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A relatable and honest podcast about the highs and lows of being a youth hockey parent. Join us as we share real stories, struggles, and wins from the rink, offering insights and support for parents navigating the world of youth hockey.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to episode 51 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. Buddy, what's going on?
Scott:Yo, what's up?
Jamie:How are doing? Episode 51.
Scott:51 it is. Yeah, good job on the intro, man. I feel like that just that that was the most natural, seamless
Jamie:Yeah, you like that,
Scott:Yeah, that that was good. That was solid.
Jamie:I don't know why I did that well, but we'll take it.
Scott:Hey, dude. We'll take it when you can get them.
Jamie:Yeah, exactly right. We'll take it. So, what's going on?
Scott:So dude, I the hockey season's coming to an end.
Jamie:I know it's crazy, isn't it?
Scott:Yeah. It's it's we're we're almost there.
Jamie:Does it really ever end though? Yeah. Does it really though? Like it does. It does but does it really?
Jamie:No.
Scott:I was so look, I mean, there there's always conversations. There always there's always a hockey thing somewhere in the week. But no, I just feel like in terms of like, season and like knowing that this chapter is is coming to a close another year in the books in terms of, you know, like club play and
Jamie:Right.
Scott:It's it's really close. So, you know, it's
Jamie:Yeah. No. I hear you, man.
Scott:It went bad. Do
Jamie:you guys have do you guys have districts after playoffs? Are you guys done after playoffs?
Scott:Our season is finished early playoff.
Jamie:Like Got it.
Scott:Not not even a little bit unless it's like Gotcha. Okay. You know, like one of those, like participation playoff brackets.
Jamie:Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay.
Scott:You know what I mean?
Jamie:Right. Understood. So your season's gonna end early as well. Our season's ending super early this year.
Scott:I mean, we have Yeah. So we have a tournament. We have we're going to tournament. We're going to Boston, not Boston soon.
Jamie:The hell where we just came from.
Ken:Yep. I get it.
Scott:Yeah. And then I think I counted well, we had two games canceled this past weekend because of snow inclement weather.
Jamie:Oh, you guys were supposed to play on Sunday.
Scott:Yeah. We had two games scheduled for Sunday, which were canceled.
Jamie:Right.
Scott:So I don't know if those are getting made up. I think all including those two games Do. What?
Jamie:I think they get made up the when the season ends, I think there's the following week before playoffs. Yeah. I think is for
Scott:They leave it open for makeup games. But only if those were league games.
Jamie:Yes. Yes. Correct. Were they league games?
Scott:Good question. I think so. Pretty sure they were.
Jamie:Gotcha. Meanwhile, let's give, let's give a shout out to you for actually doing this. Being sick Oh, as a pod? This episode with you being sick as a dog.
Scott:Yeah, I've had my, I've had better moments, but listen, there are two things had to happen this weekend. One was shoveling.
Jamie:Yes.
Scott:Two was podcasting. Both got check marks.
Jamie:Yeah. Listen, I get again, I give you credit because it's not easy. Do you know, being cheesy? Well,
Scott:I mean that that can be kind of easy sometimes, especially
Jamie:something like that. That way, then?
Scott:What was that from?
Jamie:Oh my god. Really? For you not like a child or like the in the eighties and nineties?
Scott:I was pretty sure
Jamie:I said it's not easy, and then I said being cheesy. Yeah. Chester Cheetah, and then he goes, wait, wait, wait,
Scott:don't remember the part.
Jamie:Because you do that post on Instagram or something like that. That was fantastic.
Scott:Yeah.
Jamie:Anyway, so yeah. Alright. So so you guys are alright. So you guys have some makeup games, it sounds like.
Scott:Yeah. There's all we only have I think like is six games, six to eight games altogether left going into this past weekend and Right. We played one, two got shot down. If they get made up, then I don't know. We got maybe
Jamie:I think we only have two left, man. I think two and out.
Scott:Include like league and non league games like altogether?
Jamie:Yeah. Think we're two and out.
Scott:And and no tourneys?
Jamie:No. No. We just came back from Boston, not Boston. You know? So I think it's just two games a week off for like makeups, which we don't have any.
Jamie:And then I think playoffs. So I don't think. Yeah, I think that's all she wrote. Wow. Maybe my countdown year, no nationals, nothing for our age bracket for some strange reason.
Jamie:Actually, I take it back. I do know why there's not districts. There's not districts because we're a U13. And if we went to districts, I think you would see U14 teams, you know, because it's, you know, because it's it's tier two, but it's pure 13.
Scott:Yeah.
Jamie:You know, it's pure 13 you so. So that's why I think we got bounced out of districts this year.
Scott:Got you
Jamie:something along those lines, those kids have been hitting for two years. We've only been hitting for this past year, Something that was the Yeah. But that explanation that that was given to us. Okay. Whether it's bullshit or not, it it's possible.
Scott:Okay.
Jamie:That was our explanation. So tune out, homeboy.
Scott:Yeah. Tune Yeah. Gotta start thinking, thinking about next season. Yeah. That's like, you know, more conversations are popping up about that.
