347 Parents: Are We Preparing Them?

PARENT PLAYBOOK — 347 parents – “Are We Preparing Them?”
Hey, welcome back to the Parent Playbook. I want to talk about something this week that I think about a lot — and I’m guessing if you’re a goalie parent, you’ve lived some version of this.
Your kid is splitting starts with another goalie and you don’t think it’s fair. Or maybe it’s not even close to equal and you know it’s not fair. Or there’s a goalie coach who shows up maybe once a month — if you’re lucky — and your kid is getting almost no position-specific attention. Or your kid took a head shot in practice and nobody said a word. Or practice starts and they go straight into a three-on-zero rush drill — no warm-up, no skating, nothing — and you’re in the stands thinking someone is going to get hurt. Or your kid gets pulled mid-game. No explanation, no conversation — just yanked — while a skater turns the puck over five times in a row and never misses a shift.
Here’s what I want to say first: you’re not wrong.
In minor hockey, two goalies should be getting equal starts. Not roughly equal. Equal. That’s not helicopter parenting, that’s basic fairness, and it’s actually what the development model calls for. Head shots to a goalie in practice are a real concern — these are kids, they’re in a vulnerable position, and the culture around protecting goalies still has a long way to go. Throwing a goalie into high-traffic drills with no warm-up is a legitimate safety issue and a performance issue. And being pulled from a game with no word from the coach while everyone else gets the benefit of the doubt? That’s a real thing, and it stings differently for a goalie than any other position because there’s nowhere to hide and no way to earn your way back in the same period.
These are legitimate issues and you have every right to care about them.
So I’m not here to tell you to calm down or stop advocating.
But I want to ask a different question today. And it’s one I think is worth sitting with.
Are we preparing them?
Because here’s the reality. Most of you listening to this — if I had to guess — somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re hoping your kid plays junior hockey one day. Maybe you haven’t said it out loud but it’s there. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a parent who believes in their kid.
But let’s talk honestly about what junior hockey actually looks like.
Ice time? The starter plays. If there are two goalies on the roster and one is clearly ahead, the other one might get the odd game but they could go weeks between starts. And increasingly — this is becoming more and more common — there are three goalies on a roster. Three. And many junior leagues are pay to play, which means your kid might be paying for the privilege of being number two. Or number three. It’s not equal. It’s not even close.
Goalie coaching? Some programs have a dedicated goalie coach. Some have one who comes in sparingly. Some get little to no goalie-specific time at all, and the position work falls to whoever happens to be on the ice that day. That’s not me being cynical — that is the reality at a huge number of junior programs.
Development? No. Coaches are coaching for their jobs and if they don’t think your kid is performing – they’ll just bring someone else in.
And here’s something Kevin has talked about on this show that I think really lands — it wasn’t that long ago that NHL organizations weren’t devoting real resources to supporting their goalies at the ECHL level. The ECHL. These are professional hockey players. They made it further than almost anyone who ever laced up skates. And they were, in a lot of ways, on their own. Figuring it out. Because the infrastructure just wasn’t there yet.
So if that’s true at the pro level — and it was — what do you think is waiting for your kid at 16 in their first junior experience?
Now here’s where it gets interesting to me.
I was listening to our feature interview this week with Mike Buckley — it’s a really good one — and something he said has been rattling around in my head. Mike talked about how as he got more experienced as a goalie coach, he actually started to pull back. Not because he stopped caring, but because he learned that sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is let a goalie sit in a problem. Design a drill so that they find the answer themselves instead of handing it to them. Create the conditions for them to figure it out.
Think about that. One of the most experienced goalie coaches out there — and experience taught him to get out of the way.
There’s a version of that I think applies to us as parents too.
Because there’s a difference between absence of support and intentional space to grow. When Mike steps back, it’s deliberate. It’s designed. It’s actually more sophisticated than just jumping in with an answer. But what the goalie has to do in that moment? Internally? They have to solve it. They have to get uncomfortable, stay in it, and find their way through.
Like a muscle, it needs to be trained.
So here’s the thing I keep coming back to. The battles we fight for our kids — the equal ice time, the safety concerns, the pulled-without-a-word moments, all of it — I understand every single one of them. But if we win every one of those battles, and our kid arrives at junior hockey having never had to navigate an unfair situation, having never had to perform without adequate support, having never had to dig into themselves and find something when the conditions weren’t right — What happens when the reality hits?
Because it will hit. Maybe it’s their first junior camp. Maybe it’s their first season. But that moment is coming, and the question isn’t if they’ll face it. The question is whether it’ll be the first time.
We want the best for our kids. Of course we do. Advocating for them isn’t wrong — some of these things genuinely need to be addressed, and you should speak up. But there’s a version of advocacy that prepares them for the road ahead, and a version that accidentally protects them from the very experiences that would have built their resilience.
The best goalie coaches in the world are learning to create space, not fill it.
Maybe the best goalie parents can take a page from that.
Think about it this week. Let me know your thoughts parents@ingoalmag.com