Lee MJ Elias [0:08 - 1:14]: Skaters and goalies around the world. And welcome back to another edition of the Ride to the rink. Got an 11 season NHL veteran with us today. Matt Molson joins us. Matt was drafted in the ninth round. They don't even do nine rounds in the NHL draft anymore. He made it all the way to the NHL. He wore letters during his career. He played at Cornell in college. He has done it. This guy has done it. And we've brought him on here today to talk to you kids specifically about a little bit of work ethic in youth hockey. Because we know where you're at. You love the game. If you're listening to the show, we know you want to work, but the landscape, kids can be kind of confusing. There's so many things to do. Do I go to a specialized coach? Do I get this training aid? Why do I need more? I said, what do I do? What do I do? So we brought Matt on to talk about what you can do, how you can be resourceful with everything or nothing. Because I'm going to tell you kids this. It doesn't matter what you use. It matters how you put the time in. So, Matt, thanks so much for joining us today. Tell the kids a little bit maybe about your journey and what they can do today to become a better hockey player. 

Matt Moulson [1:17 - 3:22]: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I think, you know, when we look at trying to get better, a lot of us as children look to our parents to set up skating lessons, skill sessions. And I think sometimes some of the best, I guess, strides you can make are off the ice by yourself. And that's because you're trying to use your creativity off the ice at home to try and get better. I think that's, you know, we've talked about it. Lee. Making your own shooting range. I remember making mine with two, two pallets and a painter's tarp. And I would just spray paint squares on it and shoot in the backyard at home on a piece of wood I found on the street. I think that was where I shot the pucks off of. You know, I think before was with the trainer. I do lunges up and down the street while I was stick handling. But I think if you're, if you're committed and passionate about your sport, if you truly love it or in school, you truly love a subject, you know, it's up to you to try and improve and become better in that area. And I think there's a million different ways. There's no 100% correct way when you're young. I think it's about, you know, just that passion is the most important. You get out there, stick handling. You can do all sorts of things. So I think I was forced to be pretty creative, especially when they used to take the ice out of the rink and you couldn't skate at all. And you had to still find ways that you. You wanted to improve before next season. There's a lot of things you can do. So I think just making sure you're. You're doing something, it could be watching a hockey game on tv, watching an NHL game. That's a great way of learning. So there's different ways that you can. You can find a way to improve your area. 

Christie Casciano [3:23 - 3:50]: Right? And you don't have to be in an elite skating club to do that. Right? You can just do it very practically, and it can be very affordable for you to do that. And, Matt, one of the ways that you kind of forced yourself to improve is after you got cut from a team, you actually did some research on how you can improve, right? You got cut, and instead of quitting hockey, you figured out what you needed to improve on. How did you do that? 

Matt Moulson [3:53 - 5:30]: Well, I think I needed to prove on everything, so it was easy to research. But I think my dad did help me researched. If I did have to go to, you know, I had to see a skating coach. I remember we found this lady by the name of Don Braid, and she was unbelievable. I went there. So doing that, I think a lot of times, you know, maybe they said my shot wasn't good enough. And I would sit in my backyard or my basement and I would think about all these different types of shooting drills. I would come up with them. I have no clue if they were right or wrong, but I was using my creativity to come up with these things and improve different parts of my shot. It wasn't this great shooting coach telling me what to do is just me. Me and my mind by myself and working on all different things, all different types of shots. And it's crazy how I at times thought of. They were silly drills I came up with myself. And later on in life, I was like, you know what? I used to practice this. I don't know why I practiced it. For some reason, I thought it was my mind. Just my mind told me it was a good thing to practice. And I practiced these weird things. And as I developed into an NHL player, I found myself using some of these things that I had done when I was 11, 12 years old, out my backyard, shoot at a painter's tarp. So you never know. And I think that's. That's the great behind it, being creative and figuring out different ways that you can do different things. 

Lee MJ Elias [5:31 - 6:20]: The key word is creativity. And for the kids listening, you're so creative that you never ceases to amaze me how creative kids are. You know, Matt, my setup was paper plates on the corners or in different places of the net. And sometimes I'd color them different colors, and I'd have someone tell me, hey, don't. Don't tell me before, but yell out a color. And I'd have to hit that color. These little, little tiny games that you create for yourself. My favorite one was, well, how do you work on shooting from the sides? I turned the net. I just turned the net sideways, and now I'm shooting from the side. So that's just shooting, right? There's a lot of creative ways for you to work on your game. And look, kids, I'll tell you this right now. If you have some expensive training aids, great. Really? That's great. There's a lot of great stuff out there. But if you don't, for less than five bucks, actually for free, you can do a lot of work and a lot of things. 

Christie Casciano [6:21 - 6:22]: My daughter. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:22 - 6:23]: Yeah, go ahead. 

