270 Parents: 10 tips to help you make this your best season ever as a Goalie Parent

Sorry. I didn't. Anyway, the the great tips to get ready for the season, Hutch.

Absolutely. September is upon us, and I thought it was a good idea actually to revisit an old article that I wrote and put up at ingoalmag.com. It is unlocked. So if anybody would like to go and review this, they certainly can. It's 10 tips for having your best season as a goalie parent.

I'm gonna do my best not to dig too too deeply into them because as I said, they're available over there on InGoal. But Woody and Daren, if you feel like hopping in on any of these, please feel free to. Number one, comes up in tryouts, but, also early in the season. Please make sure you're cheering for the other goalie on your team even in tryouts. There's that desire to maybe see your kid do better because somebody else doesn't do as well, but karma and the hockey gods, they're gonna get you.

So make sure you're cheering. It's a team sport. Your kid's, your kid's partner needs to be a buddy of his as well. So the second one, please don't make excuses when talking to your child or anybody else. It's not about that goal went in because your team plays bad d or they're not back checking or whatever.

We just straight up, if if the game is a tough one, the game's a tough one, and we have to be ready to deal with that. Don't compare your child to anybody else. One of the toughest things as a goalie parent is when we're looking at the other end of the ice and wondering why that kid has stronger defense or that kid has better opportunities or he's got gear that my kid doesn't have, all sorts of things. Let's just focus on helping your child enjoy the game the best you can, and I think you'll enjoy the game better as well. Find something good each game to celebrate.

I brought that one up many times on here before, but, when somebody comes up when your your son or daughter comes off the ice, comes out of the dressing room, have something that you saw them do on the ice that you really loved. Might be their attitude. It might be, their work ethic. It could be a save they made. Something good every game.

Goalies really don't like it when you say great game when they know it wasn't. So this year, don't be doing that. If, your son or daughter comes out and they've had a tough night, you know they're probably not gonna be happy. Saying great game is is not usually the way to cheer them up. Give them a hug.

Tell them you love them, and, tell them you understand it was a tough night. Number six, praise their effort, not the results. Don't get excited about their goals against average, the shutouts, the wins. I mean, they're all fun, but the most important thing I think is that they're out there having fun and working hard. So I like to spend a lot of time just talking about how hard they worked in practice, how hard they worked in the game, and making sure that you know that you love them for who they are and not the results on the ice.

As I said, praise working hard, but also take some time to praise them having fun out there because that's why we play the game. I I think it's really important that we focus on that as well, and don't forget that's why we're there. Maybe you've heard of that guy named Marc Andre Fleury. He enjoys the game. We enjoy watching him have fun playing the game.

I think we should encourage our children to be the same. Number eight, another theme that comes up in the parent segment a lot, help your children to become independent. Our goal is to raise happy, confident, independent kids, and we need to help them do that through their hockey. Let's not be the person that does everything for our kids, and all they have to do is to walk into the dressing room, put their gear on, and go out on the ice. There's a whole lifestyle around being a goaltender, and we need to help our children from the very youngest age learn to take, accountability for their game and their preparation for the game.

Number nine, I think we wanna support our children's mindset at home this season. Take some time when we're at home, helping them understand that there's only certain things they can control out there. Reinforce having that good attitude when they're out there. Help them understand that sometimes the practices aren't about goalies. Two on o drills, three on o drills.

Let's not reinforce that that sucks for them. Let's help them have the right attitude so that they can understand there's still something they can get out of every practice. So read some of the mindset articles over at InGoal from Pete Fry and all sorts of other people and learn how you can apply that at home with your kids. And then the last one, I think we all as parents need to model how we want our kids to grow up as goalies. If we have a tough mindset at the rink, if we're grumpy, if we're stressed, if we're nervous, I've used this theme a few times before as well.

If we treat every game as the same no matter what the level is, then our kids are gonna be able to do that as well. So they they're gonna reflect their attitude and how we're acting around the rink. So I think it's important that we be that calm, cool, collected, relaxed person, even if inside our stomachs are turning as they tend to do. So those are my 10 tips for having your best season ever as a goalie parent. Head over to ingoalmag.com and find that article and read through it and see what you think.

I would love to hear from you if you have any other tips for being a really good goalie parent and having a great year. You can hit us up at parents@ingoalmag.com. Let us know. Next weekend, we're gonna follow on from this theme. We had a question from a goalie parent come in asking how he can control his own anxiety in the rink.

