Scott: Alright, everybody. Welcome back to episode 46 of the Crazy Hockey Dads Podcast, the unfiltered podcast for hockey parents. No politics, no sugarcoating, just real talk for hockey parents in the trenches, my man. That's what's up. Welcome back to another episode.
What's up?
Jamie: Nothing much, buddy. Nice job with the intro.
Scott: Thank you. You know?
Jamie: Not as good as Otto. No. But No. It's still decent.
Scott: Yeah, I mean, he's got the kid appeal.
Jamie: He does, 100%. Yeah. We got a lot of text messages from people when he did that.
Scott: Oh, yeah.
Jamie: I got a ton
Scott: of them.
Jamie: Yeah. Yes. That went over well.
Scott: You talk about this with more people than I do.
Jamie: No, people just write me.
Scott: Oh, well, I guess you're more popular than me.
Jamie: I don't about that.
Scott: No, I don't mean that.
Jamie: People just write me. I don't know why people write me, but they write me.
Scott: They're like, oh my god,
Jamie: I was on the podcast. I'm like,
Scott: yeah, people said that.
Jamie: I'm like, yeah, he is.
Scott: Truthfully, not one person said anything to me about him all the time.
Jamie: I don't know.
Scott: I don't know. Maybe it's me.
Jamie: I don't know. It's a good question.
Scott: Anyway, no, it was cool to have him on
Jamie: there.
Scott: And it was cool to listen to it afterwards and just, you know, hear, like, you know, he was being, like, genuine
Jamie: and Oh, 100% he was. Yeah. I liked it. It was good. I thought was great.
Scott: Yeah. We gotta get Dom on.
Jamie: Yes. Dominator. Yes, we do. Yes. In due time, I'm sure.
Scott: In due time. Yeah. Still warming up to the idea.
Jamie: And then your daughter is chomping at the bit.
Scott: Oh, chomping on the bit.
Jamie: Bro, like, she's all about it. She's She cannot wait to be on this thing. She's gonna take over, by the way, when she gets on.
Scott: Oh, she might.
Jamie: 100% she's going to. Yeah. Because that's like she's theatrical like that.
Scott: Between wanting to be on the podcast and owning one of your dogs, I don't think I get more requests for anything else.
Jamie: Yeah, knowing her, that doesn't surprise me.
Scott: No.
Jamie: You know? That does not shock me even a little bit, by way.
Scott: So we'll get her on to say hello.
Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. But, yeah.
No. That's gonna be fun.
Scott: It's it's funny now that it's, like, you know, gifting season and Otto's got a few of the new international mini sticks.
Jamie: It was a gift, Todd.
Scott: So so Otto, he told Noah, he's like, Noah, you should get a mini stick too so we can play mini sticks.
Jamie: He totally coax her into that.
Scott: A 100%.
Jamie: For himself.
Scott: Totally for himself.
Jamie: Definitely did.
Scott: But now she got a mini stick and she said to Orly, she's like
Jamie: What am supposed to do with this?
Scott: No, no, no. She's been playing with him. It's actually been
Jamie: really Yeah, she's been down. I take it back.
Scott: I respect that. Otto came in the room earlier today and like, Noah, come, let's go, mini sticks. And she's like, no, not right now. And then he left the room and she looks at me and she goes, he wakes me up before school to play mini sticks.
Jamie: Does he really? I guess. Oh, wow. Okay, listen.
Scott: I don't know. But she's been a good sport.
Jamie: She has been a good sport. Then she
Scott: said she wants to try hockey again.
Jamie: You know, she said that to me. Oh, did she? Yeah. She said, she was saying to when I'm on the podcast, she goes, Can we talk about the time where I tried to play ice hockey? I'm like, Sure.
Yeah. Like whatever you want to talk about.
Scott: Yeah, she wasn't so into it. Mean, she's like, My feet hurt, my back hurt. And it's not like she didn't She knows how to ice skate because she took like, learned to skate and all that stuff. So it's not like she's foreign to being on the ice, but
Jamie: I would say like she sounds like a typical girl, but the girl that we are actually having on to be interviewed on the podcast today is No. Definitely not Far from typical. Far, What far
Scott: an all star she is.
Jamie: She's cool, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sadie's gonna be a lot fun. We have Sadie Lundquist on the podcast today for an interview.
You guys are gonna enjoy it. I thought she was great.
Scott: Oh, 100%.
Jamie: She's a very accomplished young lady.
Scott: Yeah, know. She's a so I mean, just real quick, before we get going on Sadie, let's just shout out, how is hockey?
Jamie: How is hockey? Crazy 10.
Scott: There it is. It's
Jamie: Christmas is here. Hanukkah's ending. Christmas is here. Yep. Go out and get your tape, laces, candles, wax, sweatshirts.
What am I forgetting? T shirts, all the things, all of the you know what's funny? They actually have great gift for, like, a hockey player, by the way. It's the Howie's hockey tape bag. You know the bag in Tarmac, right?
The small bag? Yeah. And you can buy it filled with, Yeah. Like grips and a bunch of different, like, white, black, clear, wax.
Scott: Like, it's a whole kit already,
Jamie: like kit. Yeah. Already put together,
Scott: which
Jamie: is scissors.
Scott: That's a great gift.
Jamie: It's a great gift, dude. Yeah. I mean, what a great it's a great idea, and it all comes boxed and ready to go. It's like
Scott: a You know, I'll post any hockey player. I'll post on our Instagram
Jamie: We should.
Scott: Like, I unboxed my
Jamie: Oh, yeah.
Scott: It's it's and people will see how Do
Jamie: have a video of
Scott: it? Yeah.
Jamie: Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, that's great.
Scott: Unboxed. Felt like Ryan.
Jamie: Yeah. That's pretty funny. Yeah. No. It's it's it's great.
And it's a cool again, for any, like, hockey player, home run.
Scott: Yeah. No. It's awesome. Yeah. So we got Howie's.
We got Prostride, elite skating. Let's go Angelo Surce.
Jamie: Angelo Surce, New Jersey Devils, if they trust him.
Scott: So should you.
Jamie: So should you. That's CHD10.
Scott: Yes.
Jamie: Right?
Scott: Yep.
Jamie: And then we have Eric from I can never say. It's always like a mouthful when I say it.
Scott: What? Athletic Performance Insight?
Jamie: Thank Thank you.
Scott: Yeah. No problem. Yep. API Athletic Performance Insight.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott: Check out his website if anyone out there is interested in getting their team's games tagged, broken down to create some analytics for you to review a video review and go over stats. It's just a really robust platform.
Jamie: Good software.
Scott: Yeah, it can do a whole heck of a lot. Certainly competes with all the bigger names that are out there.
Jamie: Yeah, think so. I thought it was pretty robust. Yeah, know. It's awesome. Oh, it's impressive.
Scott: So, use their contact form. Reach out to Eric.
Jamie: He'll crazy hockey dads. Right?
Scott: Yep. Yeah. Crazy, crazy hockey dads get a 10% discount.
Jamie: $100 value. There you go. Decent amount of money.
Scott: No doubt.
Jamie: Just saying.
Scott: Yeah. You are.
Jamie: Just saying. You know? Just saying.
Scott: Just saying. Check it out.
Jamie: Just saying. You should check it out. Scott's team uses it.
Scott: Yep. I
Jamie: mean And Scott's team uses it.
Scott: So you should be
Jamie: you should too.
Scott: Well, it's definitely not my team.
Jamie: Well, you know, mean, Otto's team. Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Yeah.
Scott: Yeah. So But you
Jamie: used it when you were coaching too. No?
Scott: Yeah, as soon as the kids could
Jamie: As soon as they could process. Soon as their brains started to work. Exactly. You're like, listen, I know you're five, just watch for ten minutes. Yeah.
Scott: I mean, they watch all day these kids on iPads, You're not wrong about that. No, I'm not wrong.
Jamie: Know. They do that shit all day long.
Scott: It's No, but they see like when you do it though, here's the thing
Jamie: It's positive screen time.
Scott: Well, you know, part I think the misconception sometimes that like, you know, we would sit in the room and like just have these kids watch, like, you know
Jamie: Hours of video? No.
Scott: But, like, you mix it in with, like, NHL clips, and you can make it fun. You know? And then, like, you just show them, like, one or two things from their own play. Yeah. And you're like, hey.
Look. You know? This is what
Jamie: we're talking about when we say, you know. Listen, I think in a little spurts, you could definitely do that for kids.
Scott: Without a doubt.
Jamie: You know? Meanwhile, Adam wants to start doing video with you again.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so.
Jamie: That was cool to hear.
Scott: Yeah. Think he's You know? He's I don't know. Yeah. No.
No doubt. He's I I feel like he's definitely starting to get a little bit more mature in his thinking about the game. And he's yeah, he's showing more interest in just becoming bigger, stronger, faster, and all that stuff. And look, he's he's not I don't have to shoo him away with a broomstick
Jamie: No, at the same I'm
Scott: He's definitely more interested than he's been.
Jamie: He's DTV. Down to video?
Scott: Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I was like, where are we going with
Jamie: that one? DTV. DTV. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott: Yeah, definitely.
Jamie: We're a family friendly show. Not really.
Scott: Well, you know.
Jamie: Explicit, but family friendly sort of. Ish. Ish.
Scott: Yeah. I was whatever.
Jamie: We're like Spin Chiklitz light sometimes.
Scott: Dude, sometimes I listen to what's said on Spin Chico's.
Jamie: Oh, Sometimes that's wow.
Scott: Just said that.
Jamie: Biz does not hold back.
Scott: You know what I find so funny?
Jamie: He does not hold back. No.
Scott: He does not hold back.
Jamie: Mean, he's not When
Scott: they do those roast sparks ads.
Jamie: Bro, he's
Scott: Yeah. He's phenomenal.
Jamie: When does those reads, it's like If it's Peter. Yes, it is. I don't even know, like, I'm listening in my car and I'm almost driving outside the road. I'm like, oh my god. Like, wonder what the company thinks of that.
They must love it.
Scott: You know, I wonder what, like, when he's on, like, TNT or, like, on national broadcast, like, other ones that are sitting in the chair like, in the chairs next
Jamie: to trip the shit out of him behind the scenes about that stuff. They have to.
Scott: I'm sure he loves it.
Jamie: Oh, I'm sure he does. Listen, they're paying him, so shit. No doubt. Just laugh all the way to the fucking bank.
Scott: Yeah, man. So anyhow, we started talking about our guest for today. I did. And so Sadie Lundquist, deputy director of college hockey. And for those of you that aren't familiar with collegehockey.com, College Hockey Inc.
Jamie: College Hockey Inc.
Scott: Yeah. College Hockey Inc. You'll find their website. And she's the first ever director of women's hockey in the organization. College Hockey Inc.
Is a nonprofit funded by the NHL.
Jamie: Yes, it is.
Scott: And it's they have one mission. Yep. They have one mission, and it's to grow and market Just college hockey
Jamie: both men's and women Yep.
Scott: To grow the game. Yep.
Jamie: Yep. Men's, women's, just to grow the game. Yeah. She's concentrated more on the women's side. Right?
Scott: Yes. Yep.
Jamie: But, yeah, they wanna grow the game. They they they basically are and you tell me if I'm wrong here. They basically are putting together plans if a college wants to launch a d one program.
Scott: That's part of it?
Jamie: They're working with those schools to right?
Scott: That's that's part of what they do. Right. A lot
Jamie: Oh, that's true. You're right. And they also have a whole another arm that's just kind of like educating people on how Right. Become a D1 athlete.
Scott: So they don't they don't necessarily act as like agents or anything like that. More informational They make the process very transparent. They do. They try to give people as much information as possible about, know, carving a path to play collegiate hockey. Yes.
Right. And she herself is a former D1 player.
Jamie: Bemidji State. Yep.
Scott: She's from Minnesota herself, Cloquet. Yep. If I'm not
Jamie: pronouncing that Cloquet is correct. Cloquet.
Scott: Nailed it. Nice.
Jamie: Yes. Not croquet like the game.
Scott: Oh, I didn't
Jamie: Cloquet like the cloquet.
Scott: Like the city.
Jamie: Like the location. The location
Scott: in Minnesota.
