Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 280 “Learning to Be a Pro” at a Young Age

Looking forward to it. The parent segment now brought to you by Stop It Goaltending U the app.

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Let's be a better pro.

Let's be a better pro. First thing, a great parent segment is just listening to the Eric Comrie interview this week. I know we've teased it a few times, but there was a piece in there on trusting your process that I clipped out as I was editing it and I said it sent it to both of my kids, Maddie and I still claim our former billet Cooper Black as part of the family. So I sent it to Cooper as well. I just said, this is so good.

You guys have to listen to this. I will clip it and put it in with the parent segment this week. So moms and dads, you can send it to your kids if you want. Because I know some of the younger kids don't have the patience to listen to the whole thing, but they should. Anyway, I did have something else prepared for this week, guys.

And as I was growing up in the game, I kept hearing people on broadcast talking about all these guys coming into the league and needing to learn to be pros. And I wondered what that meant. And I thought when you're a little bit younger, you you actually can learn some of these things yourself. Now there's levels to it that you can't as a minor hockey player. That grind of an 82 game schedule, the long travel, balancing family life with hockey.

That's pretty tough to learn that as a young kid, But you can get a start as a young goaltender, and parents, you can support this. Now, the first thing I wanna say is I'm not suggesting we take all the fun out of the game. We don't want young kids to be all business all the time. They're playing hockey to have fun. I for one hate hearing of minor hockey coaches telling kids on those fun away tournaments that they have to stay out of the hotel pool.

And mini sticks belong in the hotel, of course, as well, guys. But while there's some things you can do to teach a young goalie to become more professional, and I'll I'll put that in air quotes. Because to me, being professional as a young goalie is learning to be responsible for your equipment, for your time, for your training, for your game, those sorts of things. And it will come over time, but there's no reason you can't start at a young age. When I see top major junior goaltenders, the ones you just know are headed for a career in the game and and somebody who comes to mind for me, Woody, is Dylan Garand who's playing in the American League in the Ranger system as somebody who was professional from a young age.

They do all these things just as a matter of habit at every goalie skate even. They don't have a coach telling them what to do. So what what could you what could you do? You've heard me talk before about helping your young goalie learn to be responsible for packing their gear and knowing when it's time to leave for the rink and so on. You can check out some of those articles and parent segments.

I'll have them linked. By the way, just a reminder, every parent segment is published separately at ingoalmag.com. It's unlocked. You don't have to be a member and you can go just listen to this segment. And in there, will have links to these different articles and things I'm referring to today.

Second thing you can do, teach your kid that when they get to the rink, often coaches want you to be there early, an hour early at a really young age, but there isn't a whole lot of direction after that. And you see kids not even sure what to do with themselves. So simple things you can do, like lay out your gear in the locker room like you would see a pro do it in an NHL stall. And I know some minor hockey dressing rooms, you don't have the room. But if you do, hang the chesty, hang the pants, get everything set out just so before you even start getting ready.

And then you take that bag and you roll it up and you stick it underneath the bench. That's the way the pros do things. And you can start learning to do that from a young age. On practice days, tip number two, when you hit the ice, there's often a whole lot of unstructured time to begin as players are skating around, shooting pucks into the net, and too many goalies either just go straight into the net, although I think most of us tend to avoid it, or they just sit by the boards out at center ice just doing that lazy groin stretch. And I even see this in game warm ups.

Mom and dad, go find a couple of InGoal warm up articles and again, we'll link them. But maybe the Dustin Wolf or Sergei Bobrovsky skating warm ups and help your young goalie learn them for that unstructured time. I'm not saying you stand on the bench and walk them through it, but maybe you show them just one little piece of it and say, hey, why don't you try this today before practice? And eventually, they can learn something that will become their own routine much as you see older goaltenders doing now as soon as they hit the ice. Do you think there's a coach telling Dustin Wolf to do his skating warm up every day when he hits the ice?

That's his. He's probably done it for years and he's gonna continue to do it. Even a few minutes spent on edge work as others are just messing around on the ice will yield literally hours of extra practice in your minor hockey career. And then the last little tip, have some good mindset practices at home. You could check out Pete Fry's articles, for example, over at ingoalmag.com.

Also, last week's parent segment where we talked about not blaming others. Just having a little bit of time to focus on a few of those mental skills will help you have the mental approach of a pro. And as I mentioned, listen to Eric Comrie's interview today to learn a little bit about that as well. Like I said, an eight or a nine year old does not need to learn to do all of this, although some of them might like it. And don't get frustrated if it takes time for your kid to develop some of these habits.

But if you can develop a few of them, you're gonna have your young goalie well on their way to being a pro.