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081 - Conversation with a Goalie Dad with Brian Munday
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This week Connor sits down with his dad talking about what it's like being a goalie dad. We also discuss the changes in the game and the position over the last few decades, goalie evaluations, and other topics goalie parents typically face.
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Transcript
Introduction to DIY Goalie Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the DIY Goalie Podcast, where hosts and goalie coaches Nathan Park and Connor Munday share their insights on how to become ah better goalie.
00:00:18
Speaker
Goalies, how's it going? and Welcome back to the DIY Goalie Podcast presented by it True North Goaltending.
Meet Brian Munday: Father and Coach
00:00:25
Speaker
um Back in the driver's seat here today, Nathan on assignment, and we have our first ever in-studio guest today. Pleased to welcome to the podcast my father, my coach, the guy who's a pain in my butt sometimes, my dad, Brian Monday. How you doing today, Dad? I'm good. Happy to be here. Perfect.
00:00:43
Speaker
um So we're kind of bringing in a little bit of a unique perspective today.
Role of Goalie Parents
00:00:48
Speaker
um Mostly just want to be talking about the role of a goalie parent. You have a little bit of experience in that topic, coaching me for the last however many years. So we're going to jump into that today. But first, um I tell this story a lot, and I feel like I tell it wrong most of the time about your kind of playing career in hockey.
Brian's Early Hockey Influences
00:01:07
Speaker
You're from Ontario, to Toronto-ish area. um So i I've probably been making up a lot of lies about you. So I just want to get the story straight once and for all, just kind of your playing career, how you got into hockey, how you got into goaltending.
00:01:22
Speaker
Okay. So, oh gosh, this goes back a really, really long time. But i my first recollection is watching Hockey Night in Canada, I think as a lot of kids did, um Saturday night, because that was the only time that games were on TV back at the time.
00:01:44
Speaker
And every Saturday night, the the Leafs would be on. This would have been early Right.
First Ice Experience at Howie Meeker Hockey School
00:01:51
Speaker
And Jacques Plante, a famous goalie for the Montreal Canadiens. I've heard of that guy. Was playing for the Leafs at the time.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I really liked how he played. And I think like a lot of goalie kids, um the mask, because they were the form-fitting masks at the time.
00:02:13
Speaker
And the the blocker and the pads. and And I was really captivated by that. So I wanted to play goal... but From the first time I can remember.
00:02:25
Speaker
Now, unlike you, unlike a lot of kids, I never played um organized minor hockey. I played a lot in the basement at our home.
00:02:36
Speaker
um But I really came to it quite late. I was probably 11, 12 years old when I started playing. Probably closer 11. Right.
00:02:49
Speaker
And my very, very first experience in actually playing on ice was at a two-week camp. wasn't a goalie camp, but it was a two-week camp called Howie Meeker Hockey School. okay And Howie Meeker back in the 70s was a really popular...
00:03:10
Speaker
broadcaster, former player with the Leafs, former rookie of the year.
From Basement to Organized Hockey
00:03:14
Speaker
And between the first and second period, his first intermission, he would come on and there would be a little segment that he would do of kind of what happened during the period.
00:03:27
Speaker
And then i usually would teach, not so much the goalies, but the players kind of what happened. What to do, how to play. And i was, again, captivated by that.
00:03:41
Speaker
And i get really dating myself. So you'd go to the the local newsstand and the hockey news, like an actual newspaper. would would be there and I would pick that up and I saw a little coupon advertisement there, How We Make Our Hockey School, two week camp, not that far from our place and convinced my mom and dad, grandma and grandpa to to send that to me, which I think back on that being on ice for two weeks
00:04:16
Speaker
All that, having never really skated before, having never had the pads on before, none of that, was incredibly naive. ah um and But that's what I did. Incredibly homesick at the time.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I did that. And... a very intense learning experience skating playing goal kind the whole bit okay and but from there then the school I went to we had a our our team and I played right through the end of high school and after that it was Like everybody does beer league yeah and pickup games and such. And the famous famous saying, all roads lead to beer league at the end of day. Yeah, so absolutely. um
00:05:04
Speaker
So yeah so that's that's more so the part that I want to dive into here for a second.
Making the School Hockey Team
00:05:08
Speaker
But we we still have your Cooper pads hanging out yeah underneath the the this this the stairs is here. And I remember...