Jamie: Yes. Right. Yes. Yes.
Scott: So she played at Bemidji State. Yeah. And then she also played in the precursor to the PWHL.
Jamie: That's right.
Scott: That was the NWHL. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and well, I mean, you'll hear in the in the
Jamie: She had a pretty nice job out of school.
Scott: Oh, yeah. Did.
Jamie: Worked for Minnesota Wild.
Scott: Minnesota Wild.
Jamie: Not the worst thing in the world.
Scott: She had that whole career doing, like, that skate jumping
Jamie: Oh. Was that? Like That was wild. I forgot what it was called. It's like I guarantee some of you have seen on TV.
It's like it's like ice downhill.
Scott: Yeah. On a track.
Jamie: And you race. There's like four
Scott: Think like motocross, but like On skates. On skates and no vehicle.
Jamie: Dude, it's crazy. I've there's jumps. Like, the shit is nuts.
Scott: So nuts.
Jamie: It it just go YouTube. I you'll hear it during Sadie. Yeah. You'll hear it during Sadie's, but if you can find it, find it, Scott. But it's like it's like it's like downhill on on skates.
It's wild. Oh, is it sponsored by, like, Red Bull? Am I right about that?
Scott: It is definitely a Red Bull thing.
Jamie: It is, right? Yeah. For the life of me, you'll hear it in the interview, but that was something else, man. Yeah, no, she was a very impressive young lady. I enjoyed her interview.
Scott: Yeah. And she's very involved in Minnesota hockey.
Jamie: Oh, yeah. We had a lot of conversations about that.
Scott: Yeah. She talked about developing programs, strategic initiatives, efforts to grow and strengthen the game across the state of Minnesota. She's really a champion for community based hockey.
Jamie: She spoke
Scott: a lot about games.
Jamie: We talked about that a lot, yes.
Scott: And expanding it to all boys and girls in the state and outside of the state.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah.
Scott: In the game of hockey stuff.
Jamie: Yeah, no, she loves Minnesota. And most importantly, if anything about her, is her family owns Gordie's Hi Hat.
Scott: Well, that was was a pleasant surprise to learn.
Jamie: Right? Yeah. You being a former chef Yeah. That was a fun part of the conversation.
Scott: Oh, absolutely.
Jamie: Right? I found that when I was kinda doing some research on her. I'm like, oh, I'm like, okay. Yeah. I'm like, I wanna go down this road.
Scott: I mean, they must have had so much fun.
Jamie: Oh, dude.
Scott: So much fun having seasonal restaurants and playing hockey.
Jamie: Yes. Gordy's Hi Hat is a burger joint in Cloquet, Minnesota that her grandfather and grandmother started. They had a couple other spots, now her dad runs it or dad and uncle, I want to say? They run it now?
Scott: Could be. Still Still family run.
Jamie: Oh, yeah. 100%. So I think I asked her what was her go to, right? Yep. And she had a pretty funny story about the chicken tenders, if I'm not mistaken.
Scott: Yeah, and then it moved to bacon cheeseburgers.
Jamie: Yes, exactly. Wonder how many fries or how many shakes have you had over your lifetime? I it's like
Scott: I can only imagine.
Jamie: Yeah, it's like And in the summertime, because it's seasonal, like you said, when it opens, I am fully expecting a care package from Sadie of the burger. That's what I'm expecting.
Scott: Well, you probably need to show up in person to
Jamie: Listen, I mean, I had to get myself out to Kluge, Minnesota.
Scott: You might. Unless they're in
Jamie: like Goldbelly. Oh, how nice would that be? There's got to be a way to package it and send it overnight.
Scott: Goldbelly's good. Ever go to Goldbelly? Yes.
Jamie: You and I have had conversations about Goldbelly. Oh, Oh,
Scott: that's right.
Jamie: Yes, we did.
Scott: We should
Jamie: get on that. Yes, we should. We have had conversations about that. But yeah, she was lovely. I gotta tell you.
She was a good interview. Played at a very high level, had some really cool jobs in hockey, and now has a really, really she loves her job.
Scott: Yeah, and what I'd also say before we get into the interview is that she comes from a very the work that she does is very analytic. And so she brings a lot of stats and understanding about what's the average age of a D1 commit for boys and girls.
Jamie: That was cool, by the way. Even what she said about the goalies too. Was interesting.
Scott: Goalies are a little later too.
Jamie: That was a cool conversation. I I didn't expect that from her. Yeah. You know? That was kinda cool to hear.
Scott: Yeah. You know?
Jamie: I thought she was great.
Scott: Yeah. So I you know, let's, anything else before we kick it over to her?
Jamie: Should we talk about the the game that Otto just played?
Scott: We can. Sure. They got destroyed. I mean, I don't know. I don't know that there's a lot of I don't know.
Jamie: I mean Oh, my. I mean, listen. It happens.
Scott: No. It it does. I'm just saying stating a fact. They got destroyed. Fair.
Yeah. There there was there is not one moment during that game where I thought maybe they have a chance.
Jamie: We should talk about one of these days. We should talk about I think I mentioned to you. We should talk about coaches in general that maybe Don't say great examples for children. Churl churl churl churlish. Them too.
Insubordinate and churlish. Insubordinate and churlish. Oh, Shaq Kinasey's office. Who? Oh, Shaq Kinasey, principal of Shaughnessy.
Scott: Anyway We're Jay Quellin.
Jamie: Oh my god. A a Ron. Where is A a Ron right now? That is one of the greatest skits I
Scott: So good, man.
Jamie: Oh my god.
Scott: Key Peeler.
Jamie: Key and Peeler is so funny. Yeah. Like, did they explode after that? I mean, everybody knew who they were, but after that
Scott: I know. You know the first thing I saw them was, like, the east verse East versus West Bowl?
Jamie: Dude, they oh, really? That's the first time you first place you saw them?
Scott: Harvard University. DeVry University.
Jamie: They were so good. I mean, like, let me ask you a question.
Scott: Fudge.
Jamie: What what is that substitute teacher, right?
Scott: Yeah. That's what it's called. Yeah.
Jamie: I'm just curious. Without without I'll look at it. What how many Views? How many views do think it has?
Scott: The substitute teacher one? Yes.
Jamie: If you had to guess. 13,000,000. Bro, you're so off. You're so low. You're so be so low.
Scott: Okay. So 500,000,000.
Jamie: Now you're so high. Come in between. In between.
Scott: 250,000,000. Close.
Jamie: Two twenty eight. 228,000,000 views.
Scott: I've but I probably watched at least
Jamie: Oh, dude. I've watched I was gonna say, I've gotta be a lot of that too. It is it is it's mister Garvey. It's
Scott: So funny.
Jamie: I mean, it's my kids. My kids Oh know my god. Whenever they say a kid named Aaron, mean, it's like, hey, Aaron. Hey, where is A a Ron right now? I mean, it's one of the funniest videos I've seen.
Belocky. Belocky. He's like, Blake, what? Alright. Enough about this.
Anyway, sorry.
Scott: So the auto got destroyed. There was
Jamie: Anyway, those of you that don't know what we're talking about, this substitute teacher is a YouTube video. If you have not seen it, go look at it.
Scott: It is hysterical.
Jamie: Substitute teacher. Yes. On YouTube. Anyway, so yeah. So Otto had a a game.
Scott: Yeah. I mean I mean, they they got dominated.
Jamie: It happens. But we need to do an a like you said, we need to do an episode about coaches that do not set good examples for their players.
Scott: I mean, that definitely happens.
Jamie: Yeah. Too much probably in this game.
Scott: Yeah. I mean, I I think what we saw today, you know, from from not being a part of that team Yeah. And and and just being on the you know, on our side of it, like, were the ones getting our asses kicked. And then to see the amount of joy that the other team was taking in, you know, our kids getting
Jamie: It was healthy bad sportsmanship. Yeah. I mean But the coach was was was feeding it Look. In a way that was not Well,
Scott: Something something was definitely going on because he he Yes. Got thrown
Jamie: Yes.
Scott: But I I mean, I don't know that it was overly apparent to me from from over this on the sidelines what what what was being said or
Jamie: No. But his antics on the way out were pretty Well, that was telling. Yeah. We're pretty obnoxious. I mean, you know, like but, you know, it's funny.
We had a very similar situation in one of Dom's games, I would say, like, two, three weeks ago. Very similar situation. Yeah. Coach got thrown out and was not nice on the way out. Like, guy.
Like, you're an adult. Yep. Adulting.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen.
Jamie: Instead of acting like a big child.
Scott: Listen. Every every way
Jamie: You You're supposed to set an example for your players. Like, you know, the fish rots from head down.
Scott: That's an interesting statement. I've never heard that one before, to be honest.
Jamie: Are you joking?
Scott: No. Swear to God, I've never heard that before. Seriously? Yeah. I swear.
Jamie: I use it all the time when I talk about the New York the New York Jets. Yeah.
Scott: Well, I guess we don't talk about football.
Jamie: No, we do. Because you don't know who John Riggins is.
Scott: That's true. But Or or your Wally Pop.
Jamie: Well try again. Wally Pip. Oh, okay. I see. You're busting my balls.
I like Wally Pop. I might have to call him Wally Pop from now on. But, yeah, I use the phrase, the fish rots from the head down, every single time I talk about my jets because they're dog shit. And they've always been dog shit, instead of those couple years when Rex Ryan was there. And maybe Bill Parcells.
Anyway.
Scott: Go green.
Jamie: No. Gang green?
Scott: Gang green?
Jamie: Yeah. They suck. They're not even worth talking about.
Scott: Yeah. Fair. Yeah. So I'll talk you.
Jamie: Is true. Although we do talk about other things.
Scott: Yeah. But we shouldn't talk about football.
Jamie: Probably not.
Scott: Especially baseball.
Jamie: We can talk about baseball.
Scott: No. I'm good.
Jamie: Yanks are good.
Scott: Are they? Well, yeah. They didn't win the World Series.
Jamie: They didn't. Only one key only one team can win the World Series.
Scott: Okay. Well, it wasn't them.
Jamie: They're they got close ish. Yep. Last two years, they've been they lost in the World Series two years ago, they just lost right outside the World Series. So listen. They're they're not far
Scott: off. You know you know you know what happens when you lose the World Series?
Jamie: You don't win it.
Scott: No. You're the first loser.
Jamie: This is true. This is true.
Scott: No second place.
Jamie: Second place is the first loser. You're not wrong about that. Yeah. That is true.
Scott: Anyway. Listen. It is what
Jamie: it is.
Scott: Alright. So why don't we kick this over to oh, so anyways, yeah. The the game, we got dominated, done, dusted, moving on
Jamie: Yeah.
Scott: Playing again tomorrow.
Jamie: Right.
Scott: Hopefully, it's a new day.
Jamie: New day. And Dominic actually played while we were well, I didn't go out to Long Island today to Dom's game. We sent him with another lovely family.
Scott: And did they win? They did. Oh, nice.
Jamie: They did. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I have not seen the game. I don't even know the score.
But a lovely father actually did a solid for me and took Dom out there.
Scott: Oh, that's awesome.
Jamie: Yeah. That was great. Yep. I I owe him something at Christmas time.
Scott: Maybe you take his son to a game. I have already. Oh. So there you go. He's repaying the favor.
Jamie: Well I mean, I
Scott: know it's not I'm not saying it has to work
Jamie: like that. I took his son to Bridgewater. He took my kid to Merrick, Long Island. So he's clearly winning.
Scott: Oh, okay. Fair.
Jamie: Yeah. I owe him.
Scott: Okay. Got it. Anyway. Yeah. Alright.
Glad they won. Glad they had a Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah. He played defense again. So that's yeah.
Scott: Alright. Good.
Jamie: Yeah. I guess.
Scott: Yeah. I don't know.
Jamie: And Nancy, I I didn't even ask how he I haven't even looked yet.
Scott: Okay. You'll find out later.
Jamie: I'm sure I'll find out later.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So let's kick it over to Sadie Lundquist.
Jamie: Here go. Enjoy. Sadie Lundquist. Alright. We are here with our first female guest on the Crazy Hockey Dads Podcast.
We have Sadie Lundquist, Cloquet, Minnesota's own Sadie Lundquist. How are doing, Sadie? Thanks for, taking the time to hang out with us.