Scott:Was talking to a dad this past weekend. You know, just again, just the usual conversation, you know, parents I think are keeping things close to their chest. You know, people are starting to get a little bit more honest about what they thought, you
Jamie:know, and
Scott:then we'll see.
Jamie:Yeah, no, I hear you. No, it's that time of the year. That's for sure. Right? I mean, coaches are having conversations trying to see who they're kind of securing for next year.
Jamie:Now listen, it's that time of the year. No question about
Ken:it. You know? So,
Jamie:it should be interesting.
Scott:Yeah, and for all the parents out there listening, I mean, I'm sure there's some people that are already pulling their hair out of their head, And you I think, you know, like I, some of the decisions can be really hard and I think I can just speak from my own experience having traveled a good distance last year to play AAA and it didn't necessarily work out the way we wanted it to, it was a lot of time, effort, energy. I'm not saying it was a bad experience, but was it was it worth it? Not sure, you know. So I I think one thing that gets, you know, it's easy to lose sight of this time of year because like, you know, a lot of it's like people wanting to maybe go from double a to triple a or if you're playing triple A, go to a better triple A team or maybe you're getting a call for an ID skater or this or that. You know, at the end of the day, you know, it's really important to think about logistics, know, the family as a whole, that's gonna do, like, you know, in terms of like travel on the weekends and all that stuff.
Scott:So, mean, while yeah, of course you want your kid to have, you know, great coaching, play on good teams if possible, know, all that stuff is certainly very, you know, valid and also important. But, you know, if you're on the fence or you're not sure, you know, it's really a tough decision, think it's, it might be hard to go wrong with doing the things that make sense for your family logistically, you know?
Jamie:Yeah. That's well, listen, you did, you made it easier for your family this year logistically. Happy you did it?
Scott:Oh yeah, absolutely. And to be honest with you, just even like me changing jobs this year.
Jamie:That would have been a problem.
Scott:Like, I don't even know how that would have worked.
Jamie:Yeah. That would have been a problem if you guys were doing that last year.
Scott:Yeah. I really don't, I don't know. Yeah. It would have been it would have been a major a major challenge. So in any event, yeah.
Jamie:No, listen, that happens. Families need to take that into consideration.
Scott:Yeah.
Jamie:I mean, it's real. It's a thing. You know? Yeah, man. No, I got this.
Jamie:We should do an episode on on silly season. One of these one of these weeks we should do and it's funny. Were gonna
Scott:I think we're there dude. Like, I'm not saying right now, but obviously, but like maybe even next week.
Jamie:You know, it's funny. Yes, we should. You know, we keep it's funny. We keep pushing back poor Andrew Stavillier of Titan battle gear, you know, because The USA Hockey stuff keeps popping up. Right?
Jamie:Or USA Hockey, the developmental league stuff keeps popping up and it's a very hot topic right now. Of developmental league, we have a good episode for you guys today. Have an awesome interview with Ken Martel from USA Hockey to clear up some more DL info or misinfo.
Scott:And for those of you that don't know, Ken Martel is the senior director of player and coach development at USA Hockey. Yeah. And he's been there, jeez, I think he was there going back to, he thinks it started like 2009, if I'm not mistaken. He's been there over twenty years.
Jamie:I was like, I thought he said twenty seven years, that sound right? Because he said year two of the US men's and I think he said US men's was there for twenty nine years.
Scott:Well, was a part of the national team development program staff as an assistant coach from eight years starting back in 1998.
Jamie:We were
Scott:I mean, like, he's he's been a part of USA for a long time and
Ken:Yeah. So,
Scott:in any event, so he was I mean, it was amazing on the heels of having Bob Mancini on, now we have Ken Martel to shed some more light on the DL. Got to back. Yeah, no.
Ken:Who's better than us? What?
Jamie:I said back to back, USA Hockey Guys, who's better than us?
Scott:That's a great question. Some people try.
Jamie:Some people do try, don't they?
Scott:Yeah. They do try. In any event. In any event.
Ken:In any event.
Scott:So, yeah, so we have him today as our guest to talk more about USA Hockey and you know, their role in all of this and we got some questions over the Instagrams and I know you got some people texting you directly about questions asked him, so he stuck those in, in a part of our conversation. So yeah, I feel a lot of great information coming up in the interview, but before we do, James, let's just take a moment, shout out Howie's Hockey and other partners.
Jamie:Howie's Hockey, Crazy ten.
Scott:Crazy ten.
Jamie:Right. Go get your tape, laces, sweatshirts, gear, my favorite, the yellow handled scissor.
Scott:Ringing endorsement for that product. You're like, I
Jamie:love their scissor. I can tell you my wife and I use it like around the house everywhere.
Scott:Handled Scissor?
Jamie:Well, I said it because if you remember our last last podcast, I was a little bit tongue twister. Right? It doesn't seem like that change. I was enunciating is what I was doing. Yeah.
Scott:You
Jamie:were I don't really call it a scissor. I'd said that by design.
Scott:Oh, well, way, well done.
Jamie:Yeah. So I appreciate it. So Yeah. No doubt. So go get your yellow handled scissor.
Jamie:Yep. Check. Yeah. Because like I said, my wife and I use it around the house in multiple spots.
