Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 278

Awesome. Here we go. Here's the big risk I'm taking this week.

We should get your card, and and you should give it up, and we'll give it back if if you you towed the line.

Okay. I have a feeling I'm gonna be in trouble. We'll we'll see how it goes here. It's something we all do. Goalies do it.

Parents do it. Oh my heavens. If you've ever ridden in a car with Kevin Woodley, he does it. We need to stop blaming our defense after tough games. And Woody knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Look, after a tough goal or a difficult game, all of us goalies are prone to complaining, and as parents, we do it too. Oh, if Johnny, if only you had some defense, it would have been fine today. Or why don't our forwards ever back check? Or if it's Woody, sure, eight got by me tonight, but come on, can I get a little bit of help back here?

You were watching me at the Pro Am?

Look. It's only human nature. We wanna minimize the pain of what we've been through, and we know that when someone looks at the score, they make assumptions about the goaltending and our kids and that there's no clear sight analytics at your kid's u 13 game to put it all into context. So we blame. We know the other parents and the other fans in the rink love to point out when our goalie has been scored on, and often we even hear them let out of some sort of frustration or groan when the puck goes by our kid, ignorant of the fact that five other kids out on the ice have made a mistake that led to the shot on goal in the first place.

So whether it's under our breath as parents or in the car ride home talking to our kid or maybe even out loud in the rink when we really get frustrated, we find other people to blame. Why didn't the d just lift some sticks in front? If only that kid could skate backwards, the forward wouldn't have had a clear path to the net or or whatever. It's only natural. And, as I said, as parents, we want our kids to be happy and we hate to see them hurting.

So some of us, I've done it before, point out others failures to make it clear to our kid that they're not alone in making mistakes out there. But I'm here to tell you today, I am risking the union card. We need to not do that or we need to at least do it less. Yes. There will be times, especially when our kids are younger, that you need to explain to them that they're not the only one out there who is beaten on a goal.

our goal is to raise an independent young goaltender. Because when they go off to play junior hockey in another city or college or whatever, they're not gonna have you there to walk them through every difficult performance.

But remember, our goal is to raise an independent young goaltender. Because when they go off to play junior hockey in another city or college or whatever, they're not gonna have you there to walk them through every difficult performance. So we want them to understand the concept that it takes several mistakes before the shot on goal even happens and that they're part of a team. But that's sort of a a mental skill we want to give them and then we want them to be able to stand on their own. The old golden rule, remember?

You hate hearing people blame the goalie, so we can't be setting the wrong example by blaming others as well. We don't want our child to learn the concept of blaming others. Now we also need to own our part of the responsibility because we don't want to raise a young goalie that walks away from the rink after every game feeling confident like nothing is his or her fault because they had no support out there, and that doesn't equip them to make progress in the game. Like anything in life, we need to be able to self evaluate and to understand where we can get better and be able to guide ourselves in taking those steps to improve. So look, as moms and dads, just imagine a coworker who thinks everything else is somebody else's fault.

That's not a person you want to work with. Making up for teammates as well, guys, it's our job description. Like, it's what we're expected to do. If the players in front of you were perfect, you wouldn't have anything to do. There would be no shots on goal.

So your job quite simply is to come up with the save when your teammates make a mistake. Yes. Sometimes they make more than you'd like them to do. I'd also like to point out that it's a hard reality that at the higher levels of the game, the team general manager is not gonna look at his team giving up a bunch of goals over a long period of time and think, boy, my goaltending's great. We need to find some defense.

Frankly, most of them are going to tell you straight up that they don't know anything about goaltending, they know when too many pucks are going in. Now, I kind of like it to that old adage that, when a team is struggling, you can't change the team, so you change the coach. Well, next level of that at higher levels in the game is that you can't find a bunch of defensemen but you might be able to find a goalie you can perform and make up for that. Just like there have been a lot of great coaches fired even though they're doing a good job and the team's not keeping up, goalies at higher levels get changed because the team just needs more. So look, I'm not trying to be harsh on kids here and I'm certainly not suggesting that we treat young kids this way.

much as Woody always says tension is the enemy of goaltending, referring to your physical state, I think this is just as true with your mental game and learning to accept the situation.

I'm simply pointing out that's the reality of what you're preparing your child for in the long run. So if we can help them get to the point where they first understand that they're not alone out there, where goals do happen with everybody being a part of it, but then accept that they still have a role to play on almost all goals, they're gonna grow stronger. They're gonna take more ownership of the game, and they will become better goaltenders. Also, I believe that much as Woody always says tension is the enemy of goaltending, referring to your physical state, I think this is just as true with your mental game and learning to accept the situation. Players make mistakes.

Perhaps you're on a weaker team. And then be able to go out there and play within that situation that you've accepted, that takes away a lot of that mental tension and lets you relax as a goaltender. Sounds a bit odd, but simply knowing, okay, I'm not expecting a lot of help tonight. I know I'm playing a good team. It is what it is.

Get to work and go have fun. Kinda talked about that with the three on three as we were saying before. If you understand what you're up against, it makes it a lot easier. If we set up a culture as parents though of blame, then our goalie is gonna go out on the ice in a negative state. Instead of going out and playing and having fun, they're gonna look at every situation that happens around them and they're gonna get upset because we've trained them to blame.