Sadie: No. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be the first. I certainly know I won't be the last, so I appreciate it.
Jamie: No. It's awesome. It's been nice chatting
Scott: with Yeah.
Jamie: Kinda over text. I appreciate you making time. I know we kinda we're going back and forth. It's not easy with people's schedules, but yeah. I mean, tell us a little bit about kinda what you're doing now.
And like Scott said earlier, we'll kinda rewind to go back to, like, your early days of playing career.
Sadie: Yeah. So right now, I am the deputy director of College Hockey Inc, and I'm sure we'll get more into who we are, but just out like a super high snapshot, we're a nonprofit. We're funded by the NHL, and our focus is to grow and market college hockey. So it's super I think it's one thing for the NHL to say that they, you know, support and invest in women's hockey. That's another thing for them to actually invest in us as both a men's and women's company, but specifically my role that was just created in in 2024.
2023, 2024 is when they created my position. So I'm the first ever director of women's hockey, now deputy director of College Hockey Inc, but I'm super fortunate. Hockey's been a huge part of my life from playing in youth, high school, college, worked for the Minnesota Wild for about eight years. I left hockey for two years, realized that was the worst decision I made, and then I got back in with college hockey. So super fortunate that, you know, the game that has shaped much of who I am, I get to to give back and put that into my career.
Scott: That's amazing.
Jamie: It's awesome. Can you kinda go back to when you were you know, how you kinda picked up the game and what your parents were like and how they supported you, what they got right, what they got wrong, all that good stuff?
Sadie: They got nothing wrong. We are perfect children.
Jamie: No. Yeah.
Sadie: I'm the of five kids. And we're not actually we're not a hockey family, or we weren't, I should say. The fourth of five kids, grew up in a small town in Northern Minnesota just outside of Duluth. And we got into hockey because my brother came home one day and said, hey. My my buddy Troy is gonna play hockey.
Can I play hockey? So my grandparents actually bought him his first pair of skates, and my parents didn't know that you had to sharpen them before you sent them out. So his first ice funny. Was just like unhallowed skates, like
Jamie: Oh, that's awesome.
Sadie: You know, threw him he was in the trenches that first first practice, I'm sure. To go off. Didn't know anything about hockey. So like a lot of, you know, younger sisters, I just want to do everything my brothers did. So I started I think my mom said she found me in the the basement at like age two with their roller blades on just shuffling around the basement.
Yeah. You know, that's honestly, like, some people have really inspiring stories of how they got into the the world of hockey, and it's just I had older brothers who did it, and the rest is history. Four of the five of us played hockey. So we I'd say now we've become a bit of a hockey family. We certainly love it.
I'm not convinced my mom knows all the rules still after having four kids going through it.
Jamie: She was more of
Sadie: the hoorah mom than, like, the talking x's and o's. But that's really how I got into hockey. It was, you know, the the classic little sister keep up with her older brothers and Right. Just fell in love with the game. I love to compete.
So played a lot of sports, but hockey was always just special, stood out, was always kind of my number one sport. So
Jamie: And then so you you played locally. I know Minnesota does it differently than we do here. You know? I know you guys stay and play for, like, your town. Right?
You guys have, like, little regions. Right?
Sadie: Yeah. So, yeah, we we, you know, we are the community based hockey. We love to talk about it.
Jamie: We don't have that.
Sadie: Know if everyone loves how much we love to talk about it, but there's certainly something to be said. I think there's right. You can talk about it. Like, statistically speaking, Minnesota produces an insane amount of talent. Oh, yeah.
You know? But I think the greatest thing about Minnesota hockey is that isn't without growing the bottom of the funnel, and I think that's what makes it so special. So I I grew up in a small town. I'd say played with the same group of girls really from age 10 until we graduated high school together, which is super cool. In my from all my youth in high school hockey, I think I played with, like, 13 to 15 other college bound players, though.
So despite being a town of, you know, eight 10,000 people, produced a ton of college hockey players because there's really not else not a lot you can do outside of playing hockey and ice fishing and then enjoying the lakes in the summer. But, yeah, I played youth with the same group of girls from 10 on. It's all community based. So, you know, while there's a lot of girls that wanna play college hockey, a lot of the girls on my team, their goal was to be the best high school player they could be. And I think that's what's so unique about community based hockey is that you don't get left behind.
You know, there's age 12, age 13. It wasn't like, hey, you're not on this elite path, so we're gonna kinda push you to the side. Instead, it created a community base where, you know, we went to three state tournaments together. We had a ton of success. The girls who may be focused on softball, but hockey was still a big part of their life.
They didn't hold back, you know, my trajectory or anything. So, yeah, I had a ton of success as a as a community. Now, I'm, you know, I I love I'm a Cloquet Lumberjacks. I will be a Lumberjack for life because
Jamie: Mhmm.
Sadie: That's just what what community hockey does, especially for small towns.
Jamie: Right.
Scott: But let me ask you a quick question, though. So but is it safe to say that all sports are are the same way, or is hockey hockey is not an outlier in the fact that it's community based. Like, all the sports would be, like No. Baseball, softball, football, soccer, all of it.
Sadie: There's a couple girls I played high school hockey with that I also played softball with, that I also played soccer with. Yeah. That we overlapped. Or if, you know, when I went to there someone played volleyball. Someone played golf together.
But yeah. So it's all community based sports. Kinda like how America runs football. It's how Minnesota runs our sports is you play for your community. Some kids will
Jamie: go to
Sadie: a private school, but usually it's the closest private school to the community you grew up in. Right.
Jamie: It's definitely different here. We have a lot of club teams, and, you know, there's so many choices in the Northeast by us. We're in New Jersey, right outside, you know, New York City. And it's definitely not like that. We're the exact opposite of what you guys are.
We should be what you guys are, and hockey should be what you guys have, but nobody seems to be able to replicate what you guys do.
Sadie: Yeah. It's certainly tough. I think it's just become a part of our culture. I don't know what you could ever it's really hard to say you can go back to what we have. I think we were lucky, and that's how it's structured, and we've stuck with it.
Right. And now we need to preserve it. I there is some push for more AAA, and I'm not saying that's bad. You know, that's how a lot of our off season and our pre and post hockey works. I played on a lot of summer teams where it was girls from all around Northern Minnesota.
So Grand Rapids, schools, Grand Rapids, Warroad. We would all play on summer teams because we wanted to play more hockey, but it never was at the expense of my community based hockey first.
Scott: Yeah.
Sadie: So that's really how we we've done it. You know, and I think it's one thing. I've experienced it. I love it. I'm a huge proponent of community based hockey.
Right. And I can give you all of the emotional and community based and things, but at the end of the day, the stats also, they support it. Know, we produce the most division one men's and women's hockey players. We produce the most NHL and PWHL players in this state. So, you know, it's and I don't always want that to be the measurement of success.
Certainly, you know, you want kids to go on and and play at d three, d one, beyond. Right? Like, we we want that. I get it.
Jamie: Right.
Sadie: But it's how many eight u girls are playing? How many eight u boys are playing? And a big piece of what I talked about a little bit earlier is those girls that I played high school with that, you know, maybe their goal was and and I don't mean this in a bad way, their goal was just to be the best high school player they could be. Right. Because they had such a great love and passion for the game, they all have kids now that are reinvested into the Cloquet program.
And I I genuinely believe that if some of those girls would have grown up in different areas, they'd probably maybe get left behind at 12 and 13. They don't have that relationship with hockey. And now we don't have second and third generation hockey players because we picked this elite path over just having as many people love the game as So that's my emotional take. I can also put my college hockey, you know, go through stats, we do spirits, do data, and it supports a lot of what I just said.
Jamie: You know, it's funny. I don't know if you know Jamie Harrington. He's a he's a friend of he's a Minnesota guy too. He's he's a friend of Doug Christianson's. So he's with the New York Rangers now.
So he mentioned to me I was talking to him one day on the phone, and he mentioned to me, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts. He said that Minnesota hockey is not able to be replicated because the parents are so invested and the parents are kind of driving all of these local teams and giving their time, right, and to do it, which is not like it's not like that where we are. So he said it's not able to be replicated because the parents are so involved in keeping all these teams running, these local teams. Is that true?
Sadie: Yeah, I would say it's definitely an element of it, and I hate to say it can't be replicated because
Jamie: Right, right.
Sadie: You know, it's like, I would love to think that you could, especially in places that had it. Like, Mass used to be well known for their high school hockey. Mhmm. But it is. There it is a ton of volunteerism.
Jamie: Right. That's what he was saying.
Sadie: You know, it's truly community based. One of my you know, my coaches growing up were my friend Whitney. Her dad coached us, and it was coach Sylvester was like a retired gym teacher. He his breath reeked of coffee. He opened the door faster than anyone else in the Cloquet area, but you just don't get that elsewhere.
Right? He just loved being he's retired. He loved being a part of the community, and so he volunteered. And and that is a big part of it is it's kind of a it's a way of life. It's a culture here, and that volunteerism is what drives a lot of the smaller communities.
It's what perpetuates the hockey in that community. So it certainly is a huge part of why it it it's successful. But it's also right. The number of outdoor rinks we have, it's the way that only 2% of our rinks are public or excuse me. Only 2% of our rinks are privately owned.
The rest are public. We treat all of our rinks like parks. Right? They're a community service. They're not meant to operate at a profit.
So that's a, you know, that's a culmination of a lot of those different things. His history, volunteerism
Jamie: That's just work. Yeah.
Scott: One of the things that you just said just resonated so loudly with me was just that, you know, you have friends that maybe hockey wasn't their focus, but they were never left behind. Yeah. And when I was playing hockey growing up here in Northern New Jersey, there wasn't a lot of us playing hockey. In fact, in my, like, elementary school, I was, like, the only one playing ice hockey. You know?
And then when I got to middle school, I think I might still have been the only one playing on a club Probably. Travel ice hockey team. But then as I got older and, you know, all of my friends were doing you know, playing other sports or whatever or or not playing sports, but I I didn't have a group of like minded individuals around me, you know, that were also playing the game, and they weren't people that I grew up with, you know, that I had these relationships with. And, you know, when push came to shove, like, I wanted to, you know, I I want to hang out with my friends. I missed out on a lot of stuff because I was, you know, traveling and doing whatever for hockey.
And, you know, just the fact you know? So I've always said, like, if there was one thing that I think would have helped me continue my hockey journey at a younger age would have been, you know, having tighter bonds or being surrounded by more like minded individuals because it was too it was very easy to step away. It's like, don't know any of you guys. Like, I'm gonna be calling with my friends. You know, it's a lot, but, wow, that's, you know, that's unreal, you know, hearing you say all this.
And I was just curious, you know, one of the things that just, jumped out at me was, like, clearly on the outbound side of things, producing a ton of talent. Right? But and you started you alluded to it just now, and maybe there's maybe there's not much more to it. But just on the inbound side of things, like, when we think of, like, growing the game of hockey, and there's, like, these now, you know, these nontraditional markets that are come more traditional, you know, the Arizonas, the California's, the Florida's, Yeah. The You know, I'm you know, like, I wonder, like, do you think, like, community models could be successful in areas where there isn't as much, I guess, like, inbound, you know, interest?
Or and and I could be wrong. Maybe the numbers are there. I'm just I'm wondering if there's been any you've been a part of any conversations that, you know, that touch on that.
Sadie: That's a great question. And I I do think, right, like, that's where Minnesota has to be a little caveated. Right? We have such a high density. So it's easy for me to say, yeah, why isn't anyone playing or why isn't everyone playing community based?
There's that caveat. Right? There's there's always gonna be those asterisk. I I do think some of the nontraditional markets, it's it's probably impossible. Dallas is Dallas gonna be able to create a community based model or Texas gonna be able probably not.
Could they do it more so than what they're currently doing? Potentially. Right? I think there's those nontraditional hockey markets will probably always have to have area teams that travel. Right?
Like, I don't want to blanket statements that everyone can do community based hockey, but I know there's a lot of efforts like out in California, in the San Jose area to say, hey. We're still gonna have teams that wanna travel. Right? We have the parents that wanna say my my kid needs to be in the best tournament, so we're we're willing to do this, but there's still just a higher appetite to say, how do we get that middle tier kid so they don't have to make that decision? So we still have, you know, house leagues and house tournaments, and and maybe it's not as high a caliber as those kids that have aspirations to play d one, but I still think it comes back to, like, yes, we wanna keep them here.