Scott:Oh, that's either
Jamie:that or I use her meat shears.
Scott:Oh, yeah, totally.
Jamie:No, I really do. She gets so angry at me. I'll take the the shears out of the
Scott:night. Vegan?
Jamie:Yeah, she is. But is she not vegan? She's like Pescatarian? No. She doesn't eat fish.
Jamie:She she's it's like avo lacto or something like that. Like, she eats dairy, but not meat. I don't know. She
Scott:Oh, but she uses she uses it for meat that she that she might prepare for you or your Oh, yeah.
Jamie:No. She cooks she cooks steak and stuff. She had no problem. She had no problem making it. Yeah.
Jamie:She makes fish. She makes steak. Yeah. So I use her I use her her, like, meat cheers to, like, cut something around the house.
Scott:Like a package that just came in the door.
Jamie:Yes.
Scott:Correct. For example.
Jamie:Like an Amazon or something like that or a chewy box or whatever's whatever's at the front step. Right?
Scott:Yeah.
Jamie:So I do that. She gets mad at me. So we replaced it with the Howie Tockey scissors.
Scott:That's funny because I use those same shears.
Jamie:The meat ones?
Scott:From the butcher block.
Jamie:For everything else but meat.
Scott:Well, no. Yeah. I don't really use it for meat. No. But I used it to open up bags of salt this weekend.
Scott:I gave them back to my wife and I said, yeah, you should wash those
Ken:You might wanna run
Jamie:those under some
Scott:hot water.
Ken:Make sure
Scott:you wash those. Yeah, that that was that. Anyway Yeah, man. So, how was hockey?
Jamie:Crazy 10 for 10% off.
Scott:Alright. So as we mentioned, it is the end of the season, but it's not too early to start thinking about next season. And for all the coaches and managers out there, if you're thinking about video review for your team in the twenty sixth, twenty seventh season, check out Athletic Performance Insight. Eric over there will be more than happy to give a demo of the platform, tag a game, reach out to him, mention Crazy Hockey Dads, get more information, but it is an absolute rock star of a platform that is great for youth all the way up through college to do video analytics, breakdown games, they tag them, they have a software that hosts all the analytics, It's really robust. Reach out to Athletic Performance Insight, use the contact form, ask Eric for a demo and take a look.
Scott:Yeah, it's awesome.
Jamie:So, Athletic
Scott:Performance Insight.
Jamie:And all you coaches, what you should do is after tryouts, you know, find out how many kids you got. And then what you should do is go to titanbattlegear.com backslash crazy hockey dads, and you should go on and you should have Titan make your entire team custom bass layers.
Scott:That would be dope.
Jamie:Use the code Crazy Dads 10 for 10% off, and they make, they will make custom custom base layers. They'll do like, if your team is just to say blue and white, they'll do a blue and they'll do a white logos, the team logo on the chest or on the back or in the arms. And then they'll even do like a third color, like an alternate.
Scott:So, just to be, I, you know, I, the 10% works on custom stuff also.
Jamie:I think it works on everything.
Scott:Works on everything.
Jamie:Yeah. I ask them, but use our, use our code crazy dads 10 for 10% off, even if you don't have to do it for your whole team. Maybe your parents just want to give your son a base layer or daughter a base layer just because it's awesome. And it's the most protective gear out there for kids protection wise. So they're one of our partners, titanbattlegear.com backslash Crazy Hockey Dads will bring you right there for your and it's Crazy Dads 10 per 10% off.
Jamie:They have an awesome product.
Scott:No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. I keep on seeing stuff pop up. USA Hockey everywhere. Yeah,
Jamie:Super safe. You know, no Velcro on the, on the back of the neck. So you don't to worry about it getting crushed in the wash. It's really good stuff. And then keep your kids safe, the highest quality stuff on the market based on our eyes.
Scott:Yep. And then, you know, also now that we have, the seasons are coming to an end, it's a great time to continue your your off ice training and enter in hockeytraining.com and hockey training HQ is the Instagram handle. Correct, James?
Jamie:Yep. Coach Kevin.
Scott:Yep. Coach Kevin. So he we're gonna be partnering with him and you'll be hearing more about, you know, his his platform and what he's doing over there, but a 100% start checking him out. It's great to work with his videos, his instruction, his speed strength, agility training, stick handling, all off fights, you can do it from home. He's got Zoom classes where, you know, kids can join, work on stick handling in a, like a group environment, but you know, everyone can So do it from definitely check him out as well.
Jamie:Yeah. Guys will be hearing a lot about coach Kevin from us in February. It'd be good, you know, so we're, we're looking forward to coach Kevin joining us. Guys will start to hear a lot more from him in February and we're looking forward to it because he's a great dude. Coach Kevin.
Jamie:Yeah, man. So there you go. That takes care of the business part. What else is going on other than we have Ken Martel from USA Hockey here to clear up some DL stuff for everybody.
Scott:Yeah, man. And just kind
Jamie:of laid down the youth hockey law in general.
Ken:It was great. Yeah,
Scott:was. It was. I was no. Yeah, no doubt. I'm just thinking about the weekend we had just going back to our hockey weekend.
