Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players (and their Parents)
The Coaches Site is an incredible resource for hockey coaches, but can also be helpful to parents. In Aaron Wilbur‘s podcast series Glass and Out, he interviews many of the top NHL, college and junior coaches from North America and Europe. What makes this podcast so helpful is not specifically the women’s hockey content, but the general hockey development information. Specifically, how to help your hockey player become the best they can be, regardless of gender. In every episode there is a nugget on how coaches are trying to develop and motivate players at all levels of hockey. Hearing the strategies and complexity involved in planning and executing on improving player performance is powerful. Understanding how coaches think from the other side of the bench can help a young player or parent appreciate their role even more.
An episode that stands out is the conversation with Hall of Famer Cammi Granato about her hockey journey and how much the women’s game has changed over the past 20+ years.
While separate from the podcast, The Coaches Site subscription website is chock full of information for hockey players at any level. As the parent of a defenseman, there are several TCS videos from which I have shown my daughter. Without the help of her team coaches she has been working to incorporate these teachings into her game.
This past weekend, my 14 year old daughter and I flew to Rochester, New York to attend the Premier Ice Prospects girls showcase event. It was the first time my daughter has attended this type of weekend and also her first time playing with girls. Since the whole experience was new to us, I thought I write up some of my learnings for other parents who are also being initiated into the women’s college recruiting process.
During the weekend there were 3 practices and 4 controlled scrimmages (since games are not yet allowed in NY) all run by Division III coaches since there is still a blackout period for Division I coaches, and thus not allowed to attend. From what I could tell, there were girls from at least 12 different clubs with the biggest presence from the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite and the local Selects Academy.
Here is what I learned…
1. College Coaches are Experts at Evaluating Players
I was impressed at how efficiently the coaches were able to get a read on my daughter’s strengths and weaknesses. From the spectator side of things, on several occasion I saw one of the coaches giving feedback to my daughter. When I asked her about what the coaches said, it was pretty consistent with the direction she has previously heard from this past season. Thus, it became clear to me that over the course of a weekend-long evaluation it would be pretty hard to fool a college coach about what you can and can’t do on the ice.
2. It’s Hard to Compare Players at these Events
One of my hopes for the weekend was to learn how good a hockey player my daughter is. However, this wasn’t as easy as I thought. Given that the age of high school players in attendance ranged from 14 to 18 years old, in many ways it became a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Especially since I didn’t have a list of names and ages to go with the other participants. For example, there was one girl who I thought was the best defensemen during the weekend. When I asked my daughter about her, she told me she was 18 years old. So it was hard to really compare my daughter to someone almost 4 years older than her. Next time, I would try to get direct feedback from the coaches to see how she rates for her age group.
3. There was a big standard deviation between players
Even though it was hard for me compare my daughter to her direct peer group, I was still able to see big differences between the top players and the weaker players. Almost all the players had some key strength that was on display, but as I watched more and more shifts it became clearer which girls were able to consistently make good plays and decisions. On the other hand, several struggled create offense or keep the puck out of their net on regular basis.
4. The Importance of U16 vs U19
I got to speak to some coaches at the event, and l didn’t realize the somewhat greater importance on the U16 years over the U19 years with respect to the recruiting process. Since the Division I conversations starts at the end of a player’s sophomore year they are being watch heavily during their U16 years and in many cases have already committed by the time they play U19.
5. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!
I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming the girls at the hockey showcase were. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first real time my daughter was playing with other girls. Unlike the boys teams that she has been playing on recently, the positive attitude and sincere effort to create relationships with other players was very noticeable. While still competitive on the ice during play, it was very nice to see the difference in wanting to create personal bonds with other players in between the on-ice activities.
Hopefully these learnings are helpful to other new-to-the process parents like me. I look forward to attending more of these events and accelerate up the learning curve as a hockey parent.
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players (and their Parents)
Connor Carrick is a current New Jersey Devil defenseman who has some of the best guests from both inside and outside of hockey. Just as the podcast name describes, Connor explores a variety of topics of interest to him to help expand his knowledge and learn from the people who are the best in their field. In addition, Connor has spoken with several amazing female sports role models from whom any parent or player can learn from like Kendall Coyne-Schofield, Jayna Hefford and Marnie McBean. Connor is consistently seeking out topics related to life skills that he and his listeners can develop through hockey for their life after hockey. I especially enjoy the conversations around the mental side of the game. Give it a listen.
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players (and their Parents)
Kudos to multi-sport athlete Finley Frechette for creating this show about the Cornell Women’s Ice Hockey team. Starting a podcast is no simple task, especially when you have school and hockey to deal with already. What I love about this podcast is that Finley explores what life is like as a current women’s college hockey player both on and off the ice and around campus. By listening to the shows, you get a good insight into living in Ithaca as a student-athlete.