We wanna keep them loving the sport. Maybe they play ACHA hockey. Maybe they don't, but we wanna create a space and a and a league and an opportunity for these kids to play as long as possible. And that's so I know San Jose is doing really making a push to do that. So there are nontraditional markets that wanna do that, can do that, but it takes it takes really that that mindset to say we are going to go above and beyond to create this so that the kids who don't maybe wanna do it all at all expenses have an opportunity to play.
Jamie: And it
Sadie: has to be a conscious decision in those not traditional markets.
Scott: Yep. That makes a ton of sense. Mhmm. So so just let's talk about, like, the state of women's hockey. And, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more.
I mean, obviously, you know, you went on you know, played high school hockey. That was you know, if you could just even, like, then go beyond that, like, the time playing professional, college, professional. Like, at what at what point in time were did you realize that hockey was something that you want to take to, you know, some level higher than high school or higher than college?
Sadie: Yeah. Well, I found my I recently actually found my fourth grade journal that I had to do from missus Sweetman's class. I wanted to play in the Olympics. I didn't get that far. So fourth grade Sadie was more aspirational than I than I did end up making it.
But, no, I think from a young age, I I just knew I wanted to play. I think it was probably my ninth grade year. It was kind of like the writings on the wall. You you you probably play college hockey. I don't know what level yet.
Yeah. But I I had a knack for it, I guess. And then I think my junior year is when I committed to play Bemidji State. So I'm from a small town in Northern Minnesota. I went to a smaller town further north in Northern Minnesota.
I loved it. It's not I always say Bemidji State is not for everyone, but if you
Jamie: Go Beavers.
Sadie: Yes. Go Beavers. It's one of the coolest places you can go to college. It's right on Lake Bemidji. It's small community.
It's hockey, hunting, fishing. It's awesome. It's not for But we love our hockey up there. So I picked Bemidji. You know, this is a big part of my job now is helping these kids navigate the process.
And for me, it was a super daunting experience. Even though I'm from a hockey community and I there's a bunch of girls before me who played, I didn't know what I was doing, and my parents are like, we don't know what we're doing. My mom's like, don't know the rules, so I don't know how to help you get recruited. So being the fourth of five, they were kinda like, you gotta figure it out. So just worked with some schools, went back and forth.
There were some bigger schools that recruited me, but kinda knowing myself and and how I am as an individual, I knew I probably wouldn't do well in a big school. So I I kinda gravitated towards Bemidji in that regard. And then it also came down to I wanted to go somewhere I
Jamie: knew I
Sadie: would play.
Scott: Sure.
Sadie: It was a it we I knew that my freshman year would probably be tough. Bemidji was in the the start of a rebuild. I think the class before me, there was, like, 11 freshmen because they kinda
Jamie: Oh, wow.
Sadie: Know. I don't wanna say cleared house, but cleaned house a little bit and brought in this new class. And then they kind of recruited me with this idea of like, hey, it might be a tough first
Jamie: year Couple of years, yeah, couple first year.
Sadie: Building something. It was the case. My freshman year was tough, but then by my sophomore and junior year, we ended up being top 10 in the country. Nice. We beat a number one team, and and that was something super special, to be a part of building a program where you got to be the team that's, like, we're the first team to beat a number one team.
Think I was on the first team to beat UMD at home. Like, those the accolades that that built up. I I never won a national championship, never made the tournament, but didn't affect my decision that that going to Bemidji State was the best decision for me as a as a student, as an athlete, and and as a developing young adult. So
Jamie: Now, UMD is close to Bemidji, right? I mean, it's rivalry?
Sadie: Yeah, about two hours. UMD is right next I grew up, like, planning the admissions of UMD.
Jamie: Cockey's, like, gotta be, like, a half hour from you or something like
Sadie: that, Yeah. Not even.
Jamie: Not even, right? So,
Sadie: yeah, Bemidji is where I ended up. UMD didn't really recruit me that much, actually. And you're right in their backyard. Literally in their motivated when we played them.
Jamie: My gosh. You were.
Sadie: Yeah. But I have a lot of love for all the Minnesota teams, You know? And just women's hockey as a whole, it's growing so much. Division one women's hockey, I mean, I look at their shots. I'm like, I didn't shoot that hard when I was in college.
Some of the skill and the speed of these girls, it's it's just come so far even from when I played. Right. So it's just it's so fun to be a part. Like I said, college hockey impacted my life immensely, and to be able to put that as my and make that my career is just it's like second to none.
Scott: That's unreal. I remember when I first started getting back in hockey because I I I stepped stepped away is in the right way of saying it. Kinda stopped paying attention, stopped playing, like, after high school, and then it wasn't till, like, twenty five years later when I had my son who started playing did I get back into it. And so I had really stopped watching hockey, and I was watching, like, soccer and all those other. So I put I'm starting to, like, I'm starting to, like, you know, learn and who's, like, relevant now and, like, do
Jamie: I remember anyone? Can do it.
Scott: So so two things that totally stuck out. The first one was that I someone mentioned Connor McDavid. I had no idea who he was. And Oh, no. No.
It's true. Right? Thank you. I swear to God, this is a true story. This is a true story.
I had no idea who Connor McDavid was. So then I found him on YouTube, and I I'm watching him, and then I was like, and then I was like shit something's wrong like it's it's like good playing in fast forward. And then I realized it was like really he skated that fast, but that was a conscious thought I was looking to how do I rewind this and I was like, my god I can't believe this guy is so fast.
Jamie: Yeah.
Scott: So that was the first thing. The other thing, then I turned on a game. I don't know what it was a women's game, and it was the women's national team, and they were playing. And I had no idea it was women playing. I thought it was men.
And that the skill level was so high, you know, just from the since the last time I saw a women's game, like, just from whenever back, was like, oh my god. These women are unreal. You know? And it's just like, it's it's unbelievable. So so during your college career, was the pros, like, when did that come into play?
Sadie: Yeah. So actually, when I graduated, there was a start of what was the NWHL. Yep. And it was a thing, but it was really out east. So being this Minnesota homebody that I am, you don't have to drag me from this godforsaken snowy state.
I just knew I didn't wanna go out east. So I interviewed with the Minnesota Wild and I actually got a job with the Wild right out of college and spent eight years there. And a little fun fact, actually, during that span from graduating college to then playing for the Whitecaps a few years later, I did a thing called Red Bull Crash Ice. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. It's like
Jamie: I saw that on your Wikipedia page.
Sadie: Yeah. It's like downhill ice racing.
Jamie: It's like saw that.
Sadie: Cross on skates. So I did that for a few years, and then Minnesota pardon? Ended up having
Jamie: How was that, by the way? I mean
Sadie: It was awesome. I mean, like, if you ever bombed this hill on a snowboard or
Jamie: on That's skates what I figured. That's what I figured.
Sadie: It was like that, but with jumps and three other bodies on ice.
Jamie: Right. I've
Scott: seen it
Jamie: before. It's
Sadie: nuts. It's
Scott: unreal. Yes.
Sadie: Yeah. No. Super cool. I think just like being a college athlete and being a competitor, my my again, my older brother did it, so I'm like, alright. I'll do it.
That's cool. You wear all of your hockey equipment, you drop the stick, you climb a bunch of stairs, and you race down against three other people on this, like, roller coaster track of ice.
Scott: Oh my lord. It
Sadie: took me to, like, Germany.
Jamie: Oh, jeez.
Sadie: Yeah. Oh, wow. So I got to, like, tour around and do it. And then the NWHL introduced the Minnesota Whitecaps and said, hey. They're gonna join the league.
So I quickly gave up that sport and got back into to hockey, and I was playing a lot of, like, beer league, adult league Right. Type of stuffs. But then, you know, five years passed after college, the Whitecaps became an official team in NWHL. So I tried out and made the team for that inaugural season. It was humbling.
The game got better for five years, and I didn't. So but it was just awesome to be a part of that inaugural team. We won what was the Isabelle Cup that first year that we were in it. We had immense support from from Minnesota. It was a ton of fun.
Yeah. It was it was hard. The first practice when our coach was like, get on the line. I was like, oof. Not I'm not
Jamie: a lion
Sadie: in, like, five years.
Scott: Oh. Start on the blue line.
Sadie: Blasted guys to, like, be in your mid twenties, working for the wild, playing on this ragtag, you know, White Caps team with your friends. It was again, I just feel I really feel fortunate. The the game of hockey has given me so much. So it's it's a pretty cool pretty cool moment of my life there.
Jamie: What made you stop? I'm curious. What made you stop Old. Yeah. Old?
Got it. I wasn't gonna say that, but
Sadie: I yeah. I and I kinda knew, like, going into that, I I was you know, I didn't even know if I'd make
Jamie: the team.
Sadie: Right? Like, our first line was entirely Olympians and, like, just graduated from college. So was a Hannah Brandt, Kendall Points, Goldfield, Lee Steckein. I mean, that are still playing
Jamie: in the league. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Sadie: So I'm like, hey, you know, I'm back here. Let me let me play with you guys. So I kinda knew it would be one year. Yeah. And then went back to working my I mean, I'd have stayed with the Wild full time, so I would work eight to five.
Scott: Oh my god.
Sadie: Did. And if we had a Wild home game, I would go to the game, work the game, leave, go to the office, go practice from nine to ten. And if the wild game was still going, I'd go back to the Excel at the time the
Scott: Excel No way.
Sadie: And finish. So yeah. I mean, like, hockey is it's it's everything.
Scott: $24.07?
Jamie: Yeah. It's the real deal out know.
Sadie: I was in my twenties, and I couldn't
Jamie: do that anymore. That's awesome.
Scott: So when you're working with the Wilds, did you what were your primary responsibilities over there, and did those change over the years?
Sadie: Yeah. So I was I initially started in sales. I just was when I was in college, people asked what I wanna do, and I was like, I it'd be cool to work for the wild, but I didn't know what that meant to work in sports. Right. So I actually went to a job fair, and I started in sales.
Knew I I didn't wanna stay in sales, though that was my foot in the door. So Mhmm. Started an internship, and about eight months in, they hired me full time. I ended up transitioning more into, like, a service and marketing type of role, but eight years later, I was still there, working home games, loving, you know, just loving. I grew up there.
I was was there from ages 21 to 29. So
Scott: was pretty
Sadie: cool to to be at an organization and you feel the wins. You feel the losses. You feel like you're really a part of that. And, you know, when you graduate from college, you feel like you've lost a bit of your identity as a hockey player. So to stay with the wild and and still be in hockey was, again, a good way for me to kind of feel like I was still still a part of the game.
And now and I was and at the time, it was my dream job. Right? Like, as a 20 saying you work for the wild was cool. It was a ton of fun. But now this what I do at College Hockey Inc is it's like it's my new dream job because it's affecting the game that impacted my life so much and and kind of seeing how the next generation builds and and knowing that, you know, girls who graduate don't have to do crash dice.
They can go right
Jamie: to the field. Right.
Sadie: And they don't have to break their leg doing crash dice.
Scott: Did you?
Sadie: Yeah. They can just go straight into the to making money playing college hockey or playing
Jamie: So NFL tell us more about College Hockey Inc.
Sadie: Yeah. So like I said earlier, we're a nonprofit. We're funded by the NHL. Right.
Scott: And really,
Sadie: our goal is to to market and grow college hockey. And the best way to describe this, it kinda comes to life in three ways. One, we actually grow the footprint of college hockey. It's something that not a lot of people know that we do. We we conduct feasibility studies for schools that wanna add college hockey.
So, like, the University of Delaware, they had a inaugural division one women's hockey season this year. We did the study for them. It's essentially it's a big SWAT analysis to to help them. Michigan has seven division one men's hockey teams and zero division one women's hockey teams, and we actually just did a study for the University of Michigan. So hoping that in the next few years, we'll see that one come to life.
And then we've got a few other schools, confidential schools that we're working with to add men and women's division one hockey. So that's a big part of what we do is truly just growing the footprint. We do a ton of marketing, PR, research, social media, digital media. Right? Just bigger, broader, more engaged audience with college hockey.