They're gonna see the missed assignments. They're gonna see the turnovers, and they're gonna be blaming people before the shot even comes. That's not putting you in a position to be successful. So if they do skate out on the ice, understanding mistakes happen more on some teams than others as I said, then they can play a lot more freely with a lot less tension mentally, and I think they're gonna be more successful. So after the next game, please don't say, Sally, you were great out there.

If only you had some help. Instead, try something like, I'm really proud of how hard you worked out there and how you battled under some tough circumstances. There were a lot of grade a chances, so I know it was a tough game. I believe there's an important difference between those two scenarios I just gave. In one case, you're shifting blame and responsibility, whereas in the other one, you're just acknowledging that it was tough and it's an objective statement that there were a lot of grade a chances, but you're not pinning them on anybody.

We're here, as I said, to make up for the mistakes that others make. That is never gonna change, and, your kid's gonna get blamed by others sadly. But if we can help avoid that short term fix of blaming others, then I think in the long run, we're gonna help our goalies make more saves and enjoy the game more.

Is that a long way to say that Woody and I have to suck it up?

Well, so does Hutch. Like, as a goalie parent, I do it too.

I feel attacked.

Yeah. No. Like, we all do it, and I've done it many times. You see your kid and he just like, he's got that long face. They come out of the rink.

They're feeling sad. They've given up more goals than they like to give up in a game, and you just wanna say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if this hadn't happened and this hadn't happened and this hadn't happened and you're trying to make them feel good, but I really don't think that helps in the grand scheme of things.

Flip it. Like, think about it if you were the other players just saying, oh, the goalie come up with a save. Like, we don't love it when everybody else just blames the goalie. So we're kinda doing the same thing when we just blame everyone else.

Yeah. And I and I felt that way. I've been thinking about this for for many years and I've been wanting to say this on the show at some point. But then as I was writing this out, that idea of the mental tension that it creates by having kind of a blame culture really came to me. And and I think that's is in many ways a bigger part of the whole thing.

Well, you guys haven't seen the special ops pickles play on Thursday night here. There's gonna be some shared blame. I don't care what you say, Hutch, but I I understand. I understand your direction.

You're accepting that it's shared blame and you're moving on. Right?

Well, and if you go into those games knowing that you're facing backdoor two on ones all night, it's fun to come up with some of those saves. I I hate like, I I'm not taking away your goalie union card on this one, Hutch. I just lived through this. Yeah. Right?

Like, the Canucks Autism Network charity program this weekend is a total mixed bag of skill levels. You've got NHL players and some guys who think they should be NHL players out there Support against players that, you know, just are, like, at the lowest divisions of senior hockey. And as a goalie, it's really tough to play behind, but I don't go in there thinking that my performance matters. I'm trying my best, although this is tough for me because I have such a massive ego, but to check it at the door because I'm just out there to have fun. It doesn't matter if I give up two or give up seven.

And I did give up seven this weekend in one of the games. But you know what? I was out there for a different reason for a different cause. And even in the one where I gave up seven, you know, did I make a save off a backdoor pass from an NHL or that was a good play? Yeah.

And I took joy in that, and I took joy in my teammates, and I took joy in the camaraderie, and in the fact we're out out there raising money for a good cause. If I had gone in there with the mindset of don't embarrass yourself or win or whatever, I would have not enjoyed it. Instead, I gave up seven and had a smile on my face from ear to ear. And so I do think this it's not the perfect example. I'm not trying to, you know, develop a career and getting hung out to dry, you know, as as a young goaltender hoping to move up the ranks.

But the way it affected my mindset and my tension, I wasn't out there worried about how I looked. I just wanted to go out and have fun and make some saves.

The tricky part as a parent is you hear it, and you know other people are pointing the finger at your kid. And you've gotta be the bigger person and move beyond that because it is for your kids in your kid's best interest that you do that.

I think that's the important lesson here. Even if we know the other things are true, constantly pointing that out to our kids does nothing but give them an excuse or an out.

Yeah. And sets them up mentally for failure. I think in the long run, it might it might be a quick fix. It might make those some of those tears go away on the on the way home, but, I think in the long run, you're not helping them.

Is there an age where you start adopting that?

I a 100% believe that, it's a continuous process. I also believe that every child is different. Like anything that we do, we have to be reminded of things constantly. So, yeah, there's there's times with an 18 year old kid, you can still need to remind them that they're not the only one out there making mistakes. They need to learn that, but but how you do that and how you shift it away from blame and so on is is what you need to do.

And we all all our kids progress differently. So that's a short Hutch sit on the fence non answer for you.

You worked for me at 51.

You can give him his card back. See? I like it.

Oh, you guys are

You can

give him his card back.

I didn't hear I was waiting for the knock at the door, but I didn't hear it. So the goalie union police by the way, you said there's no secret society that keeps track of who has the cards or not. I'm starting one. Well,

if anybody else would like to revoke my card, you can just, hit me up parents at InGoalmag.com. Love hearing from you. Questions you want us to cover here on the show or just comments you wanna make about one of the segments, let me know. I'd love to