All I Ever Needed to Know......

As the hockey season has relatively slowed down and everyone takes a 'very little' break from the game I thought I would take a break from just hockey talk and share and article I found written by Robert Fulghum titled, "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

My company does a lot of work with young hockey players trying to play College Hockey, so by no means is this intended to infer that they no longer pursue higher education. It is just a little something to get everyone thinking moving into the summer.
For all the graduates we worked with entering the 'real world', some great advice. Best of luck!

Enjoy!!!

"All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

"Most of what I really know about life, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but here in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup ~ they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all ~the whole world had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Kerry Huffman

www.platinumhockey.net

khuffman5@gmail.com







39 turning 40

"Let your mind rest easy,
Sleep well my friend.
It's only our bodies that betray us in the end..."
Bruce Springsteen/We Are Alive
Wrecking Ball

It is both a great time of year in hockey as well as kind of a sad time. It recently hit me that I am turning forty again. Another season is coming to an end and a lot of teams are involved in playoffs or play downs depending on where you are from. Soon we will look to next season which will be my fortieth involved in hockey in some capacity. Hard for me to believe. So in light of this 'milestone' I am allowing myself to ramble and muse a bit about the game. Thoughts from an old defenceman. I hope I don't offend anyone. Remember, this game is about fun right?

I am lucky that my job has me watching a lot of hockey. Sometimes during the year it feels like too much hockey but then I realize it is never too much.....
The game is so different and yet in some ways still the same after all these seasons.....It is predictable and unpredictable all at once.

The Detroit Red Wings are still good and the Leafs will probably miss playoffs again....
The Florida Panthers will get in and The Washington Capitals may not.....yes all the experts picked that at the start of the season.
I hope my son has as much fun playing squirt hockey next season as he did playing these last two years of mite. I know it will be a challenge to equal the funny memories.....
The Toronto Marlboro Midget team is really good (again) .....and yet one of the best 97 birth year teams in North America is from Scranton, PA.....(with a bunch of Russian kids on it)?
Don Cherry is in a fight with Brian Burke. Not about European Hockey Players but about Ontario Hockey Players not playing for the Leafs....???
I watched my son break his wrist in a practice. Heal. Get over his fear of getting hurt again, and play again. My wife is not over her fear yet though.... That hasn't changed. Moms don't change.....:)

Hockey is everywhere. This year my company has taken on player profiles for kids from states including Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia......
There are players from 40 different states on USA College Hockey rosters.....
All that and I had a parent tell me the other day they had spent $37,500.00 on hockey related expenses this year.  Forty years ago my Dad spent under $200.00 for the entire season, equipment and all.....!
In 1986 I played Jr. Hockey and got a $17.00 a week meal allowance. This week I heard about an Eastern Jr. League coach making $200,000 per season........
When I was a young player there was a team from Kitchener, Ontario sponsored by Bauer Hockey, we thought it was pretty cool.....now five of the elite youth programs in the States are sponsored by a Cable Company (Comcast), a Tire Company (Belle Tire), a Pizza Comany (Little Caesars), a Chocolate Company (Russell Stover) and a Ham Company (Honeybaked Ham).........

The game is fast and entertaining but at what cost? A the halfway point of the NHL season there were 548 man games lost to concussions.......forty years ago you only got your bell rung.
I was looking at hockey equipment in a store at the rink the other day and I picked up a pair of hockey pants that were lighter than some of my jeans.....
Forty years ago you were taught to move out of the goalies way so he could see a clean view of the shot. Today young players are taught to jump in front of everything and block every shot.....Ouch!

Forty years ago Bruce Springsteen was about to release his first album "Greetings from Asbury Park". This week he released "Wrecking Ball" his 17th studio album. (had to get a Bruce reference in!)

The game was awesome forty years ago and is still awesome today......just a little different.

Simply put it was still just another fantastic year being around the game.

So forty years from now I don't know but Detroit will probably still be good, the Leafs will be battling for a playoff spot, Moms will still be worried, hopefully concussions will not exist and the game will still be great!!!

(That and Bruce will have just released his 34th album.....:)

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.