And then the third thing we do is we're a resource for student athletes. Because we are a nonprofit, we're always free. We take a lot of that research and marketing and just hopefully help kids navigate that process to to college hockey. And we're not advisers. We're not, like, one to one.
We're just there to give them all the information and and and have it be very data driven. Right? Like, I can give my personal philosophy on what it is, but that's not what we do. We say, hey. The average commitment age for a female hockey player or do play division one hockey is 17.
For a male, it's 19. Did you know that? You know, here are the key dates you need to know. Here's how to advocate for yourself. That's really what we do at College Hockey Inc.
Jamie: Right. Because girls don't go to juniors like guys do. Right? That's that's why the age is different. Like, that's why the two year age gap is there.
Sadie: Yep. No delayed enrollment. Mean, technically, there's like a year, but there's no juniors. It's really high school, whether you're in state hockey, know, school hockey, prep school, whatever it may be, right into college hockey.
Jamie: Right. How many girls d one teams are there right now as opposed to how many d one men's teams?
Sadie: Yep. They're with Delaware this year. There are 45 Division I women's teams. There are about 65 men. Should Yeah.
Know
Jamie: think you're right. I think you're right about that. It's something like that. And I'm curious. It's funny.
We talk a lot about like, Duke bringing a program and, like, UNC and Alabama. Right? I know they all have, you know, some pretty big club teams. Do you see over the next couple years, like, NCAA adding a lot of teams on both the men's and women's side? I think it'd be great for the game.
Don't understand why they don't do it. They all have the money to put it together. Yeah. You know, they all have the space to put a rink on their campus. It's not difficult.
Like, get donors to pay for it. Mean, at Penn State, right? Same idea.
Sadie: That's all you got to do.
Jamie: Get to pay for it.
Scott: Get the billionaires.
Jamie: Let's call a spade a spade. They all have money. Like, please, I don't want hear they don't have money to do it. They all do. You know, they can all subsidize the programs.
It's not difficult, you know? Yeah. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Sadie.
Sadie: Yeah. We have, like I said, we have three schools right now that will be doing feasibility studies.
Jamie: Nice.
Sadie: Yeah. Which is awesome. Maybe maybe you'll see an ACHA program. Maybe you won't. I don't know for sure.
Gotta keep it confidential. But I think what you're I think you're on the right track that some of these ACHA schools, especially some of these higher end ones, like UNLV, they beat Denver last year.
Jamie: Yeah. Right.
Sadie: And I think you could asterisk that with some things, but it doesn't matter. They've got they've got a rink. They've got resources. They've got players. I've seen just on, like, social media, some of those ACHA games.
They're packed. Like, they're rowdy. They're in nontraditional markets. There's certainly areas for growth there. You know, it's it is the sustained costs of hockey.
They're high. You know, our studies look at your cost of the coaches, equipments, your facility costs, conference alignment, all those things come into, know, all culminate to to be a successful program or not. And now in the world of NIL and transfer portal, it's
Scott: Yeah.
Sadie: It's all, you know, it's all a little bit chaotic. But without giving away too much, but without leaving you with nothing, we do have schools lined up. I think
Jamie: I would think so.
Sadie: Yeah. Future, ACHA, it's a natural spot to look to say, hey. You're already there. You've got it built out. What would it look like for you to elevate?
And that's certainly an area that we focus on.
Jamie: Right. And that's how Penn State did it. Right? I mean, that's how Penn State kind of brought their program to light. Am I right
Sadie: about Yes. Would probably be the most recent
Jamie: Arizona State, same exact thing. Correct. But those two schools are now, you know, big time ice hockey schools.
Sadie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how cool is you know, when when I talk to young women hockey players, when I say, hey, you wanna go to a nontraditional hockey market, you gotta look at ACHA. You have to look at club hockey. For the men, their footprint's bigger.
You know? They they can look at Arizona. Do you wanna go to ASU and play hockey? You can do that. I
Jamie: do wanna go
Sadie: on Colorado and play hockey? You can do that. On the women's front, our furthest west school is Mankato, Minnesota, believe it or not.
Jamie: Is that right? Yeah.
Sadie: So we're still growing, but that it's still it's it's awesome to see the the growth of men's hockey and and the footprint it's it's creating.
Scott: Let me let me ask just curious. In terms of your your role at college hockey, are you working with both men and women, or you just focus on the women's side of things?
Sadie: Great question. I primarily I focus on our women's front. Yep. But we have three other I have three other coworkers that really focus on men's hockey. Yep.
Our executive director, myself, he focuses mostly on men's just because I am kind of the the woman's hockey guru, but the both of us kinda, you know, tag along for both. But then we have a communications director and an athlete director who focus entirely on men's hockey. Got it. And I've 90% of my time is on women's hockey.
Scott: Got it. So I have two questions. One of them being with the, with the change with the CHL and NCAA hockey, is college hockey getting fielding a lot of inquiries from Canadian based players?
Sadie: You know, yes and no. It's hard because I'm gonna say we don't necessarily work with players so much, and then I'm gonna say we do a lot of seminars for players. So Got it. It's I think it's Alberta week right now for College Hockey Inc, where my coworkers will actually be in Alberta teaching them the pathways to college hockey. But again, it's more like in a we look at it more from like a program and numbers perspective rather than like an advisory where we do one on one.
Sure. That being said, Sean, our executive director, works a ton with programs, Canadian programs, American programs on that dynamics between now the rule change and CHL and and major junior players coming. So we are kind of like this little engine behind the scenes that that does, you know, handle a lot of those conversations. Sean's constantly on the phone with, you know, NCAA coaches walking through eligibility, scholarships between CHL and and NCAA players and how those rules have evolved. So we work a lot more with, the programs versus the individual players.
Scott: Got it. Okay. That that makes sense. So I one of the things though, the other thing that I was thinking about was just in terms of, you know, the people's men or women, their path to playing college hockey. You know, I I think that for, you know, parents that have younger kids, they'll tell you that, you know, I want my kid to play college.
I want my kid to, you know, the maybe they're gonna say whatever they're gonna say. But, like, for if you were talking to, you know, a brand new hockey parent who's saying, want my kid to play college hockey. That's the goal here. Maybe we wanna get the bill some of the bill, you know, paid for. Like, is there any, like, you know, things that you would make sure to point out to that person so they understand maybe where where things get really tough, like things that are maybe not talked about enough?
Sadie: Yeah. Gosh. That is a that's a big question to boil down.
Scott: Feel free to break it up however you
Sadie: It's just tough because, you know, so much of it is geographically based. Are they in California? Are they in Minnesota? Are they in New York? You know, and I I think especially if I'm putting on my college hockey and cat, I just would go back to the data and and kinda show the case that, hey, the average player commits at 17.
If your daughter's 11, we don't need to focus on whether or not she's on, like, a college trajectory. And I know that's easier said than done for me to say when I'm, you know, overseeing college hockey. Sure. But I feel like we we do over specialization too early. So I would you know, it's gosh.
I got a lot of conflicting messages here. It's love the game. Don't over specialize too soon. Know that every pathway is different and hockey shouldn't be the be all end all. Yeah.
You know, something that we did at college hockey increasingly just this last fall is, you know, a lot of these questions are kinda like our philosophical questions of hockey, and I can answer them how I feel. I'm I'm like, how do I put more data behind this? So we actually, we work with all the 45 division one programs, and I sent all emails or coaches an email and just said, would you please have your players fill out this survey? I think it's one thing for me to preach it. It's another thing for me to say, hey.
This information is coming directly from college hockey players. So we got Sure. We sent out a survey. We got almost 300 responses from current division one women's hockey players. This is women's specific.
And the average commitment age was 17.3. It's 17 for goalies. So am I talking to a skater? Am I talking to a goalie? Seventy two percent of them are multi sport athletes.
Fifty five percent of them did not get a call on June 15, which is the very first day you can be contacted for recruiting, yet they are still playing college hockey.
Jamie: Right.
Sadie: 60% of them committed to a school that they didn't talk to right away on June 15. Majority of the kids didn't even get a call on the first day. Right.
Jamie: Of the
Sadie: calls they got, majority of those kids went to a school that didn't even reach out day one. Right. So I think there's a lot of myths that like, you have to get a call on June 15. You have to be recruited immediately. There's not it's not real.
And it's it's it's that those pressures we put on these kids. So like you gotta be at every tournament and you have to be doing all these different things and and the data just doesn't show us that. Now I get. If you live in a certain demographic a certain geographic or, you know, maybe you have to travel a little more. I I'm not saying this is a blanket statement one size.
Of course.
Jamie: Yeah. Of course.
Sadie: But I think we do need to normalize the process a little bit more. I think, you even like what Doug talked about is how are you he was on your episode, how are you spending your time? Like, are you driving four hours to go to a slightly more elite practice, or are you spending that time invested more, you know, in the places you need to invest more in?
Jamie: That's right.
Sadie: So that was that was a way for us to try to communicate attempt to communicate what I'm trying to say now is, like, every pathway is different. We look at each other's, we celebrate, we learn from, but we can't replicate what every kid is doing. I I I'm rambling now, but there's a gal I played on my u ten all through high school team with. So we grew up playing all of our youth hockey, all of our high school hockey, and we played at Bemidji State together.
Scott: Oh, that's cool. She's a
Sadie: year older than me. Her and I are such different people, so our process was so vastly different. We came from the same community, played for the same youth, high school, and everything, and our pathways couldn't be any more different.
Jamie: Isn't
Sadie: that a great testament to say, like, you can't replicate. You can't force these kids into a pathway that's not gonna work for them. She was super quiet, reserved, incredible hockey player, but I'm a little more out there and loud and was willing to do you know, maybe put myself out there in different ways. We're different people in the locker room. We're different people on the pathways.
She's a better hockey player than me. That probably helped. But, you know, it's so it's it's that's just the the things that we're trying to say. Hey. Don't just take my personal philosophy.
Let's hear directly from these girls. 80% of those players reached out. See, other thing too, think there's this kind of stigma to, oh, are gonna reach out to me. 80% of those girls reached out to coaches and said, hey. I wanna play college hockey.
This is who I am. This is my tournament. This is why I wanna play for your program. So there's no shame either in saying like, yeah. Coach recruited me, but I also wanted to to reach out and show a coach I was interested in their program.
And I think that that's where we try to pull this data forward and and just give these parents and these kids peace of mind. This process should be fun. I know it's daunting. There's a lot of what ifs or what should I be doing? What can I be doing?
And that's where we try to cut through some of that that anxiety.
Scott: Yeah. Like, even when you were
Sadie: mentioning answered your question at all, but you got it.
Scott: No. No. But you gave I like to. No. No.
No. It was no. No. So what was coming to mind as you were you were talking was, like, for even just when you mentioned, like, the average age of a commit with male or female. Right?
Like, you know, living in a in a highly real society when you see all these, like, mega success stories and, like, people think, like, okay, my kids needs to and I'm talking about, you know, you know, men's hockey now or whatever, but, like, okay, my kid needs to play brick. He needs to play Pee Wee Quebec. Okay. Now he needs to be like, you know, commit to like, you know, by whatever age, and then like, you know, you see these young kids going to NHL, and people talk about the the league getting younger and all these things. But like to know that I think you said it was like 19 or 19 for does the average age for a male commit?
It's like, oh, well, if that's when, like, the average age of a commit is like, my kid doesn't have to be, you you know, the the best player on the ice when he's 15.
Jamie: 11.
Scott: You know what I Like, even if even at 15, he still has like another four years to really mature, develop, etcetera, before we're even thinking about being an average commit. And there are also kids that are gonna commit after that.
Jamie: I was just gonna say that's an average
Scott: That gives a lot of perspective. I I mean, for me, it does at least. And so that so, yeah, that was super helpful.
Sadie: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. On both the men's and the women's too, just adding this is we see goalies commit about a half year after skaters. So, like, for you goalie parents out there, know that your your child may develop you know, there's less spots, development even in the NHL.
See sometimes goalies take a little longer to mature, but yeah, it's 17 for a female 19 for a male and then add about a half tack a half year on for goalies for both boys and girls.