00:05:16
Speaker
you know playing in the hallway and i mean we had the the walls can show you all the puck marks and all that much to my wife's chagrin um but yeah no it was it was the schooling part that i that i really wanted to dive into because there because it was saint andrews that yeah in ontario that that you played for there and so just kind of how did all that come about um and just kind of lay that out for us from there sure so saint andrews college in aurora ontario and It is where I went to school.
00:05:48
Speaker
um Perhaps not as well known then as a hockey place as it is now. um But...
00:06:01
Speaker
I tried out for the team my first year, didn't make it. And then after that, just kept trying out, trying out. And and and after that, i I made whatever age group team i was i was trying out for at the time.
00:06:17
Speaker
um The great thing about that was, again, unlike minor hockey, where you pretty much... start evaluations or tryouts in September and you go all the way through March. We really never started at that time playing until November when football season was over. Football season was over, then we transitioned into playing withey playing hockey.
00:06:47
Speaker
And so we went probably from early November through to end of march But what we were doing is we would have practices Monday, Tuesday, game Wednesday, practice Thursday, Friday, game Saturday.
00:07:06
Speaker
So while the season wasn't as long as perhaps yours was in in minor hockey, um I was on the ice six days a week for an hour, hour and a half.
00:07:19
Speaker
And that was a good experience. um Enjoyed it. Again, the year... I guess was the team one year ahead of me won the provincial championships and after that the team's gone on or the school at that level has gone on to apparently do quite well for itself and ah few a few of the kids who subsequently went to school not while I was there but have turned it into NHL careers.
00:07:54
Speaker
Would that be that wouldn't be you sport? the league that you guys played in? or was No. At the time,
Evolution of Goalie Techniques
00:08:04
Speaker
it was... I'm going to test my memory here, but it was something like the Canadian Independent School Athletic Association, something like that.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think CIS would be this. Yeah, i don't I don't know that's what it was, and I'm not sure what it is now, because what little I follow of it seems like they play a different teams nowadays. I still can't figure it out half the time. I still can't differentiate between NCAA and ACHA, and it all boils together. Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
yeah So it's interesting because like a lot of guests that we talk to, you know, they don't really have, mean, I guess to an extent, they never really had dedicated goalie coaches before. I mean, they had like you had the Howie Meeker school and and and all that kind of there, but nothing really dedicated as opposed to what myself and Nathan do with with would True North goaltending.
00:08:57
Speaker
Nice to see the same that, you know, because my schedule with junior hockey was similar practice virtually every day of the week. We'll play Friday, Saturday. Sometimes you'd have the odd...
00:09:08
Speaker
wednesday game as well as we're yeah joined by another special guest here um who has made her appearance twice now on the podcast so um but no that's that's interesting so you kind of got a little bit of a unique perspective on that especially for somebody who hasn't really played until their early teens rather so yeah yeah um yeah a little bit later than than others now i never had a goalie coach right And so I remember, you know, I'd have the coach of the team um try to give me a bit of advice every now and then, which, you know, I think back on it was is was ridiculous, but well-meaning at the time.
00:09:54
Speaker
And, you know, I think maybe once over five or six years, you know, they brought out a coach to specifically train goalies but that's one time over five or six years most the time what I was learning was hey, you get a shot and you figure out how to stop it. You get another shot. Here's how you stop.
00:10:22
Speaker
And then a lot of advice from other people who thought they knew how to play the position and what I should be doing. Nothing's nothing's changed nothing's changed on that front either.
00:10:33
Speaker
um Okay, so jumping into that then. Um, so you coach my brother and my team for yeah the entirety of our hockey careers.
00:10:44
Speaker
Um, so you kind of have that unique ish perspective with being ah coach on the team. As well as being a goalie parent.
Balancing Coaching and Parenting
00:10:55
Speaker
um So I want to dive into the kind of the goalie parent aspect of that first.
00:11:00
Speaker
um Just kind of your... and don't want to call it a journey, but just kind of your thought process... coaching both more being on as a goalie parent for both my brother and I right up from novice to bantam midget whatever um how hard or easy was it to mean like I guess it was easy enough to be involved because you were the coach on the teams for the most part But just like, how hard was it to, I guess, separate yourself between being a goalie versus being goalie dad, goalie parent, and try not to, for lack a better term, impose your will on this.
00:11:41
Speaker
Well, I guess the important thing to remember, which I didn't realize at the time, was that when I stopped playing regularly,
00:11:52
Speaker
um you know it would have been early late eight s early nineties And, you know, the way the position was played at that point versus the way it's played now or when you started playing hockey, very, very, very different.