Scott:We had one game, two got snowed out Sunday. So we played one
Jamie:You were saying that.
Scott:Against the team down a more central Southern Jersey. Red Bank generals, they came up to play us and, you know, we've had it we've had our way with them this season. Oh, saw the other was pretty close. Right. This one, we got the better of them as well.
Jamie:Nice. Old man had two goals, I saw. I saw the I saw the second one.
Scott:Yeah. No. No. He was yeah. He played well.
Scott:Played well, I thought. Know, I I I have to say he he's definitely made an improvement on his, like, on his compete level when he's off
Jamie:the puck. Pretty legit.
Scott:Yeah, no, for sure. It was better than what I've seen.
Jamie:Yeah, you gotta be happy about that.
Scott:Yeah. Listen, progress not perfection, know, it always takes longer than you want it to. But I have to say he's definitely, you know, I think a corner in some ways, like it's not as consistent as I'd want it to be, but it's definitely more than Good. It You know, and and hit the second goal that he scored, he, you know, he chased the guy down from behind. It wasn't he didn't have too much ground to cover, but like stick lifted, picked it, you know, made a move, you know, got a shot off the high slot and tucked it in and that was a nice one.
Jamie:Nice, man.
Scott:Yes. First goal was a it was a snipe and it but like, I think he should from where I was standing, I thought he should have passed it, but he's like, dad, where I was, you know, the goalie gave me half the net. So, I just.
Jamie:Okay.
Scott:So, I was like, all right. I mean, if that's what it was, then great.
Jamie:They gave you, right? Yeah, sure.
Scott:But, I was like, but you know, like all the goals and stuff, you know, it's nice to talk about and he always like gets excited about it. But I think for me personally, he's, you know, overall this season we talked about is like kind of coming to an end and I think, you know, while there's plenty of things that, you know, we, whatever. Well, you know, I would have thought we would have been a little further down the line with, I I do think that from the move from triple a to double a, if you were to ask me was it the right move, I would say a 100%. Good. For a lot of reasons.
Scott:That's good. But I think in part he got he gained a lot of confidence. Just having a slightly different role in the team and also just, you know, being in an environment where, you know, he had a little bit more time and space. Sure. And, yeah, so all all in all, I think this was a good move for us you know, I'm I'm happy for him that he, like, had a good season Good.
Scott:You know, personally in a lot of ways. So, so that's, that's a win.
Jamie:Good. Real nice. Yeah, man. Good. So you're happy you did it for some of our parents out there that are wondering if they should take their kids from triple a to double a or double a to single a if it's not working or their kids having a hard time or struggling or his confidence is shot, you know, Scott and I both did it.
Ken:And
Jamie:we both are our fits out from AAA to AA. Sometimes you need a little bit of a reset. Sometimes you need to go back to having some fun. Sometimes you just need to kind of clear your head a little bit and go to a new environment.
Scott:Right? And, but I will also say at the same time that didn't come without like my, you know, I was, you know, maybe my expectations for him were maybe a little bit higher, meaning that like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I maybe I thought that he would, I don't know, perform at a higher level. And I think there is part of it where like, you know, it's, you know, I won't even go there. The bottom line is that like, if any parent like is facing this choice and like you think, you know, oh, well, he goes down to double A, you know, he's gotta do this, do that, do this, do that.
Scott:It's like, even still, it's it's not like the move down is going to ensure that they're gonna be the standout, you know, every game in every practice. True. Because that's not the case just because they played tier one the season before. It would have been nice if every game he was like head and shoulders above everyone else.
Jamie:Of course.
Scott:And in practice too, sure, that would be great to see. And I thought maybe I would see more of that if I'm being totally honest and that wasn't the case, but that's also fine.
Jamie:Know? He had a good year though. He had a good season. I mean, it's not over yet, but he had a good season.
Scott:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice man. How about you?
Jamie:How about me? What's the question? Do I do I like where we were this year? What's the question?
Scott:No. Just your hockey and weekend and maybe there, you know, you were I I just threw in a little bit of a recap.
Jamie:Gotcha. Alright.
Scott:So We're talking about the season coming to an end, but whatever whatever is good for you.
Jamie:No. Our well, you saw you saw our first game, right?
Scott:I did.
Jamie:You know, so Dom was, listen, listen, he's struggling with his brain. You know, we we have an ADHD child who I think, you know. Struggles with like some, you know, processing sometimes, you know, see the puck kind of going to the corner, you know, and then he's kind of late to get to kind of make the move to it. So he's struggling with other stuff away from the game, but it's affecting his on ice play. So he's not too happy about himself.
Jamie:So as a parent, that's hard, Right? Because you have a really talented kid and he knows he's really talented, but he's struggling. His ADHD is really doing a number on him. So that's been challenging as a, from a parent standpoint. So he's talking to somebody like an ADHD person who's trying to like reset his brain.
Jamie:Dom's issue is, is that like he knows he's a he has ability when he goes to make a move and somebody gets the better of him, even just like a poke check or like his stick handle is choppy because it's just not working that day. Whatever it is, he gets mad at himself and he goes in the tank and you can't go in the tank, you know, and he kind of gives up. So he kind of starts here and then something happens and he goes, you know, very rarely does it come up. So we're trying to be positive, you know, them a lot of like positive stuff on like Instagram and YouTube. So listen, you know, it's it's listen.