Scott: Super interesting.
Sadie: Yeah, it is.
Jamie: So, I'm gonna change direction for a second, Scott.
Scott: Yeah, go for it.
Jamie: So, Scott, you're gonna like this. So, Sadie's grandparents have a place in Cloquet, Minnesota called Gordy's well, it's it was Gordy's Hi Hat, and then there's the Gordy's Warming House. So these are like it's like Scott, like, was on like, Guy Fieri was there.
Scott: Oh, no way.
Jamie: Yes. Yes. So, Sadie, I'll I'll let you tell more about this.
Scott: Culinary chops in your in your family.
Sadie: Yeah. It's it's cool. I I mean, I'm certainly biased, but my grandparents opened a a restaurant in Cloquet, my hometown, called Gordie's Hi Hat back in 1960. It was actually their third restaurant. They were the first people to own a and w in Northern Minnesota too.
Scott: No way.
Sadie: Told that then decided they want to create their own. So my grandpa's name was Gordy. He named the restaurant after himself, which I don't know. You know, we'll leave that up to the viewers and whether they like that or not. But no, my grandparents opened in 1960.
My dad has owned it ever since I can remember. Oh.
Scott: And then
Sadie: two of my brothers are helping him take it over. So it's been on our family since 1960, and it's an old school burger joint. Guy Fieri
Jamie: Got it.
Sadie: Came when I was a freshman in college. It was awesome. Okay.
Scott: To spend the
Sadie: day with him. Yeah. He did some mini to winning games with us. It was super cool.
Jamie: Nice.
Sadie: But, yeah, I always say it's like some of those places, they're like have a secret recipe or they marinate things for like fourteen hours and all those things. The way that our restaurant works and still operates this day is just very mon pa. Like, everything's hand done. You know, the if you get a strawberry shake, it's a hand blended with strawberry strawberry shake. It's all just simple, good mon pot burgers and Oh.
Scott: And fries. So That's awesome.
Jamie: Are your grandparents still around, Sadie?
Sadie: No, thanks for bringing it up.
Jamie: Oh, they're not.
Sadie: I was just
Jamie: I was just gonna say, Jesus Christ. I
Sadie: was like, They wait did both cast. They did both cast in the
Jamie: last few years,
Sadie: but, like, very long fulfilled lives. Sorry. You can cut this part if you want.
Jamie: No. No. No. We don't we don't edit. We we put everything hilarious.
Sadie: Yeah. No. They they both worked up until their late eighties, though. They did. Right.
Which was super cool. So growing up in high middle school, high school, and even in summer in college when I would come home for summers, I worked with both my grandparents, my dad, and my brother, which some families might be like, oof, that's too much, but it was so It created such a unique dynamic with my grandparents.
Jamie: Like Right.
Sadie: My other side of my mom's grandparents were, like, the traditional grand you know, like, cuddly grandma. Oh, she's so sweet. And then my grandma who ran the restaurant was, like, yelling at people and was, like, firing my dad. You know, was just, get out of my way. I hope I have I have.
I'm a lot like my grandma. I got a lot of her fire.
Jamie: She
Sadie: was very spirited. But, yeah, they worked up until their eighties. They were incredible.
Jamie: That's
Sadie: great. If you're from Minnesota, like, you've likely heard of the restaurant. You have to pass it to get up to like the lakes part of Minnesota, like the Vermillion area. So we're Amazing. Only open seasonally while people are going to the lake in Minnesota, and then we take hockey Oh, season
Jamie: course. And what's the warming house?
Sadie: That's a coffee, ice cream, and dessert shop. It's Okay. Perfect. Just yeah. So that one stays open year round.
It's actually pretty cool. It's the it's we share the same parking lots. It's essentially the same compound, if you will. Right. But it was my dad's house growing up.
He lived there, then we converted it. They converted into a coffee shop. So his office in the basement was like his old childhood bedroom.
Jamie: Oh, that's so funny.
Sadie: Cloquet is small town community through and through, it's hockey or eating at a restaurant. It's
Jamie: Right.
Sadie: It's just it's kinda how it works.
Jamie: So what's the go to?
Sadie: Oh, bacon cheeseburger. Oh, wow. Aggressive. Yeah. No.
It they're no. They're not they're not big. They're smaller burgers. They're fifth of the pound, but everything is fresh. Everything's hand cut.
If you get onion rings, they're handmade every morning. Yeah.
Scott: Nice. That's amazing.
Sadie: The amount of bacon cheeseburgers I consume in a summer is unhealthy. I
Jamie: ask was you how many you think you've taken down over your lifetime. I bet you it's a serious number.
Sadie: I think it won't when I was a kid, I ate a lot more of the chicken tenders because I didn't have my you know, thing.
Jamie: Yeah. That's what kids do. Yeah.
Sadie: The mature palate that I have now is
Scott: the bacon.
Jamie: Yes. Well said.
Sadie: Well said. So my mom told me one time if I didn't stop eating chicken tenders from the high hat, they were gonna kill me because of the cholesterol. I think I was
Scott: like So switched to bacon cheeseburgers? Was just gonna say, see.
Sadie: But I still bring that up to her this day. I'm like, you struck the fear of God in me that I was gonna die from high cholesterol at age 10 because I ate too many chicken tenders from the hi hat.
Jamie: Right. So then you went to red meat. Yes.
Sadie: So instead I went to bacon and beef.
Jamie: You know? Right.
Scott: So that that's amazing, James. Thanks for sharing that because I I I've I spent years of my life in in kitchens, and
Jamie: I have I figured you'd appreciate that. Yes.
Scott: So that that's amazing.
Jamie: I would
Scott: love to one day check it out.
Jamie: I was gonna say, any chance we can have them sent to us? Do you guys send?
Sadie: We're closed right now. You know? If you guys can wait till the spring.
Scott: Yeah? Oh, we'll do it.
Sadie: We'll figure out a way.
Scott: Absolutely. But so so I'm gonna I'm gonna circle back to hockey for, for a moment, but it's just focusing on, like, on girls in the future of the the women's game. You know, in around here, there are not women's or girls only teams until they're, I think, about 12, 13, about that age. So up until then, they're playing, you know, like coed. Yeah.
And then what we find is that some of the girls that that are really talented, they'll wanna stay with the boys clubs as long as they can. Is that any advice for, you know, for women that or girls that need to navigate, you know, that coed space before they got into a girls team and kind of, like, any any suggestions or thoughts about about kinda, like, the pros and cons of playing with, like, a coed team for as long as you can versus getting onto an all you know, a girls only team?
Sadie: Yeah. It's a great question. And, again, you know, Kai brought up earlier, like, something we sought out to answer more clearly when we did that player survey because it is tough. And, you know, if I was speaking to a Minnesota kid, I would say go to girls hockey because of the model we have. And the data shows that it's not gonna hinder your opportunities to play.
Now if I'm talking to a kid in New York who maybe doesn't have the same opportunity, I I always kinda come down to it. You know your kid.
Jamie: Mhmm.
Sadie: I I go back to me and my teammate. I think I would have done okay on a boys team if I'd played a few more years. I I'm glad I had the opportunity to play girl girls hockey. At the age I did, I wouldn't change it, but I think I could have handled it. I have some teammates that I I don't think, like, the locker room, they maybe would have developed as leaders as much.
Or on the ice, would they have been on the power play in the PK? Like, did going to girls, even though maybe it was a step down, did that allow them to flourish more on the ice and off the ice than going to boys and maybe being intimidated and not being as high of a player. Maybe always feeling like there's a target on your back. That being said, again, I never try to use blanket statements because every kid is different. Every area is different.
Every program's different. Again, I try to come back to the data and just say that based on the answers we got, going to girls hockey sooner right now, especially in today's world with the growth of hockey, going to girls sooner is less likely to inhibit your opportunities to play beyond. I think there's this idea that, like, it's gonna slow me down. It's gonna change my trajectory, and we just don't see that in the data. All that being said, you know your child, you know your kids, you know the programs.
So I I would never say you can't do it, but I I think personally these young girls are gonna thrive more and develop more as leaders and as and then within themselves within, you know, who they are as young girls, I just I do think there's something to be said about if you have the opportunity to play girls hockey, do it.
Scott: Do it. That makes
Jamie: a lot of sense. Scott, I'm glad you asked this question because I had this one written down too. Sadie, what age did you start playing girls hockey? Did I? Yeah.
What age? Like, here, there's not a lot of opportunity for girls to play. There's like two teams, right, Scott? Two that I can think of?
Scott: Yeah. I honestly don't know the count, but like there's not that many. Right. Yeah.
Jamie: Right. So the opportunities here are not what they are in Minnesota for girls hockey. You know?
Sadie: That's the tough thing. Right? That's where I'd say it's all geographically based. Even sometimes, you might be in a an area like you could be from New York and someone say, oh, well, should have ample girls opportunities. Well, what part of New York are you in?
So I, you know, I always caveat that. I started playing that's where, like, the Minnesota is kinda hard. I started playing at, like, age 10, I wanna say. Right? We do, like, mini mites and then mites, and then
Jamie: Right. Right.
Sadie: U 10. I think I might have been nine years old playing U ten, and then that's the same core group of girls I stayed
Jamie: with
Sadie: all
Jamie: through high I'm pretty sure, Scott, and you tell me if I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure at that age, girls are playing with boys.
Scott: Oh, here?
Sadie: Oh, yeah. In most areas.
Jamie: For sure. For sure. I mean, that's just not the demand, I think, for you don't see the demand for girls hockey around here like you do obviously by U. S.
Scott: AD. Then you also see girls playing high school hockey, co ed, high school hockey out here. Boy. Yeah. That's also a thing where even if they're playing girls club, if wanna play for their high school, they're likely playing coed again.
Jamie: Right.
Scott: Yeah. Which is which is yeah.
Sadie: And I think even for me. Right? Like, I I had the chance to play girls. I stay girls. I'm so I'm so happy that I had those opportunities.
And I also acknowledge I'm very fortunate that I grew up in a town where people built up the girls programs. Right. But then I also think like there was a talk like do we put her into what's called like squirts? That would be like the next level of where you kind of separate boys and girls. I had a brother that was two years older than me.
So like a lot of his buddies were on that team and it's you know, I think a part of the conversation with my mom was, you know, you're gonna be with your brother's Sievers friends and is it probably better for you to be with all the girls that you'll see, you know, and so I think that yes, there are times that your hands are gonna be tied and I feel for parents where it's like, we don't have options Do make the best of the options you have. Yeah. But, you know, for me where I had that option squirting and girls, boys or girls, I couldn't have been happier that I picked girls. And I don't feel like it negatively impacted my trajectory at all, which is the misconception. Misconception.
Would argue I became a better leader, a stronger person from being in an environment. That just empowered me.
Scott: That that and that that that just makes the face value, that just makes so much sense. I mean, I I can imagine being the minority of any group. You'd have to be cut from a slightly different cloth to really kinda transcend that and just, you know, be a vocal standout person that's willing to take those risks and all those other things in front of peers, like so that does make a lot of sense. Question, you've talked a lot about just, like, the the data and the the numbers that, you know, that you work with to validate, you know, some to to validate, guess what's the word that I'm looking for?
Jamie: The putting together of a college hockey team?
Scott: Yeah. So I I guess my my question is, there any stats? Or is there any data that you feel like isn't maybe, like, talked about enough or something that you find very interesting that you would, like, think is worth sharing and surfacing to to an audience?
Sadie: Yeah. You know, I think I kinda pressed on a little bit of them. I think the multi sport athlete one, the seventy two percent of the girls we surveyed were multi sport athletes. I feel like if you were to go on social media and look at a snapshot, you'd think that all these kids only played hockey. Right.
And that's all they gave up everything and it hockey shouldn't be at all costs. Yep. I mean right now Minnesota's been in the news because that Mason West kid.
Scott: Totally unreal. Yeah.
Sadie: And again, I know it has to be a product with the right environment. Right? I'm not saying every kid gets the opportunity to be Mason West and play in those dynamics, but I do think we have created this culture of overspot of over specialization, and that's not just hockey. I hear this from lacrosse parents and everything. Yep.
