What Are We Building?

Maybe development was never just about hockey.

Over the last few weeks, we've talked a lot about development. We started with the hockey pyramid and the idea that development doesn't happen in a straight line. Every player has a different starting point, a different pace and, maybe most importantly, a different reason for playing this game. We talked about understanding where your player actually is instead of constantly worrying about where they aren't.

Then we moved into communication. Not just talking to our players, but actually listening to them. Understanding what they want from hockey, what they're enjoying, what they're struggling with and where they hope this game might take them.

Last week, we moved into the passenger seat. We talked about how the parent's role has to develop right alongside the player. We go from dressing them in the lobby, to helping in the locker room, to tying skates, to taping sticks, and eventually to standing behind the glass wondering when exactly they learned to do all of this without us.

Along the way, we start handing them responsibility. Pack your bag. Remember your water. Talk to your coach. What do you want to work on? What level do you want to play? Eventually, we even have to let that water bottle sit on the kitchen counter once in a while because preparation can't become their responsibility if Mom and Dad quietly fix every mistake before they experience it.

We've covered a lot of ground, but there's been one question underneath every one of those conversations that we haven't really asked yet.

Why?

Why does any of this matter so much? Why do we care about understanding development, communication, independence and responsibility? Why do coaches spend hours planning practices and trying to figure out how to get through to a kid who just isn't getting it yet?

Are we really doing all of this just to create better hockey players?

Or are we building something bigger?

Why Do You Care So Much?

Not long ago, a parent asked me a pretty simple question.

"Why are you so passionate about coaching?"

It's a fair question. I spend a lot of time at the rink. I think about drills when I'm not there. I watch players and think about what they're struggling with. I replay conversations and wonder whether I explained something the right way. Like most coaches, I've probably drawn enough terrible hockey diagrams on whiteboards to fill a book.

The easy answer would have been, "Because I love hockey."

And I absolutely do.

But that wasn't my answer.

I told them I'm not this passionate about coaching because I'm trying to create better hockey players. Obviously I want to make them better. That's part of my responsibility. I want them to skate better, shoot harder, handle the puck with confidence, understand positioning and begin thinking about the game instead of simply chasing it.

But that's not why coaching means this much to me.

I told that parent:

I might only get one chance to make the right impression on that player that makes them want to become a better human being.

I'm not suggesting every ten-year-old who walks into a locker room desperately needs another role model. They're ten. Most of them are probably thinking about hockey, their friends, what they're eating after practice and whether somebody brought the good snacks.

But they are watching.

They notice how we respond when something doesn't go our way. They notice how we talk about another player, how we treat officials, whether the strongest player gets treated differently than the weakest, whether we keep our word and whether we can admit when we're wrong.

Sometimes they remember things we had absolutely no idea they were going to remember.

I know because I did.

Hockey has been part of my life for a very long time, and when I look at the person I eventually became, I can trace pieces of him back to a hockey rink.

The interesting part is that it's not necessarily the goals I remember. It's not the scores. I couldn't tell you the result of most of the games I played growing up.

I remember moments.

Locker room conversations. Things said on the bench. Being corrected. Being challenged. Coaches expecting more from me and teammates depending on me.

I remember those moments late in a game when a timeout was called, a coach looked down the bench and my number was called.

You're going.

That's a different feeling when you're a kid. Everybody is looking at you. Your teammates are counting on you. Your coach is trusting you. You're nervous, and there's a pretty good chance you're thinking about all the ways you could screw it up.

But the door opens anyway.

Over the boards you go.

Think about everything hidden inside that little hockey moment. Someone is counting on you. You have a responsibility. You've prepared for this. Trust yourself. Trust the people around you.

You might fail.

Go anyway.

That's hockey.

But that's certainly not just hockey.

Learning Life in Hockey Terms

One of the hardest things to teach young hockey players is surprisingly simple: stop chasing the puck.

When they're little, everybody wants it. The puck goes into the corner and suddenly you've got ten kids headed toward the same square foot of ice. As they develop, we start teaching positions. You're the winger. You're the center. You're the defenseman. Sometimes your job requires you to stay somewhere when every instinct in your body is screaming, Go get the puck.

Why don't you?

Because somebody else has that responsibility.

You have yours.

You trust your defenseman to make the play. You trust your center to support them. And just as importantly, they have to trust you to be where you're supposed to be too.

