Even Wayne Came Off The Ice....

Thank you to everyone who requested my blog to come back. I took some time off to work on some other things but it is good to get back to having some fun.
As you know this blog is usually relating to my son’s Mite hockey team and our positive experiences together learning and growing. Sometimes you can learn things by the actions of others……..

"I’ve been stumbling on good hearts turned to stone….The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone.”
We Take Care of Our Own
Bruce Springsteen

For all the coaches out there:

Two weeks ago our Mite team played a game against a team and the game was not pretty. It was one of those games where nothing went well for the other team. They were missing some of their players and it seemed like every time one of our players shot the puck it ended up in the other teams net. Almost every player on our team scored. During the game we took a time out to talk to our young kids about not running the score up, making good plays, passing the puck being respectful of the other team. It was a tough day and the score ended up 13-3. As coaches we felt bad for the other team but felt like we taught our kids to react properly.

Fast forward to this weekend. We played the same team and lost 6-4. What was upsetting was not losing. In my opinion at this age it is not about the wins and losses but what the kids are learning.  It was good for our kids to be humbled a bit after the previous weekend. What was troubling were the actions of the other coaches and the decisions they made.  They have a tremendous young player who was clearly the best player on both teams and maybe the best in the league. He just so happens to wear the number 99, so of course I was having Gretzky flashbacks that I thought I had buried. The coaches in their infinite wisdom decided to have this player play the entire game……never came off the ice. He either scored every goal or was involved in setting them up. Good for him, shame on the coaches. After the game they acted like they had won the Stanly Cup. This is mite hockey remember. If there are hockey gods, I’m sure they would have been severely disappointed by them. What are we teaching our kids? That it is good to sit back and let someone do the heavy lifting for you. That one person can decide your future. That it is important to win at all costs even if it sacrifices the confidence of your friends and teammates. Isn’t there too much of that in the country already?

The number 99 thing got me thinking about things.

There are legendary stories of Walter Gretzky, Wayne’s dad, walking from one side of the rink to the coaches’ bench to tell the coach to stop playing Wayne so much, that it was more important for the other kids to play more to improve the team in the long run. The other day I didn’t see any parents walk over to their coach….
I played with a lot of guys who played with Wayne and every one of them talked about him being the greatest teammate and person they knew. They all said he was a player that made everyone around him a better player. I think Walter taught Wayne a lot more than just winning at all costs.
When I was 18 and playing for the Canadian Olympic Hockey Team, we played an exhibition series against the Canada Cup team that was filled with the greatest players on the planet, including Wayne. Clearly we were outmatched and after two periods and being down 6-0, the coaches decided to split up the rosters to make the game better. The door to our dressing room opened and in walked Wayne, Mark Messier, Brian Propp, Ray Bourque and Paul Coffey. I’ll never forget the way Wayne spoke to us. He told us that our focus should always be on the effort, the process and in getting better- not what the current score was. It was incredible. He made everyone in the room feel better and raised our confidence just by the way he acted and carried himself. I am thankful that 25 years later the action of some misguided grown- ups made me remember that incredible experience with Wayne.

After the game I really had trouble shaking hands with the other coaches. I just felt like they really disrespected our great game. But then a couple of things happened that made me feel a whole lot better. After the game my family went out to dinner with one of our teammates and I watched them have a great time and SHARE a pizza. Driving home my son said to me, “Dad, we didn’t get beat by that team……….we got beat by 99……” I laughed and said I agreed. I could see him thinking, then he said, “Dad, don’t worry…. That coach can’t make 99 do the other player’s homework for them……”
Exactly son. Well said. Maybe we are teaching them after all.

What the Puck??

Driving home from Mite practice my eight year old son, who I have never heard say a bad word ever, asked me, “Dad, you know puck rhymes with a bad word…….”
There was no way I was going to ask him what he was referring to.
“Yes, Cade I suppose it does……what is your point?”
“Well what does Puck mean anyway? Why is it a puck??? Why are some black, some blue and some heavier than others?? What do you really know about the puck?”
I have been around hockey for about forty years and I did not have an answer for him. It was time to do a little research. God bless the internet.