00:12:15
Speaker
um You know, I guess it probably started changing maybe late 80s, early 90s, but I was still yeah thinking about... early 1970s, me watching Jacques Plante play and and how I played and and a lot of the goalies that that I grew up you know watching at the time.
00:12:34
Speaker
And so there's such a fundamental difference in how the position is played that one of the challenges I had when I started coaching you is, you know, I was taught stand up, move out, um so a leg kick out throw a leg out, um you know, just do the windmill save.
00:13:01
Speaker
um You know, that was fundamentally it.
00:13:07
Speaker
Double pad stacking. I remember very clearly I had a coach um who, you know, that was one of the drills we did is sliding over and double stacking our pads.
00:13:23
Speaker
It just, you wouldn't, you So I knew about goaltending when I started to coach you and started to coach your brother. But I didn't know all of the new techniques and all of the new philosophy around, you know, goaltending and the butterfly and, you know, reverse VH and all that sort of stuff. So I could probably...
00:13:51
Speaker
again when you were younger kind of very much do the the basic sort of stuff with you right and probably some of the um maybe hopefully helping with kind of the mental side of the game and and and being ready for that but um i i was learning as you were and and very much out of my element with a lot of the new or at the time the new approach to goaltending right and fair enough um a
00:14:25
Speaker
i i guess i guess i'll throw this question at you as well because you know i worked with jamie mccaig dave ratch and dustin schwartz uh notable goaltending coaches that i had throughout my tenure as as as as a goalie playing and And there's no disrespect to any goalie parents out there.
00:14:46
Speaker
um But, you know, we'll have goalie dads, goalie parents come up and be like, i remember you yeah this, this, and that. It's like, no, this is how I used to teach it. This is how somebody else said or this, this, and that.
00:15:03
Speaker
And I say this with love. Were you that goalie parent that kind of...
Advice for Goalie Parents
00:15:11
Speaker
Not necessarily would be combative with my coaches.
00:15:16
Speaker
But just kind of say, well, I don't agree with this because this is the way that I played. Or was it one of those ones? Because like you said, like you were learning the position, or relearning the position as we were playing. But just kind of, was there any clash, I guess?
00:15:35
Speaker
and i No, I don't mean that... literally i guess i know you could um no there wasn't and i think for a couple of reasons um one is that because i was coaching you um i was there involved and i i knew like the head coach um if i was the goalie coach um And so we had, for the most part, had a good rapport, I think, with everyone that that I was working with.
00:16:13
Speaker
um I think it probably would have been different. I'm sure it would have been different if I was in the stands and not on the bench with you. Sure, yeah. It would have been different if you had a goalie coach parent um there helping you out and I was sitting in the stands um I make no promises that I wouldn't have been well no you should do this here's how you do things
00:16:45
Speaker
um And no, we never had to deal with that, never worried about that. but And I'm not saying any goalie parent or any goalie parent should do that.
00:17:00
Speaker
um But I can say very easily it would have been very tempting to go and have... you know either say to you after a practice or a game well you know or to uh to go to the the coach um or a goalie coach if i was bench and say well you know you should do this drill or do this or or whatever never had to do it um if I was a goalie coach, I wouldn't have appreciated it.
00:17:29
Speaker
But, yeah, I never had to deal with it. But i I could see myself being really tempted to want to do that. no You know what? At least you're honest about it. And I can appreciate it. Nathan and I have talked about it in the pod before. it like when if if or when emerson decides to play hockey and she decides to be a goalie um you know i would try and separate myself as best as i can um you know from you know from that it's just a
00:18:01
Speaker
particularly in today's day and age I mean I see it a lot more than you do just with how involved parents at all levels but goalie parents in particular want to be because they want what's best for their kid right and I don't think that's changed since Sean and I have played um i hope um but just again as much as we as coaches appreciate the input and We also just want you to step off. you know back you know Back off, let us do our thing. We're the ones that are professionals to an extent. mean like Everybody has knowledge of goaltending. If you listen to Oilers fans talk about...
00:18:43
Speaker
Stuart Skinner and Calvert Pickett half the time. um But like we're the ones that are trained in teaching a position and know providing the best possible knowledge because we would have insights better than what the most did the general goalie parent would. Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
So, so let me, um, interrupt and tell a story. So when I was playing again, i never had a goalie coach. Um, what I learned from goaltending was having 500 shots on me in a practice right and kind of whatever would come my way during a game.
00:19:25
Speaker
Um, And coming to it later, while the players and the kids I was playing with had probably played...
