It's hard to believe that another season of minor hockey is now into the home stretch.
Teams have been playing for a few months now. They've enjoyed practices, games and tournaments. The kids have been making new memories on the ice, in the dressing room with their teammates, and on the road.
Minor hockey can be a wonderful experience for kids. It's an opportunity for them to have fun, make friends, visit communities they normally wouldn't see and learn skills that last a lifetime.
They aren't just learning how to skate, shoot, stickhandle and backcheck. They're learning about teamwork and work ethic. They're learning how they can all contribute towards a team's success.
And they're having fun. That should be the most important thing, especially at the younger levels of the sport.
Sometimes we get caught up in wins and losses, even at the youth sports level. But the team's record at the end of the season shouldn't be the gauge of success. Fun and improvement should be the top priority.
If there's a chance to win a league or a provincial championship, by all means, go for it. These opportunities don't come along very often and can be another great memory for a group of kids. We cheered as Canada won the recent Four Nations Face-off hockey tournament with a thrilling overtime victory over the U.S. Many of the players hailed from big-city or suburban hockey programs. That's to be expected. But you'll also see players from smaller communities, such as defenceman Travis Sanheim, who is from Elkhorn, Man.
If a minor hockey association produces a player that makes it to the NHL or wins an international event – especially a best-on-best – it's an incredible thrill, but it's not the only criteria for success or failure, either. The odds of a player making to the NHL are astronomical, so there has to be other priorities than players winding up in the NHL or the relatively-new Professional Women's Hockey League.
That's where fun, skills development and life skills come into play.
Is hockey perfect? Of course not. We hear the stories about disrespect from players, parents and coaches. We hear about slurs directed towards visible minorities. We'd be naïve to think they haven't happened here, although we'd certainly hope that minor hockey associations would deal with these people swiftly and harshly.
But when you sit down and talk to the people in the game, you realize the majority are pretty good people. The kids are fine boys and girls who want to have fun and play the greatest game on the planet. The coaches and the other volunteers give up their evenings throughout the season to provide guidance and fun for the kids. The parents are driving the kids to games and practices, often in the dead of winter. I'm sure many of them would much rather binge-watched a series on Netflix than be on the road during the Family Day long weekend when it was -40 C.
You wouldn't have these games without the officials, either. And while they do receive a stipend for the time they dedicate to officiating, it's small enough that we know they're doing it for the love of the game.
When you look through the photos in this album, you see lots of smiling faces from kids and adults alike. They're so happy to be associated with the game because it's a great game.
So we should be proud of minor hockey, the different associations and the positive impacts they have on the lives of young people. For so many of these kids, there's no better way for them to spend their winter, regardless of how far the sport will take them.