That's discipline. Not punishment. Not skating because you messed something up. Discipline is understanding your responsibility and doing it even when something else looks more exciting.

Eventually every hockey player learns the other half of that lesson: you can't do everything yourself.

Maybe you could when you were younger. Maybe you were faster than everyone and could skate around three players every time you touched the puck. Eventually you meet someone just as fast—or faster.

Now you have to move the puck.

You have to trust somebody else.

But trust works both ways. We spend a lot of time asking players to trust their teammates. Maybe we should also be asking:

Can your teammates trust you?

Will you be where you're supposed to be? Will you get back defensively? Will you make the pass instead of trying to score yourself? Will you show up prepared? Will you do your part even when nobody is cheering for it?

That's bigger than teamwork. That's learning how to become someone other people can rely on.

Hockey also teaches that contribution and recognition aren't always the same thing. We celebrate goals, and we should. But a lot happens before that puck hits the back of the net. Somebody won a battle. Somebody made the first pass. Somebody created space. Somebody covered defensively. Sometimes the player who made the entire play possible never touched the puck.

The scoresheet won't show it.

That doesn't mean it didn't matter.

Life won't always give you credit for everything you contribute either. Sometimes somebody else gets recognized. Sometimes your role changes. Sometimes the person beside you is simply better at something than you are.

That doesn't make your contribution worthless.

And if the only things we talk about as adults are goals, points, the best players and who made which team, kids learn something from that too.

They learn how we measure value.

I hope we're teaching them that their value is bigger than a number beside their name.

Then there are the moments where hockey gets emotional.

Maybe you get taken out behind the play.

No call.

You know what happened. The other player knows what happened. Maybe your entire bench knows what happened.

The referee didn't see it.

Now you're angry. You think the game isn't being called fairly. Maybe you think the other team is getting away with too much, and every part of you wants to settle it yourself.

You can chase that player down. Finish a hit you don't need to finish. Slash them. Take the penalty and sit in the box for two minutes telling yourself that at least you stood up for yourself.

Or you can get back into the play.

Compete harder. Make the next pass. Win the next battle.

Maybe the best answer of all is putting the puck in the back of their net.

That's discipline. That's composure. And I think there's integrity in it too.

Because integrity isn't only doing the right thing when nobody is watching. Sometimes it's doing the right thing when you feel completely justified doing the wrong thing.

Anybody can control their emotions when everything is going their way. What happens when you feel cheated? Can you still make a decision based on what your team needs instead of what your emotions want?

Standing up for yourself doesn't always mean retaliating. Sometimes the strongest response is refusing to let somebody else decide how you're going to play.

And then there's maybe my favorite hockey lesson of all.

Next shift.

Every hockey player screws up. You miss the pass. Lose your coverage. Turn the puck over. Miss an open net. Maybe your mistake leads directly to a goal.

Now you're sitting on the bench thinking about it. You're angry. Embarrassed. Maybe blaming yourself.

Eventually the door opens.

Next shift.

You don't get to go backward and fix the last one. You get another opportunity.

Learn. Reset. Go.

You're going to fail at things in life too. You're going to make bad decisions, disappoint people and have days where absolutely nothing seems to work. Accountability doesn't mean pretending those things didn't happen. It means owning what happened, learning something from it and understanding that eventually the door is going to open again.

Next shift.

Now Turn the Glass Around

We've spent a lot of this month looking at our players. Where are they in their development? What do they want? Are we listening? Are we giving them responsibility? Are we letting them make mistakes?

But if we're going to talk about everything hockey can teach our kids, there's another question we probably need to ask.

What are they learning from us?

We're asking players to stay disciplined. What do they see from us behind the glass? We're teaching them to respect officials. What do they hear when we disagree with a call? We're teaching them that everyone on the team matters. What do they hear in the car when we discuss another player's mistake? We're teaching accountability. Can we admit when we're wrong? We're teaching sportsmanship. How do we behave when our team loses?

And coaches aren't exempt from any of this.

If I'm telling a player to control what they can control, I need to demonstrate that myself. If I demand accountability, I need to be capable of looking at a ten-year-old and saying, "I got that wrong. That's on me."