00:19:38
Speaker
six, seven years before
Handling Conflicting Advice
00:19:41
Speaker
i even put on a pair of skates, you know, so I was always trying to play catch up and that can be difficult to do or a difficult mindset.
00:19:52
Speaker
Um, you know, when, you know, say the goalie is supposed to be the best skater on the team. I certainly was not. Um, the goalie is supposed to be the one, the backbone of the team and, you know, don't rely on them.
00:20:03
Speaker
And, you know, I, I'm sure I was the one that they were going, gosh, can you make a save please? right um
00:20:15
Speaker
Thankfully, I was probably blissfully ignorant of of all of that at the time and enjoyed playing. And that was that was the most important thing. But I you know very clearly remember...
00:20:28
Speaker
um you know, practices, um you know, I'd have, and games, you know, probably five or six parents and players each telling me what I should do. And there it was all different. you know You know, there'd be parents in the stand,
00:20:48
Speaker
telling my parents, oh, you should do this, or how about this, or, you know, he needs to move out more, stay back in his net more, stay up, stay go down, kind of whatever it And I'd have, you know players do the same thing.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah. And so what do you do in situations where you've got all these people giving you all this advice in during the game and in practices, parents, players, and sometimes coaches?
00:21:21
Speaker
um I think you learn to develop a really thick skin about it, which, again, I think has served well in in and outside of hockey.
00:21:34
Speaker
And you just go and figure out what works for you. So those sorts of things, I think, are just good life lessons, regardless of hockey. It's just kind of shut the noise out and yeah and just figure out what you need to to work on in the absence of, you know... know people who are trained to be goalie coaches and play the position and know the position. So that's what I had to do. you know lately we always We always say you know that the best goalie coaches out there are the goalies themselves.
00:22:10
Speaker
you know There's so much that I can do, so much that Nathan can do, Schwartzy, Muka, Jamie and Dave, all those guys, everybody out there that has a goaltendous goal. tenni school There's only so much that that that we can do.
00:22:23
Speaker
But really, at the end of the day, it's the goaltender, the athlete that um puts in the work puts in the effort and what they what they put into it is what they're going to get out of it and you know we've i've had conversations with goalies before where hey i think yeah you're not doing this right or whatever the situation right and they can tell me where to go on how to get there or they can say like yeah no your coach are actually wrong because of xyz and
00:22:56
Speaker
right so that's So we always we always say it's at the best goalie coaches out there are the goalies themselves. um And especially in today's day and age as well, you were saying earlier, just good life lessons in general, what we find you know that the world has kind of been...
00:23:12
Speaker
i say Again, I say this carefully. A little softer than however long ago. um Moving on from that very, very quickly. um i wanted to talk about kind of the evaluation and trial process.
00:23:27
Speaker
Because I was scrolling through Facebook here and saw a few posts about goalies and tryouts and harrowing journeys with that and such. When we we've had that similar journey itself.
00:23:42
Speaker
I guess just wanted to talk about your... perspective i guess when it came to dealing with tryouts and evaluations with both my brother and i um i'd like to tell the story a lot between the of the fallout between us and milwood's hockey um no disrespect to them or anything um but i but just just what was what was your perspective what was your thought on dealing with tryouts and
00:24:14
Speaker
and how to, I guess for a lack of better term, not be biased um or try and put the biasness aside, if you will, when it came to going through tryouts with both with both my brother and I. Because you've been on both sides of it. You've been a volunteer evaluator, and you've been that goalie parent that has sat through the goalie-specific skates and the just the regular the regular game skates in general.
00:24:42
Speaker
um Well, I guess the first thing is to say I am biased. so It maybe took me a while to realize that, but I'm biased. um There's just no way getting around that, um that when it comes to evaluations and tryouts, and as much as I say, hey, i'm I'm going to look at what happens on the ice that's I'm going look on the ice that's it
00:25:16
Speaker
I can't help but be a little, maybe a lot biased when it comes to that. Sure. Okay, so let's just admit that and and get that out there up front. Sure, yep.
00:25:28
Speaker
um
00:25:32
Speaker
well sorry to interrupt so this let me let me throw it this way then because there was a we we we tell the story to each other a lot uh throughout the time where there was a particular time especially when i was with millwood's hockey again no disrespect um where the i was i think it was my second year adam was sitting tier three four i'm not sure what it what it was but It wasn't bottom of the barrel.
00:26:00
Speaker
It wasn't top, it wasn't bottom of the barrel. I think it was about easily middle of the pack. And we got a really good team. And then transition to first year Pee Wee, where we were bottom of the barrel, people who never play, can't skate for the first time.