Christie Casciano [6:23 - 6:33]: My daughter would hang water balloons up in the corner of her house and shoot and try and get the water balloons to pop, and that really helped her shot a lot. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:33 - 6:37]: Right. It was also probably very exciting every time you did that. 

Christie Casciano [6:37 - 6:42]: The other thing about Hot Day, it was great. You'd get a little splash. School off was fantastic. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:43 - 7:31]: Summer balloon hockey challenges. Make sure there's no goalie in the net on that one. You know, Matt, the other thing you brought up, too, is that, you know, if you do seek out help, and I think this, kids, this is a kind of big misnomer, right? Nowadays is, let's say you go to a skating coach or you go to a skills clinic, and there's this mindset of, oh, well, I'll learn it at the clinic. And I think that you got to expand beyond that. You'll learn stuff at the clinic to take home home to work on. There's no skating coach or clinic that in one session you're going to master something, you'll learn something, you might advance heavily, but it's what you take home, right? So, Matt, you said it. The skating clinics, the other things, it's, oh, I got to work on this more than just the clinic. That's a big part of that accountability of. You can't just go to one thing and say, okay, well, I'm Going to the skating clinic and I'll be a better skater. It's really beyond that, right? 

Matt Moulson [7:32 - 8:41]: Yeah. I think, you know, you actually triggered something in my mind. I think it's when you go to these skating, skating coaches, skills coaches, even your coach of your team during the year, I don't. It's not their responsibility to develop you as a player. It's their responsibility to give you information that then now you have to take and you have to decide how you're going to implement it for yourself. You know, obviously, when you hear so much information, some's right, some might not be right for you personally, but you have to take that information and decide, how does that work for my game or how can I improve with that info? They might have some great information. So it's your responsibility to develop yourself. You can't, Whether your parents send you here or there, that's not going to necessarily make you better. It'll help you, but it's your, it's your job to take all that information and now put it into, into something. And you could. Obviously that's easier said than done, but that's, that's the fun of it, man. 

Lee MJ Elias [8:41 - 9:22]: I'm not gonna lie. That's a golden nugget right there. And the kids, that, that's a mindset shift that can really impact your game. I think there's a little too much, what are you going to give me attitude in hockey today versus what can I get out of this attitude? And that's a shift you can make to become the best hockey player possible. And we say it a lot on the show. It's not about your resources. It's about how resourceful you can be. And kids, what that means is it's not about what you got, it's what you can get, what you can create, what you can be creative about to create for yourself. Really good stuff there. Kids, you don't know this, but Mike is here as well, and I want to invite him to say anything he wants to say right now before I close this out. 

Mike Bonelli [9:24 - 10:12]: No, I, I, I just, I mean, I, I loved listening to Matt on the main show and obviously, you know, if you have a chance to listen to that, it gives a lot of these, a lot of these motivational pieces as. But I think the most important piece is what he just talked about is that, you know, the player themselves have to be the ones to find that path and then, you know, use people like Matt. You know, if you have, if you think you have a great coach, then keep going to that person and asking him for more and more information. And I think great coaches, good coaches, even halfway decent coaches are going to give you, are going to want to give you more information. They're going to want to give you more. If you're the one driving that conversation and you're the one driving the fact that you're motivated to get better, it's amazing how many athletic coaches will go out of their way to help you succeed. 

Matt Moulson [10:14 - 11:20]: Yeah, I think that's a good point, Mike, because I think, you know, every. Every coach. Let's. Let's be honest here. We're not. Not making any money coaching Utah. You're doing it because you love it at every level. These coaches are coaching because they love it. And whether they're, you know, better than the other or what have you, I think you can always take information. They're always going to try to help. They're trying to do the right thing. Um, so I think you can always get information no matter how. How good the coach is. There's, you know, I've had some. Some coaches who never played the game of hockey at a high level whatsoever tell me some, maybe some great things. So I think it's always trying to find if, like you said, if you. If you really love it and you want to be the best you can at this, you're always looking to get any information anywhere. And, you know, maybe it's one. One coach is not going to tell you a million great things, but maybe they have one or two that might really make a difference. 

Lee MJ Elias [11:22 - 11:59]: Well, it's great stuff, Matt. And kids, again, a lot of golden nuggets in this episode. For you, it's all about you. It's all about what you want to accomplish. And if you're willing to put that time in, nobody else should have to tell you what. What to do. Right? You should desire that, whether it's knowledge or training or anything in between that. So that's going to do it. For this edition of the Ride to the Rink. We hope you enjoyed it. I'm sure your parents are looking at you in the car, just nodding away. All right, they know what they're talking about, but format. Christy and Mike, I'm Lee. We'll see you on the next ride to the Rink. Remember, kids, wherever you're at on your hockey journey, we believe in you. You should, too. All right, have fun. Skate on. We'll see you next time. Take care.