If I tell them every player matters, then the kid at the bottom of my roster deserves the same dignity and respect as the player at the top. If I tell them to respect officials, I can't turn around and make an idiot of myself screaming at one.

And if I ask a kid to trust me, I need to behave like someone worthy of their trust.

Parents and coaches aren't going to get all of this right.

I've gotten things wrong.

I'll get things wrong again.

The lesson was never perfection.

Own it. Learn from it.

Next shift.

Maybe that's where this entire month finally comes together.

When we talked about the hockey pyramid, we talked about building a foundation. Skating, shooting, passing and hockey IQ matter. We need to understand where our players are today before worrying endlessly about where they might be tomorrow.

But maybe there's another foundation underneath the hockey one.

Discipline. Trust. Responsibility. Integrity. Sportsmanship. Confidence. Resilience. Accountability. Learning how to depend on other people and how to become someone they can depend on.

Those things don't just build a hockey player.

They build a person.

That's why understanding development matters. Every kid develops differently.

That's why communication matters. We can't guide someone if we're never willing to listen to where they actually want to go.

That's why parents eventually move toward the passenger seat. Kids can't learn responsibility if we never give them anything to be responsible for.

That's why players need room to make mistakes. Accountability doesn't develop if somebody else is always there to remove every consequence.

And coaches?

Maybe our responsibility is understanding that every drill, correction, conversation, timeout and moment on the bench has the potential to teach something bigger than hockey.

What Are We Building?

Of course I want to build better hockey players.

I'm a hockey coach.

I love seeing a player finally learn an edge they've struggled with. I love watching someone develop confidence with the puck. I love when a player finally sees the pass we've been trying to teach them to recognize.

Those moments matter.

But some of my favorite coaching moments have nothing to do with the scoreboard.

It's the kid who makes a mistake, comes back to the bench, listens and goes out to try again. It's the teammate who notices their goalie struggling and gives them a tap on the pads. It's the player who finally walks up to their coach and asks the question themselves instead of sending Mom or Dad.

It's the kid who starts packing their own bag.

It's the player who realizes someone else is in a better position and makes the pass.

It's the quiet kid whose number gets called and suddenly realizes:

They trust me.

Those things won't appear on an evaluation sheet. Nobody is putting them in the standings. There's no column on the scoresheet for integrity.

But maybe those are some of the most important things we're building.

Because eventually the hockey pyramid ends.

For some players, hockey ends earlier than they expected. For others, maybe this game stays with them for decades. But eventually the serious games stop. The jerseys get put away. The equipment ends up in the garage.

Nobody is going to care what their evaluation score was when they were ten.

Hopefully something remains.

Discipline remains. Integrity remains. Accountability remains. Trust remains. Confidence remains. The ability to fail and get ready for the next shift remains.

Maybe years from now, one of these kids will look backward at hockey the same way I do.

They probably won't remember every drill I ran.

Honestly, I hope they don't. Some of them weren't that good.

They might not remember the final score or where their team finished.

But maybe they'll remember something that happened in a locker room. Something said on the bench. A conversation after practice. A timeout. A moment when their number was called.

Maybe they'll remember that somebody believed they could do something before they believed it themselves.

And maybe a small piece of that follows them out of the rink and into adulthood.

That's why I'm passionate about coaching.

Not because I believe I'm personally going to turn every ten-year-old into some incredible hockey player.

Because I get a chance to matter.

Parents get that chance every day. Coaches get it for a much shorter amount of time. Sometimes one season. Sometimes a few years. Sometimes only a handful of practices.

They are watching us. They're listening. They're learning. And every once in a while, they're going to copy us.

So maybe the final development question we should ask this month isn't about our players at all.

Maybe it's about ourselves.

Are the things we're showing them worth copying?

I know that's a question I need to ask myself.

So yes, let's keep teaching them to skate. Let's teach them to shoot and pass. Teach positioning. Teach them to stop chasing the puck. Teach them to compete and make the right play when the easy one isn't there.

Absolutely, let's build better hockey players.

But let's never forget what we're really building.

Someday the hockey player walks out of the rink.

The person we've been helping build walks out with them.

And if we're fortunate enough to be one of the parents or coaches allowed to travel beside them for part of that journey, maybe that's the responsibility we should take most seriously.

Because we may only get one chance to make the right impression.

Let's make it count.

— Coach Wes
Fundamental Hockey Academy