00:26:15
Speaker
So i guess I guess I want to zero in on that a little bit more. And then we can zero in a little bit more on what happened in my midget career. Right. Well... It's kind of just um I knew how I dealt with it, and I've relayed that on the podcast before, but just kind of for you and for Mum in particular, just kind of what was your thought process, kind of just how did you take the situation? Because you can talk for a little bit longer. and Like, again, one of the Facebook posts that I was reading where one of the where kid was playing AAA hockey for his team and then gets cut this year and then gets sent back to to to minor hockey tier one, tier two. two
00:26:56
Speaker
so clearly a difference there big difference there and so just they they the goalie and the family's not really taking it all that well and best of luck to them with just kind of the rest of the season yeah just kind of how would you how did you navigate that from that transition from second year adam to first year pewey and kind of what would be your advice in general if you're going from a tier or a level where you were playing where you should be and playing at a high level and then kind of getting Yeah, I'm not sure I'm necessarily the best one to offer advice on this because I'm not sure navigated it as well as perhaps could have or should have. But just but just what was your perspective? Okay.
00:27:39
Speaker
I guess the first thing is, and again, i don't want to get into any particular situations or yeah and if any personal situations with anything whatsoever.
00:27:51
Speaker
But ah the first one that you talked about, um where you were kind of mid-level Adam and then... kind of the lowest level peewee team. um Also have to bear in mind that during that um ah evaluation process, you had come down with pneumonia. That's right, yeah. So you had missed a number of evaluation skates.
00:28:19
Speaker
So there really wasn't anything to do but try to make a guess about where might best fit in. um And sometimes that can happen that way. Your brother, um he had um he had some health issues during evaluation. I forget what it was. I want to say it was...
00:28:43
Speaker
his arm or show but seen something along that. And, you know, at that time they said, well, where do you, we haven't seen you skate a whole lot, so where do we think you belong?
00:28:56
Speaker
And he got tiered maybe a little bit higher than what we would have expected. um it's It's really a bit of a crapshoot. And um my take on evaluations is, particularly for goalies, there's no good, real good evaluation process. sure There just isn't.
Critique of Goalie Evaluations
00:29:21
Speaker
um And what I mean by that in a couple of different ways is that, you know, if you've got...
00:29:32
Speaker
you know, volunteer parents doing the evaluation, do they know anything about goaltending? They may know a little bit. They may have been a coach somewhere along the line, and they're doing the best they can.
00:29:47
Speaker
But if you don't know what to look for, yeah it's it's going to be a bit of a crapshoot. Right.
00:29:58
Speaker
yeah Even then, if you get you somebody like yourself and you're doing an evaluation where you've seen the kids play before, again, it can also be a bit of a ah built-in bias because you just know that...
00:30:18
Speaker
um This person generally should be at tier one. This one should be at tier two and and so on. So it's, and again, I'm not saying anybody goes into it with a, particularly with a bias, but it's there.
00:30:34
Speaker
Right. since I'm on a roll here. The other thing that I find with evaluations in minor hockey is a lot of them are built on um scrimmages yeah or on just kind of particular drills.
00:30:57
Speaker
And it's the scrimmages that I always struggle with because you know The players can go out and make things happen.
00:31:09
Speaker
The goalie has to wait for things to happen to them. I mean, if you're playing on a team where you get three shots in a scrimmage, what does that prove?
00:31:20
Speaker
Or you give up 10 goals on 118 shots. What does that prove? So a goalie...
00:31:32
Speaker
is really only as good as or has to rely on what comes to them and that can be difficult to make a really sound um assessment about uh about where they should be or or might fit in um anyway i'll stop there and let you ask your next question sure um I guess I would agree and disagree with you on that because I went through evaluations recently about a month ago.
00:32:03
Speaker
um And so I had found and kind of particularly how our rubric was set out, particularly with the scrimmages, as was can this goalie stop the puck? Can they track the puck? How's their rebound control?
00:32:15
Speaker
And so so you are right to an extent, you know, talking about the reactionary part of it. And I think that's what we delve more into, but it was more so the technical aspect of it as well. So are they tracking the puck? Are they making their saves in front of them?
00:32:29
Speaker
Are they controlling their rebounds, x y Z, etc.? Yeah. and And I think a rubric like that is is good, but it also relies on the goalie being able to demonstrate the skills in that rubric.