The origin of the word "puck" is obscure. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name is related to the verb "to puck" (a cognate of "poke") used in the game of Hurling for striking or pushing the ball, from the Scottish Gaelic puc or the Irish poc, meaning to poke, punch or deliver a blow.
It is possible that Halifax, NS, natives, many of whom were Irish and played Hurling, may have introduced the word to Canada. The first known printed reference was in Montreal, in 1867, just a year after the first indoor game was played there.
A hockey puck is also referred to colloquially as a "biscuit". (Put the biscuit in the basket!!! I love that one!!! …..)
A standard ice hockey puck is black, 1 inch thick, 3 inches in diameter, and weighs between 5.5 and 6 ounces some pucks are heavier or lighter than standard.
There are several variations on the standard black, 6 oz hockey puck. One of the most common is a blue, 4 oz puck that is used for training younger players who are not yet able to use a standard puck. Heavier 10 oz training pucks, typically reddish pink or reddish orange in color, are also available for players looking to develop the strength of their shots or improve their stick handling skills.
Pucks are frozen before the game to reduce bouncing during play.
During a game, pucks can reach speeds of 100 miles per hour or more when struck. The current NHL record belongs to Zdeno Chara, whose slapshot was clocked at 105.9 miles per hour in the 2011 NHL All Star Game SuperSkills competition, breaking his own earlier record. The current world record is held by Denis Kulyash of KHL's Avangard Omsk, who slapped a puck at the 2011 KHL All Star Game skills competition in Russia with a speed of 110 miles per hour.
 
So I relayed all this important information on to my son thinking how much he would be impressed with my work. He just said, “Thanks Dad,…Cool! Good night….”

The next night coming home from a skills practice my son asked me, “Dad, you know stick rhymes with a bad word too…….”

I’ll save that one for another blog………..

Shake Hands

My son plays for the Philadelphia Generals Mite/Squirt Patriot team.

Once again he recently made me think about things in an entirely different and positive way. My hope is that it makes you think that way too.

A couple of weekends ago we were playing at a local rink and it was a very competitive game. This is a little embarrassing to say but yes, Coach John and Coach Kerry found themselves raising their voices to the referees, disagreeing with many of their calls….. (Mite hockey, I know….not good….) The game ended and both teams shook hands as well as did the coaches and the referees.

On the way home my son said to me, “Dad, shaking hands at the end of the game is good.”
I inquired, “What do you mean?”
Cade said, “Well, after all the hard work and all the yelling and excitement, once we all shake hands at the end of the game it feels good…. it feels finished….it feels like it is time to go home….even you, coach John and the refs were friends again…..”

After a couple of years of these observations I now find myself looking for a deeper meaning of his musings. They are becoming ever easier to find.

I began thinking, how many times in life should we just shake hands and move on to the next game? We are all human beings and there are always times in life when we just won’t see things the same way and disagree vehemently on issues. I guess getting older, I now realize there is one side, the other side, and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. Whether it has been in business or family or even with friends, I know I have been guilty of not being able to shake hands, move on and live for the future the way I really should have. We have all been guilty of that. There really has been a lot of wasted negative energy. I wish there are things I could have done differently as I am sure you feel the same way.

Recently, there has been a lot of local coverage of the upcoming Winter Classic Hockey Game and Alumni Hockey Game being held here in Philadelphia. One of the interesting storylines of the game is that Bob Clarke and Eric Lindros will be participating in the game together and the implied mending of the fences of their supposed rocky relationship. If you are a hockey fan you have probably heard all the story lines and history of what had happened or supposedly happened. Who really knows and it really is not that important anymore.
I had the pleasure of playing for Bob when he was a General Manager with the Flyers and also playing with Eric on the same team for a season. They are both fiercely intense and bona fide Hockey Hall of Fame caliber hockey greats. They played extremely hard, and they apparently had extremely rigid differences of opinions at times. But guess what? It took some time but it looks like they shook hands and have agreed to move on to a more positive way. At one time both were captains and considered exceptional leaders. It looks like they still are.

Ok, now moving back from the Greats to the Mites.
My son and I were watching the news the other night during dinner and there was coverage of our military engaged in some battle in Afghanistan. He looked at me and asked, “Dad, those guys have Generals, we are Generals….why can’t they be just like us, shake hands like we do, end it, and everyone go home????”  

There are some conflicts that can’t be settled with a hand shake but most of ours can and should be. In the end most of them are really not that important.
So shake hands, because like my son said, “it feels good…. it feels finished….it feels like it is time to go home….”