Jamie:I can't really complain because he still has if you look back, you know, he's played like 40 games. He's got like 43 points. Is it the worst thing in the world? It's not.
Scott:Right.
Jamie:Okay. You know, he played defense for two months, that kind of threw him for a little bit of a loop. So it's been a challenging year for him, but I don't think challenge in a bad way. I actually think was pretty good because listen, adversity is real, right? I mean, it's a real thing in life.
Jamie:It's a real thing in sports and you have to kind of get yourself through it. Right. And you gotta build a strong mind because life is hard. And now we say all the time, you know, this game is all about building life skills. Right.
Jamie:So, you know, I would say that he's not thrilled with himself. I will say this even though his gameplay is not great, He has gotten much more physical. As the years gone gone by. That part of his game has has taken off, right? You know, the physical part of his game has really kind of jumped.
Jamie:So listen, if I have to take anything away from this year, it's a little bit of adversity. You know, have we handled it well? To be determined. But the physical part has definitely come out. He has doesn't have an issue with the the hitting part of the game.
Scott:Oh. Yeah. I mean, I would say that I I definitely saw that on, you know, this past weekend. He was impressive in terms of his like physicality. He didn't he definitely got after it and for someone who's a, you know, a smaller guy out on the ice, he was definitely like, you know, he was getting, he was mixing it up.
Scott:So, he gave him like a
Ken:lot of props
Scott:for that. And you know, like, look, it was it was it was good to watch. I think it was the second game of his that I've watched and just to kind of like, you know, better understand kind of the stuff that you talk about because Right. You know, without watching a lot of any one player, you know, it's it's hard to kind of pick up on some of that nuance and, you know, I I think I I better understood your perspective on some of the things, you know, that no, but at the same I will say, again, not being super tuned into the things that you're, you know, that's really getting you going. He definitely looks like a top player.
Scott:No, he
Jamie:can play. He can definitely play.
Scott:No. No doubt. I mean
Jamie:His skating is good. He looks the part.
Scott:He's good. Like that first the first attempt on goal that he had where he kind of he was Oh. He's playing left wing, right? So, he's on his off hand. Yeah.
Scott:So, he's on his offhand and he kinda tried to pull this move where he like backhanded top shelf, short side. Yeah. Just like, you know, it's not not was super aggressive move. Yeah, man. Super aggressive.
Jamie:Yeah, listen, if, if he, he, I think he pushed over the crossbar if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Listen, I give him credit for trying for it because that's a ballsy shot, you know?
Scott:No doubt. No doubt. And, and you know, he had some other, you know, some really nice passes, a great touch pass between his legs to his teammates. So he's, he's doing things and seeing things that other players weren't.
Jamie:Yeah, I think you're right.
Scott:No, no doubt. No doubt.
Jamie:Yeah. So he, listen, he, his ability, he just needs to fix his brain. You know, he fixes his brain and I think you'll see a different hockey player.
Ken:Right.
Scott:Yeah. Well
Jamie:Like anything else?
Scott:Yeah, man. But That's nice
Jamie:because the runway is long.
Scott:The runway is long. Gotta keep on reminding ourselves that.
Jamie:That's right. So yeah. Yeah, man. So you wanna toss it over to Ken Martel from USA Hockey?
Scott:Yeah. A 100%.
Jamie:I think everybody's gonna really like this interview.
Scott:Alright. Well Yep. Let's do that.
Jamie:Here we go. Ken Martel, everybody from USA Hockey. Enjoy.
Scott:Alright, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Crazy Hockey Dads Podcast. Today, we have a fantastic interview. We have Ken Martel, who is the senior director of player and coach development at USA Hockey. This is someone who works directly at the intersection of, like, player development, But Ken, you know, you know, again, like I said, thanks so much for taking the time.
Scott:And I know, for those of you that are not familiar or for those that are listening that aren't familiar with USA Hockey and kind of like who's involved in the organization, if you don't mind just kind of setting the table and sharing with the audience kind of like what your role there is and and perhaps like how you got to be so involved with USA Hockey.
Ken:Yeah. This is my twenty seventh year with USA Hockey. I've worn a number of hats. I started off as one of our national team coaches at NTDP in the first, the second year of the program. It was around at the start when we were just getting things up and running.
Ken:And so it was about eight years there and then kind of transitioned to our national office and was doing some player and coach development work ended up getting involved with our, our ADM program when it first started. I've transitioned into doing, you know, a bunch of different coach development projects research on development. We have some interesting projects that we're doing.
Scott:That's cool.
Ken:And I kind of work with our player development staff and our coaching education program now. A number of different hats over that long timeframe, but that's what makes the job fun and interesting. So
Jamie:yeah, you guys are busy over there. That's for sure. You're definitely, you're definitely busy over there.
Ken:Well, that's job security, you know, lots to do, lots to, lots to keep up with. The game keeps evolving, how it's delivered, know, keeps evolving. So we're trying to stay as current as we can.