00:32:42
Speaker
I mean, if you have a situation, it's it's a bit of a fanciful one, but you know if in the scrimmage all you get are breakaways on you, you know it's very tough to evaluate um you know a can you do a reverse VH or something like that.
00:33:02
Speaker
Sure. Okay. Jumping from that later into my career where we're dealing with my midget year. And so first year, I think it was the first year.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yes, it was first year. I think it was like tier eight, tier seven, you know, and around there. And I think if I recall correctly, it was about a three month battle with the organization that we were dealing with to get me from where i was to where i should be in like tier five six whatever um and i'veve i've told this story on the pod as well numerous times and as well as a few other times um just kind of how how much of a
00:33:48
Speaker
in your favor word crap shoot it was in in in dealing with that and so just i know my thoughts and i relayed my thoughts and my experience with it um on pod multiple times this but what was your kind of perspective and how you were handling things when it came to dealing with that kind of three month i think think was three month battle Yeah.
00:34:15
Speaker
Again, it's, I don't want to get into any personalities or any individual situations, but, and i'm I'm not sure handled it.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, we probably did handle it as well as we could. It wasn't a good, it wasn't a, it was a difficult time around here. Yeah. And I think like hand anything else, whether it's goaltending or hockey or life, the big wide world out there,
00:34:50
Speaker
um a lot of it is i think really around managing expectations and you know if you go through an evaluation process goalie or player where you are yeah skating with the the top group and then the bottom group and then the middle group and then the here and you're all over the place um it can create a false expectation about kind of where you fit into things.
00:35:29
Speaker
And a similar sort of thing is if you've got most kids starting in evaluations at ah at a bottom level, if you can use that term, and then they slowly get funneled up until kind of a natural place where they belong.
00:35:48
Speaker
That's all about managing expectations. and Everybody feels, okay, we're we're moving up, we're improving, rather than you start here and then you're down here. um Your situation...
00:36:00
Speaker
um I get a couple of observations about that time and I'm sure lots has changed since then. um But you know they did a an initial evaluation skate and yes, i I'm biased and I was part of that.
00:36:21
Speaker
But when I saw kind of where they then started Tier Kids, it had no bearing, or to me anyways, it had no bearing on kind of that first initial skate.
00:36:38
Speaker
um The other thing, and again, I talk about managing expectations, was said, oh, you're going to get an opportunity to um play, you know, face some difficult shots.
00:36:52
Speaker
Well, really what that meant was you're going to play with a group of kids who haven't played before and the difficult shots are going to be because, not because they can shoot hard, but because the defense can't stand up and skate backwards. yeah um And that was all around, again, managing expectations and and where things were,
00:37:19
Speaker
just just how things were starting to kind of fall apart. yeah And I guess it's probably important for me to say at this point that it's not ah about, your mom and I never felt it was about Trying to get you up to a level so you could play um for the Oil Kings or the Oilers or anything like that.
00:37:42
Speaker
But I think there's... um very much, at least we certainly had a mindset that, you know, you when you start playing, you play with a group of kids and you you understand that, you know, kids are going to kind of not want to play hockey next season and some will move up and some will move on and and so on and so forth.
00:38:06
Speaker
But there's there's probably a bit of a kind of an expectation that you know kind of the group of kids that you started playing hockey with that you'll kind of move along move along with them some will get bigger really quick and and and just go on and do great things some won't but there was always kind of a thought that hey you were playing with you know this group of kids, and you're friends with them, just kind of like school, you know kind of friends with them, and you know next year you'd be playing still playing with some of them. yeah and that
00:38:46
Speaker
particularly that year, that didn't wasn't happening. It was um kind seemed like, probably wasn't reality, but it seemed like...
00:38:57
Speaker
you know A lot of the kids that you had played with the previous couple of years were all kind of being tiered upwards. And they were going to say, hey, we're going to keep you down.
00:39:11
Speaker
And again, I don't think there was i don't want to imply that there was any conscious effort to do that. yeah But when hockey is supposed to be fun and you want to play with your friends...
00:39:22
Speaker
um and your friends have all moved on and kind of feels like you've um you have to repeat a grade it's not but yeah no it's that's probably the best analogy i can i can what it feels like sometimes
00:39:38
Speaker
so what would be if you did have any
Advocating for Your Child in Sports
00:39:42
Speaker
advice for goalie pants that were kind of going through something like that what would it be okay um
00:39:51
Speaker
I guess a couple of thoughts there. One is generally whether it's player or goalie. And another one is specifically for goalie. so the So the general comment I have is in whatever you do,
00:40:12
Speaker
um you know, um advocate for your child, um speak for them, work with them.
