The issue I'm trying to bring up here are cultural differences and hockey and how the changing demographics that are happening in many of our communities are playing out on our teams. We can take the PC route and pretend it isn't happening and dare not speak of it or there can be an intelligent discussion about it. Some of it is new hockey families not understanding the game and thinking scoring the goal rather than making a smart pass makes the kid a superior player when clearly it does not. There is the additional challenge of these kids being first generation where there is a language barrier with the parents. As a coach I take the responsibility to teach kids to play the game the right way (head-man the puck, find the open man, get back on defense) seriously. So it is hard on a number of levels here.
But sure take the small minded approach and delete the post.

Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm the only coach out there dealing with this. In my experience there are always players that are harder to reach than others. My point here is that there are cultural factors at play here that make it even more difficult. The kid sees the father who tells him in whatever language that the most important part of the game is scoring as the only authority he needs to listen to. Communication with the parent who speaks limited English gets nowhere.
I'm sure you have got this all figured out being the genius coach that you are.
In that case we can all go back to the EHF vs E9 discussions.

Next time kid doesn't pass, glue his ass to the bench. Simple. All cultures understand that riding the pine is bad.

Why doesn't anyone ever complain about communication gap with the occasional German kid? The Swedish kid? Finnish kid? Czech kid. But no, it's the Asian kid that leads you to run to your keyboard to have a "discussion" about it. Here it comes... The inevitable "make hockey great again" conversation.

It is definitely a cultural difference.

I have seen it at my sons prep school. They don't really interact with their teammates and do have trouble understanding the idea of collaboration and the nuances of the game. They also are extremely cutthroat with each other when it comes to academics.

If you look at the sports that they are most successful at, they tend to be individual sports or some real obscure sport.

I know this may sound racist. Not my intent but just an observation and opinion.

Yeah, and some kids whos dads are roofers have great slap shots, doctor's kids have great hands and the investment guys kids get all of the goals and the lawyer's kids argue every call.

The notion that an Asian kid can't be a team player is moronic. Believe it or not but they actually play hockey in Asia and other team sports. I know right. It's impossible but true. The issue sounds more like a parental one than a cultural one. The kid is listening to his dad who is doing something that I have seen white, black, brown and purple dads do and that's to tell his kid to score goals. You deal with that like any other coach would deal with it and you bench the kid.

As a minority I have sometimes wondered if people see my kid as a kid who plays hockey or as a minority kid who happens to play hockey and by some of the responses I've seen on here some parents feel it's the latter. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's racist. That word gets thrown around way too much and has lost its meaning but I will say its ignorant to generalize to such a degree.

Well said!

My kid plays with a white American kid that tries to go end to end on every possession. Why would anyone think his selfish play has anything to do with his culture or language? My kid played with a Czech kid who's probably the worst teammate anyone could ask for. Played for goals only, no assists, no defense. Is that a statement on Caucasians and his Eastern European parents? why is this even up for discussion? It has zero to do with PC, It's an opportunity to be a racial flamer.

I'll let you know the next (first time) I run into this issue with a German, Czech, Swedish, of Finish kid. That is not where the demographics are going and I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing. It just presents some challenges is my point. There have already been some good Asian players. The Du kid from Harvard and Yip from BU are the ones that come to mind. 10-15 years there are going to be a lot more so long as we are able to teach the game the right way.