It is the height of tryout season. The summer is here, and the cycle begins again. Change is everywhere, in every league and in every team. It is a good time to be a young man.
To be sure the parent always want the best for the child. We nurture, we provide, we support, and we spend all that we can to try to make the dream come true.
As parent we sacrifice a lot. Our children appreciate it even if they sometime forget to say they do. They will likely voice it much later in life when they reflect on their journey, or when they have the child trying to make the dream come true.
It is the strange thing about dreams though. Everyone has their own. No two are exactly alike, and no parent can see into the head of the child to visualize exactly what the child dream is. Though the child try to express it to us, we never get full picture because it is individual vision.
This is exactly why parent need to step back and let thing play out. Step back, keep mouth shut, and support only. Please read, memorize, or print that to read every time you attend try out camp with you child.
It not matter if you returning, signed, drafted, tendered or the free agent. You are promised nothing.
It not matter if you play in the top AAA program. It not matter if you play in top Prep School program. It not matter if you are the completely unknown free agent player showing up for camp.
You are owed nothing. You are guaranteed nothing.
Parents need to take this in and remember it. Coaches care nothing about you opinion. Please read that again. Coaches care nothing about you opinion.
DO NOT TALK TO COACH
Unless you know coach, do not talk to him unless to say “hello”. Do not call coach about the game plan, playing time, or anything else to do with on ice activity. Period.
No player is so special they can not be cut or traded. Wayne Gretzky was traded was he not?!
Get used to the fact that every team will have a less talented player or two make the team over a more talented player. It happen all the time.
It is simply because the coach like the player more as a person, or work ethic, or compete level. Coach may like the way player dressed when he sign in for camp that make good first impression. He may like the way player communicate. He may like the way other player respond to him being in dressing room, or for any other reason.
It is life. We all work with people we like more than people we don’t. If you can not handle this you career in hockey will be short and you do not understand life, let alone the game.
I write this today because I go to two try out camp this weekend and see several parent doing all the wrong thing politically. Those parent damage the child opportunity.
Every one of those player cut, who parent had to open they mouth, just make sure that when next coach call the coach who cut them that they are told about the parent. You mouth may have just ended you child next tryout opportunity before the camp even start.
As the smart parent say, “just let them play”.
Coach
