To be sure, a good player adviser can make the big difference in any player career. These are the very important people in you hockey career, many if not most player have the good adviser. But, there are some real life example of bad adviser giving bad advise.
Last week a colleague give the boss here a tip on a few example of bad adviser and bad advice. What funny is I actually have information to confirm this to be true.
As the first example, there is Adviser or Agent company based out of Western Canada that is causing the serious problems for players.
The serious problem is this company have no idea of what they are doing. More than once they have a player sign Major Junior contract without explaining the player lose his NCAA ability once he sign. The players, when not making the team then try to go to NCAA and find out they can not.
Why and how do this happen?
Why it happen is simple. This company have virtually no background in hockey and hire just about anyone with the heartbeat in order to make company look big. They care not for experience and they care less about knowing the rules.
The second example is from the Adviser or Agent in Eastern Canada that is spreading untruths, using intimidation, and threatening player and parent in the attempt to sign more player. This person even go so far as to say if the player or parent pay him ten thousand dollar he can promise a spot in a certain Junior A league on a certain team!
This person also go to far and say if they do not sign with him, they will not ever play on that team or in that league.
Now the threat is very bad. It is designed to scare, intimidate and manipulate the player and parent into giving the Adviser or Agent money. This is not the ethical thing to do.
This Adviser have the nerve to actually make these statement at a showcase in Eastern United States recently to group of parent and player.
The truth about a good Adviser or Agent is the simple one. They know their role in the process, and understand the rules. Adviser is like the Lawyer. He has a duty to protect the player and parent from harm, that duty extend to protecting player and parent from threats and bad information.
It should be easy for many of you to figure out the people I speak about in this today. There are plenty of good Adviser and Agent in the game, none of them would every try to scare you into doing business with them, none would advise you to sign Major Junior contract without full explain the rules, and none would promise to make you play for any certain team if you pay him certain amount of money.
Coach