It is really tough being a goalie parent, and we all feel anxious, from time to time, if not all the time. So we're gonna talk about that next week. And if you have any tips for parents who are feeling anxious at the rink, let me know those too. Maybe they'll get incorporated into next week's segment.

I was actually gonna ask you about how you approach the drive to the rink when if it's tryouts or whether you're in a bit of a rut or your child's in a bit of a rut. Do do you talk about the game? Do you talk about something else? Do you try and build them up? Curious how a parent should handle challenging times or stressful times.

Everybody's got their own answers, Daren. As I as I say all the time, I wanna preface, I'm not telling you how to be a parent here. Everybody's child is different, and you know your child better than I do, so you probably have your own approach. For us, I think we've always just tried to keep it light. You know, I told the story before when when Matty played his first junior a game as as a youngster.

I left him at the door of the rink and, again, teaching independence. I just parked the car out front and then he could walk in on his own. I said, somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously, just try and keep it in single digits, buddy. We try and keep everything as relaxed as we can. We don't hype it up.

We don't try and talk through the nervousness every now and then. Maybe he's got a few cues that he's using in a game he might mention to me, but, no. Generally, it's his game to play. If he wants to direct some conversation, he can. But for the most part, it's just keep it light and loose, I think.

When you're walking through that list, I couldn't help myself but think, how would Woody answer this?

Well, Woody's a volleyball dad. So and we had a volleyball player on the, well, we have one on the podcast this week.

I think that, it's great advice. I was actually thinking more in terms of as a, gear segment at the Hockey Shop, dad.

Good boy.

Maybe there's a few moments I could handle a little bit better and a little bit differently based on Hutch's advice. So Cam, if you're listening, my friend, and I know you do, I'm gonna I'm gonna digest all of these, and I'm gonna try and be better in the future because certainly there were a number, that check boxes on some of the feelings and mistakes I've made as both a volleyball parent, but also just in terms of how to approach things and put yourself in a in a better state of mind for a lot of things in life. I at the end of the day, we find a lot of ex goalies that succeed at a lot of big things in other avenues in the world, and I think it's because of their the mindset required to be a goalie. And there are some lessons that apply also to being a goalie parent that, you know, frankly, I still need to learn in my fifties.

The late great Gord Downey, the lonely end of the rink. Right? Goalie parents often find themselves at the lonely end of the rink because it's just stressful. And I don't know whether you pace, whether you keep to yourself, whether you force yourself to sit with the other parents, I I don't have any tried and true perfect answer for you. But it's it's challenging when you're a goalie parent, and that's just part of the position.

We'll talk a little bit more about it next week, but I think it's definitely an individual thing because even for me, it changes season to season, team to team, how I end up handling the situation personally. But at the end of the day, as I said, to close this out, I'm doing my best just to stay cool, calm, relaxed because that's what I want my son to feel. Although the nice thing is now that he's playing junior hockey and he's not living at home during the season, I can be as anxious and crazy as I want to be because he's not gonna see any of that anyway. So it's all good. I can flip out at home and go snap tastic.

Yeah. The only the only challenge for Hutch, though, is he has to watch this when he when he does go to the games and invites Woody. He has to remind him that we're sitting in the parent section because because Woody needs to keep

his might have happened once or twice.

Woody needs to keep his mouth shut about all the mistakes being made on the ice because the people Oh my god. That kid can't skate. Those parents might be sitting nearby. So

I'll finish off with this. Goalie parent, this goes back a number of years. The goalie himself, and I got this story secondhand, but from from the the the athlete. He was playing minor hockey, and they always laughed at how this guy's dad would stand along the glass and listen to the game on the radio. And they're like, that is so cool that he's listening on the radio all the time, but it was minor hockey.

And the kids finally figured out that the game wasn't on the radio anyway, but he always stood there with a transistor up to his ear. And they're wondering, what's what's he listening to? And, well, as it came out, there was no radio in the in the transistor radio that he was holding up. It was a flask, and that's what he was holding up. And that's how the dad was getting through the game.

And he just held it up to his ear like he was listening to the radio the whole game. I thought that was ingenious as a as a funny one, going going way back when you could do that kind of stuff in and around the rink. Sense Arena.