Scott:You know, what's what's interesting when, and certainly we talk a lot about, I guess, like player development, you know, with, you know, a variety of folks that we've had on here, but something that we don't talk about much is coaching development, which you just mentioned. Yeah. I'd be really interested to hear if you could do like, you know, maybe a little bit of a deeper dive into kinda like what goes into, you know, the coaching development plans, like what kind of the research that you even mentioned that you're doing, like, where are you turning to, you know, what are those conversations look like?
Ken:So I'm, I'm really lucky as part of my job, I get to sort of, I get to discuss coaching and coach development with a lot of our other partner NGBs under the Olympic banner. So whether that's soccer, whether that's volleyball, basketball, you know, swimming, we have a good relationship with US tennis. Wow. You know, different NGBs that do different things, but you know, we are all talking about how do we work with adult learners and how do we help support each coach along their own developmental pathway? Right.
Ken:We're all, we're all at different points. Sure. There's the brand new coach that's just getting in and there's coaches that have been around a long time. Coaching is an experiential type of profession occupation or part time, if you're a volunteer coach, right? You get better, the more you do it, the more you're around and the more you're open to other things.
Ken:So we look at how do coaches learn? How do they learn best? And they learn informally. A lot of times they, you know, they'll take some courses with us. So that's the the formal piece, which is still only about, you know, 15% of of how coaches learn.
Ken:Right? And so it's a small portion when they come to our our programs and the things that that we design. So then it's all right. Well, how do you support from a, an NGB level? Right.
Ken:What are the things that we can do to, to help supply resources? What are the things that we can do to have conversations with coaches? How do we support them along their journey within the framework that we have? So that's a little bit about coach development that we do. We have a player development staff that are out in the field and they will show up at rinks and work directly with programs and coaches and, you know, try and help support their learning process.
Scott:Real quick though. The NGB, a national governing body?
Ken:National governing body. So that's what USA Hockey is the recognized national governing body for ice hockey in The United States. Yep. Under the Olympic banner, we get our sort of charter to exist through the USOPC and congress through the Ted Stevens Sports Act, which established our Olympic our parent organization, which is the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So
Jamie:You know, it's it's interesting. You guys when we talked about Mancini, he mentioned that you guys got the DL, which we'll get into shortly from USA soccer. Is that right?
Ken:We it was or was that part of the background? Yeah. We looked at what they did, what was successful there, maybe not so successful. Right. Cause there were issues with, with how it operated and those things, but this has been done elsewhere and they shut their, their academy program down during COVID due to lack of funding, lack of money and, and those things.
Ken:We were approaching this a little bit differently, but
Jamie:yeah. Gotcha. Very cool. And Mhmm. Go ahead.
Jamie:No. No.
Ken:Go ahead.
Scott:No. So I was just gonna circle back as we talk about like player development and Mhmm. You know, that's something that you hear, you know, so many people talk about and use that word probably pretty loosely, you know, and in terms of development from where you sit and the way that you use that word, what is what is development mean in the context of USA Hockey and in in your specific position? And if I could just tack on to that, how does that change if at all at different age groups?
Ken:Yeah. Well, more complexity with the change at different age groups. I mean, you know, what's good for an 18 year old is probably not the same as what's good for an eight year old. Right? And as parents or people around kids, you recognize what they're capable of, what they're, they're ready for.
Ken:So for us at USA Hockey player development is really, you take a step back organizationally, have two long term goals and one is to have more American kids play the sport and enjoy it and be involved. And then our hope is to have more American kids play the sport really well. Right. So, you know, we want both of those things. They're not mutually exclusive and look, development means something a little different to everybody based on the context that they're in and maybe what they're capable of and those things.
Ken:But you know, when kids start out at six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years of age, we really don't know who's going to be good down the road. Like, is, you know, again, there's a lot of a lot of water under the bridge that has to To flow and a lot of things have to go according to, you know, put the kid in the best environment possible so that they can re you know, kind of achieve whatever potential Yeah. They Yeah. You know, because not every kid wants to, you know, every kid will say, oh, yeah. I probably wanna play in the NHL, but not every kid is willing to do the things necessary to actually get there.
Ken:Right? Let me Yeah.
Jamie:No. Sure.
Ken:And and there's balance and values and and things that are different by families, and that's all good. So we want a really good holistic experience around the sport, especially at those youngest ages. Because, you know, they may not end up in the NHL, but a lot of them are going to end up maybe where I am in the beer and pizza league back down the road and right? And still, you know, if if kids and families have good experiences, you don't have to have played at a high level to have the same passion for the sport that those that do.
Scott:No doubt.
Ken:Right? Yeah. Right? So they can they still do, you know, do they come back to the sport? Do they bring their kids back to the sport?
Ken:Are they our coaches or administrators? You know, are they down the road giving back Yes. To the And I think one of the reasons you're seeing The US have success now on the international stage, I don't know if Bob mentioned it, but 2025, we were across the board. We had, we had won everything at the senior levels, won a lot at the junior levels. Pretty much everything you could win under the International Ice Hockey Federation in 2025 were the number one ranked men, women, and sled going into the Olympics.
