Sad, but true, but I'll disagree that it is not in other sports. Maybe a bit more in hockey, but pay attention to club soccer, even basketball or baseball and lacrosse at a little older age.

"But Little Johnny is on the first line as a sophomore. He's definitely going D1."

News flash, toots. If he was any good, he would be at a private school already or a hockey academy, not a D2 public school.

Some truth to that but most hockey academies in New England are just as bad as youth hockey. Mount, SKS, SSM, sure but that's about it. Go watch a game on LB between some of our academies and real teams from around the US and you will understand what I mean. Also, since ISL schools don't permit PG's it's still fairly common for a kid to come out of a public after sophomore or junior year and repeat the year at school. Just because the kid is only playing D-II public hockey doesn't mean the kid can't play.

Football!! just as bad, we just dont see it in our feed

It’s truly baffling. We had a kid whose father was an asst coach on our team. He was the worst. The father thought he should be out there for each pk and pp. The asst and head got into some heavy disagreements and the asst left with his kid at the end of the season. He thought he could take the team with him to a new team but the new team didn’t want his kid and no one wanted to go to the new team anyway. The kid wound up on a terrible team where he belongs but his father still thinks the kid got screwed over and is so great. This father played d1 hockey around here. How does he not see that the kid is just bad?

A lot of people think they are good looking too.....

I can't stand these people. They're constantly talking about other teams, other places they think their kid should be. Meanwhile their kid does nothing during games.

Delusion equals Dollars to all those skills and skating coaches. So they have to feed the cash machines. Some of those parents are actually being told something other than the truth. hahahaha say it aint so....

skill and skating coaches can tell mom and dad how much better their bender is getting, but is that coach watching game film, does their bender have any hockey IQ, grit, true love of the game... most time the answer is no, but the non-game coaches will tell you... "hey, johnny looked really good today on the ice. We really like having him in our non-contact, high cone skills class"

Thanks for the dough joe!!

I'm also tired of seeing the same kids on IG at the same skills places who use them in their videos. Make it stop, show me someone different. I guess I should unfollow.

and of course the parents who pay for outside skills get loads of advice on how great the kid is doing.

I'm impressed by the kids who actually do a good job in the games or even at practice.

I call them practice players. They fly around the ice, look great running through the drills, make tape to tape passes every time but once the game starts and there are actually 5 others on the ice playing D, they disappear.

Yes! That's great that your kid knows all these skills and gets the puck in the net every time at skills but he doesn't do this at the games.

You are spot on and unfortunately my kid is one of those. Pretty good skill, good skater but throw a puck out there 5 on 5.......stinks. It stinks saying this about my own kid, but at least I know the reality and not living in a dream world.

I laughed, and I laughed. Haha!

First, having multiple kids that have played various club sports over the years, it's not restricted to just hockey. I've witnessed parents blow up at baseball fields and lax games over playing time, batting orders, defensive alignments, etc. I guess for some, the spending of the money on the sport makes them feel entitled.

Second, most parents, myself included, aren't equipped to really judge our kids or any other player on the ice. Okay, some stick out like a sore thumb like a coaches kid playing D but gets beat every single shift, but for most of the kids, parents equate being good to points, especially early in their careers. If a kid moves well without the puck, finds open ice in the offensive zone but no one passes the puck to him, most parents don't see what the kid did, they just know he doesn't score so he must not be very good. My favorite are the parents that bribe their kids for goals, nothing like watching little Johnny try and go end to end every shift but never get back on D. Great he scored two goals but the other team netted four while your kid wasn't bothering to play D.

Third, leagues have become so watered down that parents are often shielded from what is Elite vs. Good vs. Average, this includes parents of those elite players. I went to a friends sons game a number of years ago between to very highly ranked Bantam teams. Believe it or not, there were actually four or five prep coaches in attendance, one I know well enough to talk to. They were all there to see the same five players, everyone else was just a decent player. My friend was so excited about his kid being scouted that I didn't have the heart to tell him that he wasn't one of the five. (FYI, kid is playing USPHL premier just about to celebrate his 20th, dad still waiting for someone to recognize his kid's elite talent.)