00:40:24
Speaker
But you have to be respectful in doing that. And you have to understand that um the the league, the organizers, they've heard it all before.
00:40:37
Speaker
They've had You're the 23rd parent who's come that's said your child hasn't been evaluated correctly. yeah um the and And if they've done it for a number of years, you're the 23rd one that year, not, no and if they've done it for five years, no, you're now 115. advocate for
00:41:03
Speaker
so advocate for your child Absolutely be respectful. Be forceful. Push the issue sometimes if it needs to be forced.
00:41:16
Speaker
um But that doesn't absolve your kid or yourself from any responsibility. It's not all their fault. It's also, hey, that that's an indication you have to get work hard and get better. Right.
00:41:37
Speaker
The other comment I want to make that specifically around goalie parents, what I've seen is that
00:41:45
Speaker
It seems like goalie parent or the number of goalies in a league um varies from one year to the next.
00:41:56
Speaker
So there are some years where a league is desperate for goalies. Hey, we need more goalies. yeah We've got pads here. do you want to try them on? Do you want to be interested in being a goalie?
00:42:08
Speaker
And then there are other years where you've got a bunch of goalies and a league in minor hockey has to... kind of send them off to another league so they can play or say hey how would you like to play defense because we've got too many goalies yeah and in those situations um you know you can end up being tiered um differently than players are just because it's a function of how many goalies there are so if you're you're in a league that where there's eight tiers as an example and there's eight goalies
00:42:42
Speaker
you might be the eighth goalie and you're on the bottom tier But if there are 16 goalies, you might still be number eight, and now you're on tier four.
00:42:54
Speaker
um That's just a function of numbers, and it seems to go in waves. Probably, you know, here in Edmonton, you know, if the Oilers have a really good goalie or there's you really behind them, probably a lot of kids who want to play goal all of a sudden.
00:43:14
Speaker
other years when the goalies are are getting bad press um maybe a lot of kids say no i don't want to play in that position we had a we had a guest recently kurt ralco who's somebody that we deal with um i shouldn't say deal with somebody that we work with um with casey north and he was saying that yeah this this is the city of connor mcdavids and because connor mcdavid's the guy that all hockey players and edmonton in edmonton and the surrounding area you look up to um I want to kind of backtrack just a
Challenges of 90s Goalie Parenting
00:43:45
Speaker
second there. We are running a little bit out of time, but I just i' want to backtrack this for a second because I don't think we talked about it a whole lot.
00:43:50
Speaker
Being a first-time goalie parent. you know Nowadays with social media, the more goalie schools that we have out there and such, lot of great resources out there in terms of navigating that and the drills and and this, this, and that.
00:44:04
Speaker
For you, and when I started playing, the the rise in goalie coaches was starting to get there. The rise in goaltending resources, not necessarily with Hockey Alberta or Hockey Canada, um but just there wasn't as much support.
00:44:24
Speaker
The rise in goalie coaches, you know, wasn't really... there yet as it is now as well as the resources with hockey alberta hockey canada and such which still aren't there for the most part um but just navigating that without really social media you you and mom had moved out here from ontario to to alberta in 94 um so there wasn't really i guess for lack of better term help uh if you will in terms of kind of navigating that so just how did you guys navigate that for as best as you can i think it would probably be different when sean played versus when when i played because you kind of had already been through that once before yeah so just to correct you we came out of 97 oh sorry that's okay that um
00:45:09
Speaker
again because i never played minor hockey that whole side of things was was very new to me um when you decided you wanted to play um But I think you just what take it as it comes.
00:45:27
Speaker
um Enjoy it, because now that you're not playing, and I haven't been into a rink for a while, you kind of miss it. So um you know enjoy it while it's there. Again, whatever tier anyone ends up playing at.
00:45:41
Speaker
And ae What I would suggest is that, yes, there's resources out there, but probably the best resource is, again, talking to your kid, making sure they're having fun first and foremost, that they're they're enjoying it.
00:46:00
Speaker
um and that you know you talk to goalie coach if they're there and and with the goalie coach or the coach kind of reinforce kind of what they're trying to do rather than be at odds with with what the coach is trying to or the goalie coach is trying to is trying to do there um it's
00:46:27
Speaker
Again, we talked about this earlier. it's There's going to be lots of people offering advice on kind of what to do. um And I think just for the most part,
00:46:40
Speaker
um develop a thick skin and and be confident that what you need to do is right. I think really the most important thing that a goalie parent can do is help your kid with their their mental space.
