout out to actually the whole crew here. So for those you don't know,

Katelynn is our producer, our community manager. We do nickname her glue. She holds

the whole show together. She's the reason we win awards. Give a shout out to our

editor, Xavier, who really works tirelessly on these episodes every single week.

Schedules them, make sure they're out on time. We should give a shout out also to

Haley Scamurra, our co -host on our girls play hockey, who joined us, who's in the

middle of a PW HL and Olympic season somehow finds for us to do this. I definitely

want to give a shout out to our partners that help sponsor the show, which is

amazing. And also, you know, the guests, the guests that come on here,

amazing people. If you told us five years ago, you know, you're going to have Hall

of Fame coaches, Hall of Fame players, Hall of Fame GMs on the show. We would have

told you you're crazy. The first year we had almost no listeners. That's the funny

part, too. And then it exploded. And then obviously, finally, the listeners, you

really are what make this show go around. The fact that I know the three of us

get stopped weekly with this, and this always starts like this. Hey, I heard the

episode. I listened to the episode, and I have thoughts on that. It's so rewarding

because that was the point was to create the community and conversation that youth

hockey apparently desperately needed and you have vaulted this show to a top award

-winning podcast. You did that, the listener, right? We just come on here and Jabber

every week, opening people keep listening. But you have to listen for that to

happen. So incredibly thankful for you. All right. To end this, it's Thanksgiving.

So the shopping season. Good luck to all of you. Many of you know we're also

running the Wraparound Roundtable giveaway podcast right now every Wednesday. Check

that out. We are giving away a lot of prizes this year. And we usually put some

stuff together, maybe a gift guide. It won't be on this episode of things that Mike

provides. I provide, Christy, and some of our friends, just to bring you some really

great deals, whether you're new in the game or you've been in the game for a long

time. That's part of the community as well. But from the bottom of our hearts, my

friends. Happy Thanksgiving. Thankful for all of you. Thankful for this hockey family

on this podcast. And we're wishing you the best into this, what will not be a calm

break because you're in youth hockey. You have 75 tournaments coming up over the

next three weeks. So good luck with those as well. And for the select few of you

who don't have that, enjoy the rest. You've earned it. That's going to do it for

this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey Thanksgiving edition. We're Mike Bonelli and

Christie Casciano-Burns. I'm Lee Elias. We will see you on the next Our Kids Play

Hockey. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. 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 Kids Play hockey .com. Also, make sure to check out our

children's book, When Hockey Stops, at When Hockey Stops .com. It's a book that helps

children deal with adversity in the game and in life. We're very proud of it. But

thanks so much for listening to this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey, and we'll see

you on the next episode.