But then we also complain that our kids are over specialized, but then we push them to over specialize. So I'm really passionate just personally about that idea of multi sport athletes and staying home. You know, just Mason West gets to go to prom with his buddies. He gets to, you know, do all those things because he chose to stick around and play community based hockey. And and again Right.
Not everyone gets to do that, but I think the multi sport athlete that just be a 15 year old kid at some point, whether you're a boy or a girl, like, let's use the data, understand it, advocate for yourself, dream big, but at the same time, like, hockey shouldn't be the be all end all. And I think some of that goes something I've become more passionate about within this role is our main focus is d one hockey. We try to do a lot to champion d three and ACHA hockey because it's it's really unfortunate. I'll talk to to kids where it's division one or bust. And it's just it's such a tough mindset that, like, why?
Why? Tell me why. If you could play four years at a d three school and play incredible hockey and make lifelong friends and get an education, why wouldn't you want that? Like, that's where I've another piece of of the, you know, my job is is kind of elevated and I've become passionate about and I'd like to spread more as especially on the women's front. The d three national championship last year was in River Falls, Wisconsin.
They went undefeated. They won it at home. There's, like, a two hour wait to get in the door. People were lined up in the stair I mean, like, I get chills just thinking about it, And it's such a shame that some kid out there is thinking, well, that's a d three national championship. Like, that was that was just a national championship.
That was elite hockey. It was packed building. The place was butt. It was electric in there. And so that's another piece that I think with students and with parents is kinda taking away the stigma of, like, division one's not the only level.
Division three is awesome. ACHA opens up the amount of schools you can go to. It opens up the markets you can play in. I know kids, everyone has a dream to play in the NHL and the p w h l, but at some point, like, just love the game. Play d three hockey.
It's awesome hockey. So, again, I think I rambled. I don't know if I answered the question. No.
Jamie: No. That's great.
Sadie: I've become a all the levels of of hockey because more kids we have playing for as long as possible, the better our sport gets.
Jamie: Yep. You know, it's funny you mentioned d three. So I don't know if you know the hockey guys, the guys who started at Wisconsin Superior
Sadie: Oh, yeah.
Jamie: Which is
Sadie: Right next to Cloquet. Yeah.
Jamie: Alright. So I I figured you knew them. Deep down. Yeah. Yeah.
So so so if you're familiar with the guy, so we interviewed Austin and Johnny. Matter of fact
Sadie: I don't know who they are individually. I know who they are as a collective.
Jamie: Those are the main the main two. Right? Matter of fact, it's coming out tomorrow, their episode.
Sadie: Oh, heck yeah. Okay.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. So, D3, Wisconsin Superior, and you were talking about hockey is not the end all, be all. You make lifelong friendships, stuff like that. I mean, that's a perfect example of like four or five, six guys, you know, that started that while they were playing at Wisconsin Superior, now look at them, they have a full fledged business.
Sadie: Change the trajectory of their life. Correct.
Jamie: You know what mean?
Scott: Yeah. And one of them even said, because I asked them, I'm like, you know, being Canadian and then playing, like, you know, D3 in The United States, like, is that a failure? Like, in your mind? And they're like, you know, at first, were kind of like, that's not what we were going for.
Sadie: Yeah. The stink went to it. Yeah.
Scott: That's not what we were going for. But then, you know, look at look at where we are now.
Jamie: Change anything.
Scott: Right. And it it's it's so true. And and we had a dad who's got very talented children, one to commit d one to Penn State play lacrosse. Awesome. And he's going there next year, then the younger one is, like, a double underager playing, like Total u sixteen premier, like Yeah.
Led the team in scoring, like, NTDP, like, prospect type of thing. 100%. So this dad's, like, seeing, like, the highest of the high level stuff, and he's saying he's, like, look, you know, like, putting, like, his kids, like, kind of aside. He's, like, he he because he played, I think, d three football, if I'm not mistaken. And he's, like, dude, for all the kids out there, like, if you, you know, you play hockey in your high school, you know, it's not like club where, like, just it's mom and dads.
You have, like, kids from your high school coming. They show up, you know, like, they're cheering you on. In the hallways, they're talking about things. Maybe you go play club, maybe play d three, and he's like, dude, that's a solid career. Like, who like, there's nothing wrong with that.
Like, that's amazing stuff.
Jamie: Well, think he was talking about going to Alabama, Scott, and playing club at Alabama. Right?
Sadie: It'd be electric. He
Jamie: said it was an unbelievable environment. There's, like, 6,000 people watching. Yeah. He's hanging out in Alabama. He's getting an awesome education.
He's like, What's wrong with that? Right, Scott? Yeah.
Scott: Well, you're talking about that who are you talking about now?
Jamie: I'm talking about Lazaro was talking about the kid who played club hockey in Alabama and was like, you know, and the kid's loving life, and he's hanging out in Alabama and playing club hockey, there's 5,000 or 6,000 people coming to every game. Mean, he's like, What's wrong with that?
Scott: He's like, It's a whole And there's group nothing wrong
Jamie: with it.
Scott: But I just don't think too, and like Sadie, you know, championing that, I think, is is important. It's wonderful. Because I I think there's a lot of people that could probably go on to have, like, lifelong memories, experiences. Yes. And who knows what can ever happen?
You know? Just keep your you you gotta be if you don't shoot, you don't score. Right?
Jamie: So Yeah. In any event. Yeah.
Sadie: Yeah. It and it's hard. I get it. When I was 15 and 16, when I was being recruited, if there were someone's like, but where are you gonna make your lifelong friends? I'd probably like, okay.
I wanna play hockey. But the more we can just ingrain in these kids and parents that like, would you go to that God forbid, you broke your leg and hockey wasn't an option. Would you still wanna go to that school? Would that still be where you want life to take you? You know, and it's it's hard to tell them, but like, some of them I mean, I have friends now that their kids call me aunt Sadie.
And I that's I I direct that because I chose Bemidji. I mean, one of them played soccer. Couple of them played baseball. Like, especially depending you know, pick a school that's gonna fit you as a student, an athlete, but most importantly, as a developing young adult. And if playing ACHA hockey at, you know, Sault Ste.
Marie is gonna be that for you, do it. That's awesome. Definitely. And like you said, the I think that the the hockey guys is a great example of, this game is going to give you what you put into it. So make sure it's it's the right opportunities for you because this game can give us so much more off the ice than than it can on the ice for most people.
Right?
Scott: No doubt.
Jamie: They actually said they made the NHL. It's just not the exact way they thought they were when they were younger. Right? So true.
Sadie: I won a national title, just not the way I was expecting. You
Jamie: know? So you got it. Right? It's funny what doors things open, though. It's it's it's awesome.
Yeah.
Sadie: It is. This game is incredible, and just as as many kids as we can have staying in it for as long as possible is just it's gonna grow our sport, and and we need to grow. We need to reduce the barriers. We need to make it more accessible because I think once kids get involved in the sports and fall in love with it, it's it's I mean, I'm biased. I think we're biased, maybe.
It's the greatest sport. It is.
Jamie: It's awesome. It's an awesome It it creates a different type of kid in my opinion.
Sadie: Yeah.
Scott: Yeah. Well, listen. I I think we're about that that hour mark. This was unreal. Sadie, And it was such a pleasure meeting you, getting to know you, hearing your story.
Thank you so much for everything you're doing for the game. If you wouldn't mind just if you wanna share with, you know, people want to reach out to you or get in touch with you somehow, what would be the best way to do that?
Sadie: Yeah. I think if you go to our website, collegehockeyinc.com, one, we have a ton of information on college hockey, on all the things we talked about, our research, everything, but it has all of our contact information. Myself and then our executive director, Sean Hogan, reach out to us. You know, we love to help support programs, people. We're a nonprofit.
We're always free. I always say that this comes off harsh. I don't care where you play college hockey. I don't care what level it is. Just let us be someone that helps you get there and helps make that process a little easier.
So, yeah, reach out to us, follow us, whatever it needs, and and and then we're always happy to be a resource for anyone.
Scott: That's awesome. And I should have asked this earlier, and I meant to, but I forgot. Are those your guitars in the background?
Sadie: Oh, no. I'm such a poser.
Jamie: Ah. Okay.
Sadie: I get played, like, banana pancakes by Jack Johnson, like,
Jamie: the first verse. That's funny.
Scott: That's something.
Jamie: Well, they look good on your wall. They look really good on your wall.
Sadie: Yeah. Yeah. I'm a poser.
Scott: All good.
Sadie: I saw some hockey sticks back there. Good good good thought.
Scott: All good. Just curious. Anyway, Sadie, this is such a pleasure.
Sadie: Thank you so guys. I really appreciate it.
Jamie: Yeah. Likewise. Thank you so much. We'll see you soon, Sadie.
Scott: Alright.
Jamie: Yep. Thanks. Bye. Bye. WNBC.
WNBC.
Scott: WNBC. WNBC. WN.
Jamie: Alright, everybody. And we are back from our interview with Sadie Lundquist, College Hockey Inc. It was good. Oh, yeah. Was.
Yeah. She was great. Yeah. Yeah. It Gordy's high hat incoming.
Yeah. Inbound. Well, inbound when it when it opens
Scott: for the season. Yeah. No. We should go out there. Love to go out there.
Jamie: Dude, I would too, by the way. Yeah. It's funny you said that. I would actually speaking of going out there, dude, world juniors is out there right now.
Scott: That's gonna be so much watch TV.
Jamie: I'm pretty sure the exhibition games are right now.
Scott: Oh, yeah?
Jamie: Yeah. That's if you if you guys don't know what world juniors are, world juniors are the 20 year olds. Is that what they are?
Scott: You know, they have multiple
Jamie: age But this one's different, though. This is like the main one.
Scott: This is the highest level in terms well, the oldest age group. And I think it's u I think it's 20.
Jamie: I think it's 20 also, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. World Juniors.
If guys don't know World Juniors, you should watch it because The United States has been very impressive the last couple of years.
Scott: Yeah. They're of last two years in a row.
Jamie: Yeah. World Juniors is what it normally starts after Christmas, right?
Scott: Yeah. Right around the
Jamie: New Year. Yeah. Right.
Scott: Yeah. It's definitely going on right around the New Year.
Jamie: Yes. I think you're right. Think it starts, like, the end of the the end of the month. Yeah. World Genius is awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully
Scott: And you get to see, like, you know, inbound talent that's, like Bro. Just lights out, like watching Picard, watching, like, Lane Hudson,
Jamie: watching Ryan Leonard, Will Smith.
Scott: All the good.
Jamie: Yeah. I mean, Trey Augustine. They've all they were all there.
Scott: Yeah.
Jamie: Mean, it's right. Like, right. Sal Brini, like, I mean, it's the world junior is awesome. Yeah. It's so good to watch.
Like you said, it's all kids that will be either in major d one colleges and then in the NHL or jumping right into the NHL.
Scott: Yeah. It's funny because there's some NHL players that could go back and play. Like, last year, Bedard and Celebrini could have played World Series, but clearly, they're not gonna leave the NHL to go do that, but they're eligible.
Jamie: So I'm pretty sure Ryan Leonard went last year for them to stay. Right? He was drafted, but it was but I I don't think he was in the NHL. He was playing for Boston College.
Scott: He's still playing for Boston College because he didn't join the caps until the end
Jamie: of the season. I think at the end of the season, he went when they lost in the first and four. I think you're right.
Scott: Yes.
Jamie: Yeah. Know you're right. Yeah. But you're right. NHL guys can go back.
Scott: Yeah. I don't know if anyone's done that, though. I don't
Jamie: think so either. But they can.
Scott: Unless there's Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but just getting back to Sadie She's awesome. No. And it was so interesting, again, just the community based model of things.
And, every time we talk about Talk about that a couple times. It just makes me think about how, I guess fortunate in a lot of ways those kids are to stay with their friends. They make lifelong friends. It's not like they're jumping from team to team. Yeah.
All this stuff. They're like, you're really a part of the community. Yeah. And that's why high school hockey's so big.
Jamie: No, it's legit out there, man. Yeah. That community model's insane. Makes me want to move out there as a crazy hockey parent. Right?
Dude, I'm sure it's awesome, by
Scott: What do you think Nancy would say if you went home and be like, listen, I think for development, we're gonna move to Minnesota.