00:47:00
Speaker
Meaning that you know if they get shellacked in a game, to keep them positive and they want to go back the next game. Or if they've they're on a good team and they're winning all the time or they're they're the very small goals against average, to not let them get too far ahead of themselves and think that they are the next Jacques Plante the next...
00:47:24
Speaker
Bernie Pront was another favorite goalie of mine back in the 70s. So I think it's very important to help your kid keep that even keel so they don't get too
00:47:39
Speaker
ah too much of a big head when they're doing well and that they want to give up the sport altogether when they're that are on a bad team or have had a bad game or two.
00:47:50
Speaker
There are more questions popping up in my head, but we'll leave those for another time we'll have to come back for a part two at this at some point but i guess just kind of any just final thoughts any final advice for goalies goalie parents out there uh before we sign off for today um i'm not sure about advice but uh kind of earlier on i did mention um Howie Meager Hockey School. I think some of his videos are up on YouTube. So perhaps when you finish watching this podcast, um go take a look at that.
00:48:22
Speaker
Take a look at Jock Plot playing for the Leafs or Bernie Pront playing for the Flyers in the 70s.
00:48:30
Speaker
That's what I grew up with. And if you want to have a whole lot of fun, find an old set of Cooper goalie pads, the horsehair ones like I have. and hold those up and hold up today's yeah bigger but much lighter pads just to see what what we were dealing with back then. yeah you You could probably compare the Cooper pads to one of these. i mean like Mind you, these are older sets but compared to what's out there now, but you could probably even see the difference between both pads. Those are phenomenally, phenomenally lighter
00:49:05
Speaker
than the because those are are quite tall beds because you're taller than i am um but uh my small cooper pads um um they are much uh much heavier i might have to pull those out and put them up on the wall here so maybe one uh time for a podcast what we can do is we can get the scale down here we can just weigh them and and we'll have some fun with that fair enough we'll uh have to reach out to a goalie partner of mine, Jacob Musselman, who's with United Cycle. Maybe we can close down United Cycle and go off for a little bit and have some fun there. Have some fun.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, this has been, I mean, like we we had done an episode similar to this, which had never aired, but I'm glad that we were able to come back and kind of rehash this. and just kind of tell some stories here which is um a lot of fun we'll have to bring you back at some point just further few further things to talk about but uh just really appreciate you coming on today you're very welcome happy to do it well goalies that'll do it for another episode of the diy goalie podcast presented by true north goaltending you guys can follow us on your favorite social media platforms all at true north goaltending except on instagram because we like to be different that one is
00:50:17
Speaker
excuse me, Y-E-G, goalie coach. If you're watching us on the YouTube side of things, make sure you hit that share button and hit that subscribe button, the like button, um anything there with a button, press it.
00:50:29
Speaker
The further we can push this out and help the ah algorithm to push this out to more goalies because the more goalies that we're able to bring together, the better. um Again, if you are new, so if you are a new viewer, hit the subscribe button.
00:50:40
Speaker
If you are listening on your favorite podcasting platforms, whether that be Apple, iHeart, Spotify, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you are a returning listener, thank you. make sure you hit that share button. Again, the more goalies that we can bring together. ah If you are a new listener, make sure hit that follow button. We have a bunch of different followers all over the world here. I think we've had like we've had some in...
00:51:00
Speaker
uh think jamaica actually was one oh wow was a was a random place that uh that we got uh some viewership out of um states canada for sure i think uh uh i think venezuela was in the conversation actually at one point so uh just some random spots that we've uh sounds good and i do want to put shout out for uh um my nephew your cousin nick uh says he really enjoys the podcast so hey nick hey nick how you doing On top of that, you guys can go check us out, truenorthgoaltending.com if you do happen to be in the Edmonton area. I think as when this podcast goes out, which should be October 28th, will be entering into our one-year anniversary.
00:51:40
Speaker
we will be entering into our one year anniversary at the facilities studio in niscu so we do our ah we are offering some lowered rates when it comes to uh when it comes to our facility session so if you guys want to come check us out you can book a session true northgoaltending.com for that week or if you just want to come and visit us throughout the year we're open all year round except for mostly holidays You can go check us out there, truenotesgoaltending.com. You can follow myself on Instagram at MondayGC.
00:52:07
Speaker
On behalf of myself, Nathan Park, and Brian Monday, this has been the True North Goal. This has been a DIY goalie podcast presented by True North Goaltending. Make some saves goalies. We'll see you guys next time. Take care.