My favorite episode was when Finley interviewed one of the team’s super-fans, Casandra Moisanu, who is also a member of the band. Cassandra talks about her dedication to the Big Red team both at home and at away games. The first episode of the new hockey season just released this week, with the new players being introduced and sharing a little about themselves. Best of luck to Finley and her teammates for the upcoming season (hopefully it will start soon).
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players and their Parents
Let’s Go Hockey Podcast
Coach Pete Kamman and Coach Danny Heath have some excellent guests from all over the hockey world. The show has a strong focus on hockey development and gleaning insights from each interview. At the end of each episode they share their 3 Stars – key takeaways from their guest. Let’s Go provides parents, players and coaches positive guidance and motivation for their hockey journey. Past female guests include Lyndsey Fry and Gold Medal goalie Maddie Roonie. Hopefully, they will continue to add more guests to talk about women’s hockey. My favorite episode so far (although not specific to girl’s/women’s) hockey was with Marty Pavelich, 4-time Stanley Cup winner from the late 40’ and early 50’s, telling some amazing stories. Worth subscribing to this podcast. LET’S Gooooooo!
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players and their Parents
Lyndsey Fry Hockey Audio Experience Podcast
As someone who has a daughter playing hockey in a non-traditional hockey market, it is great to hear about Lyndsey Fry’s journey from Arizona to Harvard to the U.S. Olympic team. In addition, she is now committed to developing the next generation of girl hockey players on the west coast by leading the Arizona Kachina’s hockey program as well as her travelling hockey camps to underserved girl hockey markets. Her conversations with former teammates and other coaches dedicated to developing women’s hockey in non-traditional markets is really great to listen for someone like me.
The episodes of Lyndsey’s experience in travelling at a young age to Colorado to play youth hockey and then process of making the 2014 Olympic team are great listens. I don’t usually listen to the podcasts more than once, but there are a couple of her shows that are on that short list of repeat plays. Candidly, Lindsey’s podcast would be higher on this list if she just published more of them :).
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players and their Parents
From The Point is a relatively new podcast focused on all things women’s hockey. Hockey coach Bob Deraney and Hank Morse started the show in late 2019 and have continued new shows into the 2020-21 season. Bob’s previous experience as head coach of the Providence Friars women’s ice hockey team and parent of two daughters brings a unique combination of insights to the shows. What I have particularly enjoyed are the episodes dedicated to youth hockey and what it takes to make it to college hockey. They also talk to prep hockey coaches and former players. Specifically, the Alyssa Gagliardi episodes provides some excellent insight on her path from North Carolina to prep school to Cornell University. Both hosts are based in the Boston area, so their discussion and guests have a strong New England theme (prep, college & NWHL).
Top 10 Podcasts for Girl Hockey Players and their Parents
The Hockey Training podcast is one of the audio programs I have been listening to the longest. This podcast (plus their website, YouTube videos and training programs) provides hockey-specific training knowledge and exercises to help you “dominate on the ice”. While most of the content is not gender-specific, at the appropriate times Coach Dan Garner will make sure to point out differences based on a scientific and anatomical basis. In addition he will provide female-specific training guidance for relevant exercises. I know that one of the local NorCalAAA girls teams has used their program for off-ice training and they have been quite pleased with the results. Overall, Coach Garner consistently pumps out quality episodes. I would recommend searching past episodes for specific areas to work on (e.g. speed, strength and endurance).
Finding podcasts for youth hockey players isn’t very hard. But finding ones focused on girls hockey isn’t as easy. About 2 ½ years ago I went down the hockey podcast rabbit hole. Specifically seeking out the best podcasts for hockey parents of youth players. At that time, I was able to find the archive of a weekly radio show from Ottawa, Ontario called Grassroots: The Minor Hockey Show with Gregg Kennedy and Richard Bercuson. The archive went back almost three years and I binged every episode over a two week period. It was amazing how I could compare what I was seeing at the local clubs where my kids played and how it differed from what they were recommending on the show.
Since then I have listened to hundreds of additional youth hockey podcast episodes from a variety of different sources in the hopes of finding an insight or pattern that might help my kids develop into better players. One of the biggest topics that has been consistently reinforced is the focus on Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) and taking a break from hockey during the offseason. As a result even now that my kids are teenagers, they continue to play additional sports beyond hockey (soccer, lacrosse, pickleball, baseball etc.) and have taken a minimum of 4 weeks off each year during the spring/summer time period.