Jamie: It's kinda like moving to Canada, no? Similar ish move, wouldn't you say? We know somebody who's done that.
Scott: That's true. We do know someone that's done that.
Jamie: Yeah. He moves for the season. That's crazy. Listen, Crazy Hockey Dad. Yeah.
Is there another way to describe?
Scott: No. I don't think so. He's one of he's cut from the same cloth.
Jamie: Aren't we all?
Scott: He's kind of next level.
Jamie: So so I was just gonna say, some of us have different levels of it.
Scott: Yeah.
Jamie: Right? That's listen. But they're out there. Yeah. You know?
That's dedication. That's for sure.
Scott: Yeah. But like, and then, you know, just also thinking about the the Sadie's experience and also talking about how, like, there were girls that she played with where, like, hockey wasn't going to be their be all and end all, but they they also didn't get, like, pushed aside. Like they they had a place to continue to play and continue to participate and
Jamie: Mhmm.
Scott: Develop, etcetera. And you know, again, that's just such a a great thing, you know, because for us around here, there's many kids that I don't think have an opportunity to play hockey in an environment that's like, you're with your friends and whatever until you get to high school. Yeah. Now it's like, you know, high school hockey, you're you're not gonna have kids that just wanna try hockey for the first time. And I'm not saying that's what Sadie experienced, but it's less accessible.
Jamie: Listen, it's very impressive out there. What was impressive out there too was that the girls can start playing. They don't have to play with boys at a very young age.
Scott: Also yeah. Right?
Jamie: That was crazy to hear that. I'm curious if Canada is similar to that.
Scott: Oh, yeah. I don't
Jamie: know. I would think so. But they have so many hockey players out in Minnesota that they the the young ladies, young girls that play ice hockey don't have to play with boys if they don't want it.
Scott: Right.
Jamie: Which is and it's funny. We actually had a write in on Instagram from Mario. Mario has a a nine year old girl he was saying, and one of his questions was, you know, you know, when to take them off coed and and just go into, you know, into regular girls. And I hope that Sadie answered your question, Mario. That and the other question he had was, he was worried about starting his his daughter's journey too late.
Like, not starting at like four, five, and six. And I think that everything that we have heard so far is that that really doesn't matter.
Scott: No. Especially if you think about like the Like
Jamie: you don't need to start at four, five, and six.
Scott: No. It's probably less common to well, I shouldn't even say what do I know? But just talking to the conversation we had with Bob Mancini and just how and many others will just say puberty is the point at which things change dramatically. You know, there are stories of people that don't start.
Jamie: Oh,
Scott: sure. Otto Otto was talking with a collegiate player at Mercyhurst.
Jamie: Okay.
Scott: And he played lacrosse and he didn't start playing hockey until he was 10. And now he's playing d one.
Jamie: I was just gonna say, there's people that put skates on when they're 10, 11, 12 for the first time and play division one hockey.
Scott: Yeah. It's it's it's totally possible. Now, that is No. That the
Jamie: But it happens all the time?
Scott: No. But like, if develop a passion for the game, they love to play it, they, you know, they work. Happens all the time.
Jamie: Yeah. There are kids that that haven't that there's kids Otto's age, 11, right, that have not put skates on yet, that will play the Visual Boy Nice Hockey.
Scott: Probably. Probably not too many. But they're I
Jamie: think it's more than you think. Yeah. I do.
Scott: Could be.
Jamie: Yeah. I do. You know, I I think sometimes we start this at in the early specialization.
Sadie: Yeah.
Jamie: And I and I showed you a graph recently Yes. About
Scott: But that was early specialization.
Jamie: It was early specialization, but I don't think it's my point is that I don't think it needs to be all hockey all the time from four or five. No, and it shouldn't. Right. But when we started this, I think we all thought it was supposed to be.
Scott: In some ways.
Jamie: What we have found out is the opposite.
Scott: It's yeah. Long road
Jamie: of just doing a variety.
Scott: Yeah, because I would say that when spring would come around in summer, you're thinking like, Oh, I gotta pack in hockey, pack in hockey. Right. Yeah. Even though, you know, your kid might be doing something else, it was still like, hockey, you gotta do hockey, you gotta play hockey.
Jamie: Exactly. Yeah. And I don't think it's necessary. From our guests that we've spoke to on here Yeah. There's a very common theme across all of them.
Scott: Yeah, no doubt.
Jamie: Right? That you don't need to specialize in the game. Go do other stuff because it helps your athletic ability. Right. Right?
Scott: And another thing with Sadie also, like she was talking about her parents and like that her mom was like, you know
Jamie: Yeah.
Scott: They were more supportive than anything. Yeah. You know, they weren't these crazy hockey people. They weren't a hockey family.
Jamie: That's a theme too, by the way. Yeah. That's a theme from Doug Christiansen, from Jeff Lovacchio, Bob Mancini. It's a theme all the way across those people,
Scott: by the way.
Jamie: Mean, there's again, there's ongoing themes woven into all these people's conversations that we're having with them.
Scott: No doubt. And it is from, like, same personal experience. It's not, like, anecdotal that they're just, like, regurgitating what, like, you know, talking heads are saying.
Jamie: We're not we're not, like, right. We're we're not telling everybody what everybody else is saying. These are all their words, and they're all saying the same thing. Yeah. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Scott: No. I know. And that makes me also think of, like, when we spoke with, like, Alex Kim.
Jamie: Oh, well. Go ahead.
Scott: No. I was just gonna say, like, he he had a very interesting point about talking about how we form opinions based on other people's opinions.
Jamie: That was great, by the way. Great. That's we have that clip. No?
Scott: We do. Yeah. We Yeah. Post it Yeah. But, like, you know, it's not rooted in fact.
You know? And so it's
Jamie: like people telling other stupid people stuff.
Scott: Right. It's like bro science or, like, blind leading the blind. You know? And and the more you talk to people that have reached high levels and now look. Of course, like everything else, it depends, right?
Jamie: No question. There's always outliers.
Scott: There's always outliers. Yeah. But that's, those are the exceptions, not the norm. 100. We're starting to get more clarity on what, for those that have been successful, what and are more normal people, not like the generational talents.
From their experiences that some of the themes that you mentioned ring true.
Jamie: Right. The generational talents are a different animal. Right? We're talking like the masses.
Scott: Right.
Jamie: Right? Yeah. You know, but yeah, no, you're right. It's the exact same theme across everybody, which is really cool to hear, actually.
Scott: Yeah,
Jamie: that's It's changing my mindset, that's for sure. Yeah. You know?
Scott: Without a doubt, mine too.
Jamie: Yeah, and hopefully it's helping a lot of other people. Hopefully it's helping a lot of people that are listening to us. Maybe you've kinda changed your path a little bit from being pigeonholed into, you know, all hockey all the time to more of a, like, you know, variety. Long long date long goal with a lot of variety in there, whether it's baseball, basketball, football, mountain biking, gymnastics, jujitsu, boxing, whatever. Yeah.
Rollerblading, you know, running. I I don't know. What else what else have I not curling. Give me something else. Tiddlywinks.
I don't know. Tiddlywinks. I don't know. I'm reaching for things here, and you're not helping.
Scott: I'm just watching you try to figure
Jamie: it You're watching me flounder?
Scott: No, you're doing a great job.
Jamie: Speaking of Flounder, can I just tell you? Watched Animal House the other day. So good. So, so, so. You forgot how good John Belushi was, by the way.
Oh my god. John, Jim? John.
Scott: John. John. John Belushi.
Jamie: Yeah. Jim Belushi was the other
Scott: one. Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah, dude. He was he was phenomenal. Died way too young. Do you know where he's buried? Fun fact.
No. I don't. Can you give a guess?
Scott: Yes. I can give you a guess. Cloquet, Minnesota.
Jamie: Under Gordie's hi hat? No. He's actually buried on Martha's Vineyard.
Scott: Why?
Jamie: I don't know. Don't know.
Scott: I don't think
Jamie: he was a wild man. I think I'm pretty sure that he liked it there. He liked vacationing there.
Scott: Yeah.
Jamie: So he's buried in an undescript grave on Martha's Vineyard. I know where it is, I've seen it.
Scott: Really?
Jamie: Yeah. Well, we got Martha's Vineyard a lot. But yeah, so that's probably the only reason why I know he's buried there.
Scott: Oh, fair.
Jamie: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you would never think out there because he was in Hollywood and
Scott: Actually, would never think of it. Period.
Jamie: Yeah. Understood. Died way too young though.
Scott: I think
Jamie: he was in his forties. Right?
Scott: Yeah. Was he?
Jamie: Don't He was 39, 40? He was young. Very funny bastard though, man. Yeah. You ever watched Animal House in a while?
Scott: No. Not recently. Oh my god. So good. Yeah, yeah.
No, there's a lot of movies that, you know, since we've been talking about stuff recently that I'm like, Oh, I should watch that again. I should watch that again.
Jamie: It's funny you said that. Jeff Lavecchio posted something on one of the clips we put of him on our Instagram, and he actually said the words no doy, remember when we spoke no doy? Yeah, only a guy like him can make that sound cool. Some people can't do that. You know what I mean?
So I wrote something like, I haven't read that one in a while. Like, like, it's and I and then I wrote, like, it's a gift, Todd, in in quotations. Yeah. And I said, like, what movie? He hasn't seen it yet.
Oh, no. But I'm curious if he'll know I'm the
Scott: sure he'll crush it.
Jamie: Do you know the movie? No. Oh, bro. It's Wedding Crashers.
Scott: Oh. Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah. When he paints in the picture
Scott: Oh my it's
Jamie: a gift, Todd. Oh my god.
Scott: Oh my god. That movie is so
Jamie: It's it's they don't make movies like that anymore.
Scott: Bradley Cooper was good in that too.
Jamie: He was phenomenal. Sack.
Scott: Sack. Yeah. Sack. When they're playing football.
Jamie: Big tree fall hard. Yeah. How many fingers were rolled up? He's was the line? Crab cakes in football.
That's what Maryland does. Like a sack lunch. That
Scott: movie is hysterical.
Jamie: Hot route. Hot route. Red seven. Red seven. Sorry.
Scott: Alright. Well, you were in Dude,
Jamie: again, they don't make movies like that anymore, I'm having my child watch them.
Scott: You should. And is it a good excuse to watch them yourself? A 100%. Oh, you haven't seen this? We're watching it.
Jamie: Dude, meanwhile, you're a thousand percent right, by the way. I am absolutely pigeonholing him into watching the movies I
Scott: want to watch. Is he coming through on the other side enjoying them? Oh, dude. Loves it.
Jamie: Liar Liar. Ace Ventura one and two. He's watched all four Beverly Hills Cops. Yeah. That stuff's so funny.
Yeah. You know, have a job. I'm just from Caddyshack. I have to be careful because he's only 13. Right.
So I have to be a little careful of some of the content. Yeah. Know. But dude, some of the comedic stuff from some of people
Scott: We had a
Jamie: so good.
Scott: You from Otto that he loves, Rush Hour.
Jamie: Great movie. Yeah. I mean Yeah. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Yeah.
All three of them are good, by the way. Yeah.
Scott: I don't
Sadie: know if he's
Scott: seen the Thin Rise. He's watched one and two.
Jamie: You know what? I'm pretty sure Dominic has seen them.
Scott: Oh, yeah?
Jamie: I think he has. I think he has. Yeah, not with me, but he has seen them.
Scott: Yeah, they're funny. They're good.
Jamie: Again, they don't make movies like that anymore.
Scott: Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, yeah. So anything else?
Jamie: Man. Yeah. Listen, I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas because this episode's gonna come out right before Christmas. So wish everybody Merry Christmas.
Scott: Yes. Happy holidays to everyone. Enjoy your family. Enjoy any time off you might have from work. Yes.
Jamie: Hopefully everybody has a safe and healthy holiday.
Scott: All of that stuff.
Jamie: And we will see you guys right before New Year's. Yeah. That's the plan.
Scott: That is the plan. We'll That do
Jamie: is the plan. So here we go, dude. Nice episode.
Scott: Yeah. Likewise.
Jamie: Gotcha, buddy.
Scott: Alright.
Jamie: I'll see you on the next one. Yep. Later. Later, dude.