Lastly, social media plays an important role as your kids get older but I don't understand why parents create an IG account for their pre-teen with the possible exception of trying to get him some recognition to move onto a higher end program. I don't personally know of any player that was recruited to a new team because he blew up on IG but I could certainly be wrong. Hit 14 and older, coaches will often ask for game film and YouTube isn't a bad way to share film if you don't know how to use Hudl. Other forms of social media, unless you are trying to build a kid up for a NIL deal, should probably be avoided. Many coaches will check out a kids social media profile at some point fairly early in the recruiting process, your son/daughter gets tagged in the wrong post and it can cost them everything.

At the end of the day, focus on what's best for your own player & don't get caught up in FOMO.

This is spot on. I’ll is a couple more things. When they’re younger and just starting out, often times this family is the only one in the ‘friend group’ playing hockey. This suddenly makes them the ‘hockey expert’ of their group. The kid is the only one who ‘can skate’ suddenly becomes a superstar in their minds pretty quickly. Then they get onto a team and are provided a special designation: ‘1’ ‘AAA’ ‘Elite’ ‘Platinum’ and even for the bottom players ‘Gold’ ‘AA4’ ‘Elite Development’ so it feeds into the delusion as opposed to being placed on PeeWee F or being cut, and even then they’ll find a way to spin it and have someone else who wants their cash to put a better label on them.

The best one is a guy whose kid is on a let's say 30th ranked team in ma mhr. he was an alternate for a 20th ranked team. He's not a good alternate and couldn't make that team. the dad reached out to me to ask if I would ask my kid's coach if there were any openings on our team. our team is top 3 in ma mhr. say what? like if the 20th team didn't want your kid, wouldn't you go to the 21, 22, 23, etc. whatever team is near you going down?

There are good players on bad teams and bad players on good teams. Unless you just drink MYHR kool aid that is.

Correct. This kid is a bad player on a bad team and wants to go all the way up - delusional. MHR is a gauge to how good a team is directionally and over the course of a season is more and more accurate. Sorry your bender is on a bad team and you refuse to admit it

As a parent of older kids this perspective is the absolute definition of what's wrong with youth hockey in MA. Guy probably wears an MYHR ranking t-shirt to bed. Please print some business cards and know that everyone is very impressed. Top 3 MYHR is basically a D1 feeder. You've got it all figured out. Please remember the rest of us on you're ride to glory. Lol.

No self awareness. This thread is about you. Grade A douche. Hilarious 😂

I get that people love their kids and want their kids to be successful at something, but I'm not sure why hockey brings out such idiocy in people. I see parents who have this need to put up pictures from every weekend after games, one in particular always feels the need to say, and he scored a goal! Some parents just post a picture of the kid getting a goal. Perhaps it has something to do with not being good at hockey themselves as a kid or being rejected by a hockey player.

Very simply.

They don’t know any better.

I’ve learned that the differences can sometimes be subtle so maybe that’s why some parents don’t know any better. The speed, skating ability, compete level, hockey sense. You have to get your child around truly elite level players at clinics or other tryouts (summer teams, even if you don’t intend to follow through) to be able to gauge where your player is compared to others. Could my kid hang at elite level? Absolutely. Would they be an impact player? No. Better to keep them at a level where they can develop confidence and skills without worrying about trying to keep up with the truly elite players. They need to dominate (and I mean dominate) the level they are at. Those who have this figured out are the kids that end up surpassing some of those supposed elite players later on because they were able to actually develop skills vs. just hanging on to an elite team.

there is a real easy solution to this. Just don't follow the kid's social media account (or the parents for that matter). but you live for being upset about someone else life...

It's actually just cringeworthy. I'm not upset about their life.

Listen to yourselves. You are posting about children. get a life. Pay, Drive and watch. It is not about you.

No people are talking about the parents...not the children.

Cause they made "an elite team"

LOL

Maybe it’s not about thinking their kid is good and more about growth. The more a kid plays the better they will be in most cases. Just because your kid is elite today, doesn't mean he'll be elite tomorrow. Many of the kids that peak faster at a younger age eventually plateau when they get older.

The flipside to that question, why can’t a parent whose kid was good yesterday, not let go when they're no longer good tomorrow. They're the ones who are arguing with coaches and directors.

I can see where it would be difficult to have a kid who was once really good end up being not good. It's like if you have a kid who got all A's and B's in school and suddenly in 9th grade they become a C student. It would be frustrating.