Parents: Whose Dream is it Anyway?

Alright. Somewhere in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or possibly Ontario, David Hutchison is, working his way around Western Canada, and he stops by with our Stop It Goaltending U the app parent segment. Before we get to Hutch, what's happening over at Stop It Goaltending?

How about twenty five years of NHL goalie coaching experience at your fingertips? I like that. That's what oh, that sounds good to me. That's what they put into the Stop It Goaltending U. You wanna tap into goal goalie parenting expertise that helped Joey Daccord reach the NHL?

That's what you get with a subscription to Stop It Goaltending U, the app. All that knowledge from Brian Daccord has been an NHL goalie coach, scout, and director, as well as the insights and expertise from his staff at Stop It, which last year celebrated twenty five years as one of the world's top goalie schools and includes teachers who who work and are working right up to the NCAA and some in the National Hockey League and scouting capacities. All delivered to you on your phone or tablet in easy to digest chunks, including five short daily primers each week, weekly style analysis and breakdown videos, and drills that you can take onto the ice with your team and coach. Plus, you get an InGoal premium subscription included. So check it out now at the App Store or Google Play Store and get the best of both worlds with a subscription to Stop It Goaltending U, the app, and a subscription that comes with it to InGoal Magazine premium.

Was Hutch able to give you a heads up of what he's going to talk about? Because he won't share that stuff with me.

Well, you know, he trusts me, Darren. He trusts me. That's what makes sense. So this week's parent segment is about not getting too caught up in the identity, too tied up into the identity, into the game as parents and goal and as goal. And so some important lessons from Hutch on that in this week's parents.

That's That's why he wouldn't share it with me because I wouldn't understand that. Hutch, explain.

One of the most common questions in youth hockey is also one of the most uncomfortable. Whose dream is this? And the honest answer, most of the time, is that it lives on both sides of the relationship. The parent side. As parents, we don't just support our kids' goaltending journeys, we organize our lives around them.

The schedules, the travel, the community. The pride in watching them chase something hard. Over time, it's easy for the supportive parent to quietly become a core part of who we are. And that's not wrong. But there's a moment where support can drift into something heavier when their success feels like validation for you, when their struggles get to feel too personal for you, and when stepping back would feel like losing a piece of yourself.

A useful check-in isn't Am I too invested? It's If this ended tomorrow, what would I need help letting go of? That question isn't about guilt. It's about awareness. Now on the child's side, we have to worry about one role becoming the whole person.

For kids, goaltending can become a powerful identity. It's how they're known. It's where they feel competent. It's where they receive praise and attention, which are so important to them. But kids, of course, are still building who they are as a person.

They aren't just goaltenders. They're students. They're friends, siblings, creators, thinkers, leaders. There's so much more to being a child than just being a goaltender. When one identity crowds out the others, and let's be honest, it often does, even in a positive way, it creates a risk.

Not just a burnout, but fragility. Because if being a goalie becomes the only place they feel valued, then those bad games hit them a lot harder. It feels a lot more personal. And change can be a real threat to them. So I actually think these two things overlap on each other.

Parents and kids can both become over invested in the same identity for different reasons. Parents may cling to the journey because it provides meaning and connection. And of course we're doing it because we love our kids. Kids may cling to it because it provides certainty and approval. And of course, it's fun.

Neither is wrong, but we need to balance them. We have to work on both sides. The solution, of course, isn't to care less. It's actively cultivating other parts of the identity on both sides. For parents, that might mean reinvest parts of yourself that existed before you were in the rink all the time.

Protect some of those relationships and interests that have nothing to do with hockey. And letting your child see that your world is bigger than their performance. That's not to put them down. That's to make sure that they understand that when things don't go well for them, that's okay. We don't want them feeling that this is everything to you and that when things don't go well for them, they're letting you down.

You know, for the kids, it means we need to celebrate effort and character, not just the outcomes. Because effort and character can carry over into any role in their life. We need to really support, even encourage interests that are outside the crease. And we need to make it clear, repeatedly, that their value doesn't change on hard days. Indeed, that our value we see in them is not about being a goaltender, that we love them for everything else about them.

Just importantly, it means we have to practice letting go even while we're still involved. Let go of the control. So it's theirs. Let go ownership of the outcomes. Let go of the idea that this path has to look a certain way.

the healthiest goalie journeys are the ones where parents stay engaged without being too entangled, where kids feel supported without being defined, where both sides understand that this chapter matters but it isn't the whole story. The goal isn't to protect the dream at all costs, it's to protect the people living inside it.

And that's something we definitely get tied up in. Parents all the time talking in the rink to each other about what's Johnny doing, what's Susie doing, making sure we're following just the right path. Every child can have their own path inside and outside the rink. Now bringing it all back together, the healthiest goalie journeys are the ones where parents stay engaged without being too entangled, where kids feel supported without being defined, where both sides understand that this chapter matters but it isn't the whole story. The goal isn't to protect the dream at all costs, it's to protect the people living inside it.

And when both parents and kids are allowed to be more than just goalie and goalie parent, the game actually becomes safer, healthier, and more enjoyable for everyone.