Ken:But a lot of that goes back to, you know, we had a lot of growth in our country around the sport in the 1990s. Yeah. Huge rink development across the country. A lot of minor pro entities, you know, evolved east coast league, American league, minor pro hockey in different warm weather areas, Arizona, California. Right?
Ken:Yeah. You know, at one time there were more pro teams in the state of Texas. I haven't looked in a while, but then any other state, you're going really seriously.
Jamie:That's not great.
Ken:But yeah, so the sport grew because more rinks were around. Right. And what happened was is you know, who coaches your kids? A lot of it's first generation hockey families that are good as parents, right? Yeah.
Ken:They're, they're the workforce of youth hockey. You get a lot that are just getting involved. So we had lots of first generation people that were coaching. And so they do the best job with what they know. But maybe not having a background in the game, trying to provide good experience.
Ken:Where we're at now, you go twenty five, thirty years later, it's we now have so many more second generation people back in the game that are bringing their kids back to the sport. So that great growth that we had is now seeing, you know, again, our coaches are just better than they've ever been because they had a little experience with the game. There's more information now. You can pick up your phone. Can, like, want a new drill on something, right?
Ken:You can pick up your phone and do skating drill. Yeah. So information is there. So I'd say our coaches are better than ever. Right.
Ken:And that has an impact.
Scott:That's a great point.
Jamie:So yeah. Do you think that, so it's funny, like years ago, I think that, you know, the, I think people would say the best athletes in The United States were playing, you know, football, basketball, baseball. Do you think some of those best athletes now are staying in the game of ice hockey that maybe weren't fifteen, twenty years?
Ken:We have really good athletes that are picking up ice hockey. But so we have over a typically have a 120,008 and unders playing in The United States registered with USA. There's some that are outside our registration, but so over a 120,000. Nobody knows who the athlete is until they're 78
Jamie:until they have puberty. Yeah.
Scott:Yeah.
Ken:Yeah. So yeah, at the end of the day, look, we've had even going back in the day we had Heisman Trophy winners. That were that played ice hockey when they were younger. Right. We've had MLB, you know, major league baseball.
Ken:We we have pro athletes in other sports that played hockey growing up. Football players.
Scott:Right? JJ Wah, right? Was is he the one that you see him on the ice?
Ken:Yep. Can you imagine him as a defenseman?
Jamie:Oh my God.
Ken:Jesus. So take a step back and say, all right, well, what didn't we do to keep them in the game? Right. Like, if going to the ice rink was the most fun they had and the opportunity was there, the co like, if the things around our sport were such that we provided the right experience, maybe we would have kept those those athletes in our game. So Yeah.
Ken:We don't know which, you know, like, we we try and tell everybody it's hard to be great at 18 if you quit at eight. Right? Like,
Scott:he said
Jamie:the same thing. He said something very, very similar to that. Yes.
Ken:And so how do we provide, you know, a really good experience for kids? Right. When we started our EDM program, the the tagline was play, love, excel. Wanna get them get kids into the game. We want them to play.
Ken:Play is fun. Let's let's help build a passion, help them fall in love with it because we know if they don't truly love it in the long run, they're probably not putting enough time into, you know, they're gonna choose other things. Right?
Scott:Right. Right.
Ken:So they'll excel if they put the amount of time in later. So not overly concerned with the Excel at, you know, eight, 09:10, 11:12. It's
Scott:developing the passion. So I wanted to ask you about your own personal experience because you're from California originally, if I'm
Ken:mistaken. So
Jamie:that's not exactly a hockey hotbed.
Scott:It wasn't a No, you know, you
Ken:know what? It actually, it was actually interesting story. Icecapades, the old icecapades built a bunch of rinks in Southern California to like teach skating and they put rinks in all these old grocery stores and in different odd venues. Right. So there were actually quite a few ice rinks back in the day.
Ken:Right. Then they kind of all shut down. I I but I came through at a time when off my little team that I played together at a local rink. And and back then, you know, a nine year old 10 year old team only had 10 or 11 kids on it. Sure.
Ken:Right? So when you went to play your games, you played all the time. You weren't platooning through three lines and
Scott:Yep. Right?
Ken:So Yeah. Right? But out of out of the ten, eleven of us, nine went on to play at a pretty decent level. We had five scholarship division one players.
Scott:No way.
Ken:Two CHL players in the Canadian Hockey League. Two more division three players. And out of the the nine of us, three played in the NHL. And this was on one little team.
Jamie:Yeah. One small
Ken:California at at the time. Yeah. So now things have changed. It's different. But, you know, and we did have good coaches.
Ken:I think most of the at the time, most of the kids that played, their parents were transplants from some other part of the country and had a, an inkling towards wanted to get their kids in ice hockey. But I got, I came through, played on a little tiny, the rink that I played at growing up was about a 140 feet long, about 60 feet wide and 65 feet wide. So it was a small area game back then back then.
Scott:That's so interesting.
Ken:All of our games and like, can honestly remember going to a regulation size rank and thinking, oh, wow, I got all kinds of time. You know, anyway, how we came to kind
Jamie:of model down to that, right? The small area
Ken:game And staff, then, you know, we we tell everybody get good at your local rink. We didn't travel all over the place. It's we, we were very local in what we did. We might go to, you know, one tournament a year, two tournaments a year. That was it.