Since I started listening, the number of hockey-related pods have exploded best exemplified by the popularity of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast (Note: Not recommended for kids given the amount of R-Rated content). However, most hockey podcasts are not very relevant for parents of a female youth hockey player. The following is a list of the most helpful podcasts I subscribe to that continue to educate and motivate me as the parent of a 14-year-old girl hockey player.
We will count down the Top 10 starting with the next post. But for now, let’s being with…
Honorable Mentions:
Mindset Moments
While not really specific to girls or women’s hockey, I find Gord MacFarlane’s guests quite insightful about the mental side of hockey development specifically with players and coaches who provide positive nuggets of information on what it takes to be a mentally tough hockey player. Gord has some excellent guests from both inside and outside hockey that provide excellent advice on overcoming adversity and other key topics on the mental aspects of sports.
Breakaway – The Minor Hockey Podcast
Breakaway: The Minor Hockey Podcast from the Ontario Minor Hockey Association hosted by Dan Pollard. Dan sits down with the leaders of hockey to discuss everything from scoring goals to how to grow the game. While none of the episodes focus solely on girls hockey, there is a lot of great content for parents and coaches of hockey players of any gender. Hopefully they will add new episodes for the 2020-21 season shortly.
Our next posts will start counting down the best youth hockey podcast for parents of female hockey players starting with #10.
Hi! I’m Ray and I’m a hockey dad. In addition, I am a below average hockey player with an above average love of the game. Both my kids play youth hockey here in northern California. This hockey season, if there is one, my kids will be playing U14, with my daughter being a 2006 birth year and my son is a 2007. I have no expectations for where hockey will take my kids other than I know that hockey will help them develop life skills they can take anywhere.
Crazy Hockey Parent?
At the same time, like any somewhat-crazy hockey parent, over the past few years I have tried to give my kids every opportunity to be the best they can be when it comes to hockey. This includes waking up at well-before the break of dawn multiple times a week to take them to practices and private lessons at our local rink (which is almost 20 miles away) plus travelling 300+ miles each way for regular season games in SoCal.
My daughter has only played on boys teams so far during her hockey experiences, last season playing on a slightly above-average Bantam AA team. So, we think she is probably an above average 2006 girl player, but we don’t really know how she compares. This spring we had planned for her to attend several girls recruiting showcases and go through the USA Hockey Selects process. The expectation was we could really get a good feel for where she was in her development and hopefully receive feedback from college recruiters/coaches on how she compares to her peer group.
From Quarantine to Champs App
Well, we all know what happened in March 2020 as hockey and the world shut down due to the Corona virus. With all the showcases, tournaments and USA hockey camps cancelled, that’s when I took it upon myself to help kickstart the recruiting process for my daughter. I assumed building an online profile page for my daughter which included key information plus highlight videos would be a start. So I decided to try to build my own website using a popular website builder.
After several days of manipulating a web template that was created for a completely different audience, I was able to get it to look pretty good. However, I couldn’t imagine other hockey parents trying to do this on their own. I then looked at other sites that are in the “college athlete recruiting” business and while they did offer the ability to create basic profiles, they seemed more concerned with upselling you on advisory services. I asked myself why isn’t there a simple “LinkedIn”-like app for the women’s hockey community? In addition, there must be thousands of parents out there just like me trying to figure out how they can help their kids on their athletic journey.
Time to Build
Having done several startups I wanted to see if someone else thought this was a viable idea. I contacted my friend John Lorance who is a technical genius and someone I have partnered with off-and-on for almost 15 years. Turns out he had been thinking about a similar type of platform for a completely different audience, but with many of the same characteristics. He liked the idea of building such an engine and using youth athletics as the perfect use case.
This is how the idea for Champs was born. The Champs mission is to help youth athletes be the best they can be. Specifically, assisting them to meet their goals in both academics and athletics.
We are planning to take a slightly different approach on how to navigate these challenges and get to the next level, whether it is their next team, next level, prep school, juniors, college or pros. By focusing on creating a lifelong sports network and community, athletes can both promote themselves and find resources/opportunities via the Champs App.
Drop the Puck!
Given my personal passion, Champs will focus first on hockey and specifically Women’s Ice Hockey. The cliché I’ve heard frequently is how hockey is a small community and everyone knows everyone, so Champs will be a good test. As we grow, we hope our community pulls us into adjacent sports, especially since we know many hockey players are multi-sport athletes.
So welcome to Champs! I am sure there will be ups and downs along the way as we figure this out. Hopefully you can be part of the journey as we all try to enable youth athletes to strive to achieve our mission.
Ray
P.S. Here is a screenshot of the web page I designed back in February that spawned the creation of Champs. When the app launches, I will update this post with a link to her profile on Champs