Ken:That was the big deal. Right. And that was it. Right. You know, but we went to our local rink a lot.
Scott:Did no. Did you do you have a hockey family? Like, you have any
Ken:My dad grew up around the the sport a little bit, you know, he was from Massachusetts and Right. Alright. It was his favorite sport growing up. So, yeah, you know? So that's how
Scott:he got into it. Then, so clearly, so just from the young age, clearly the passion was there because you went on to play D1 hockey yourself. Right? And so like that, that path, along the way going from like the smaller you know, rinks, local rinks that had been built up by you. Did you spend any time like out of state, like junior Well, or anything like
Ken:again, things things
Jamie:have changed.
Ken:But midget hockey, that that category was through 16 when I was growing up. Wasn't through 18. It wasn't 18U. There really wasn't junior hockey in the area when I, when I was growing up. So after I'd finished my 16 new year it was turning 17.
Ken:I needed a place to play. And so I went back, I was able to make a USHL team at the time. So I played the USHL for my senior in high school and a year or so out, and then got my scholarship to go to Lake Superior state at the time there. That's right. Along with another teammate from that I grew up playing
Jamie:with. That's wild.
Scott:That's so
Ken:much In California, all the way along. Yeah.
Scott:But you were on the same, like, same junior team also? Same
Ken:same junior team.
Scott:Same path.
Ken:We played together from about nine years of age all the way along through And
Jamie:you guys won a national championship there with Lakes Parent. Right?
Ken:Yeah. Had some good teammates. If I'm not
Jamie:mistaken, Jimmy Dowd was on that team.
Ken:Jimmy Dowd was on that team.
Jamie:Yeah. So we're speaking to him on Thursday.
Ken:Oh, well, you have to tell tell JD I said, love. I certainly
Jamie:will. Yep.
Ken:We're on a little text chain that we occasionally summon those markup. Yep. I can imagine. He was a heck of a player. Yeah.
Ken:Heck of a-
Scott:Jersey guy.
Jamie:Jersey boy.
Ken:Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie:Exactly right. Brick.
Ken:Jersey guy.
Jamie:If you don't mind, Ken, can we get into a little bit of Development League? I'm just, there's so many questions and I keep telling like, we're gonna have to have you guys on for like a part two, three, four or five. Cause it, they just, yeah, probably
Ken:as it, as it evolves and the process goes forward and right.
Jamie:Right. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. Have to tell you.
Ken:Oh my gosh. People just make up stuff and just to sound like they know what they're talking about, you know?
Jamie:Yeah, exactly. Right. That's why we figured we'd come right to the source, Sure. Know, to help parents out. One thing is the residency, right?
Jamie:So people aren't sure. So I understand that and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that the new DL is going to have open borders. If you live in New Jersey, you can play for a team in Mass if you really want to. Right. Okay.
Jamie:Yep. So where the question kind of comes is, is triple a and then double a. Okay. Are you guys kind of tightening? Because you hear out there that you guys, that USA Hockey wants people to stay in their district more and play in their district.
Jamie:Is that true? Can you play outside of your district now? Or do you guys not want that?
Ken:We we've had different. And this is one of the challenges that we've had across the board is each one of our affiliatesdistricts has had different rules on, you know, boundaries for, for players.
Jamie:So,
Ken:you know, level playing field, all those things. Look, as I said earlier, you get good at your local rank. So especially for younger ages, we really do want people to play close to home. There's not a real need to be packing up and moving away. Right?
Ken:Right. They, we have looked at some rules to put in place. There were some rules that just were voted on. That's in the process of being deployed in the future, what year that comes out. I think there's a little bit of confusion around, I think.
Jamie:I was just gonna Yeah. Ask you
Ken:think we, I think that was something that people were so focused on the DL that they weren't paying attention, I think to a 100% the rules that were, the other rules were being passed. And so this was a rule that was put forth by our registrars. And so the people that register our teams with each club, with association, etcetera. And in theory, everyone I think was in agreement. Yeah.
Ken:This is a good thing. I think the timing of it was where people got, got a little off. So I know that they're having a meeting on that. That would be a Bob Mancini question. You have to come back
Scott:to him.
Jamie:I was just gonna say, okay.
Ken:I do believe that we're, open to maybe delaying that. So was it supposed to
Jamie:be for next year? Like when the DL came into play?
Ken:Like, yeah, I think it was, well, we had, when we delayed the DL implementation for a year, you know, a lot of clubs came back to us and said, oh, this is too fast.
Jamie:Right.
Ken:We, you know, you know, the vote being here in January, your ICE contracts and things for the following year are already been negotiated. Things are
Jamie:Yeah. Already in
Ken:Agreed. Rightly so. We want this to be fair for our constituents and people out there, they have to be able to do things in a reasonable timeframe. Right?
Jamie:So this is coming for this upcoming season. Right. Okay. And I think
Ken:what had happened was is the language from our registrars didn't, it was initially put in at the same time as the DL launch. Right. That, yeah. So I think the timing is what is off here. So I do know that our, our president board members are, oh yeah.
Ken:Okay. A little oversight. We can maybe step in with
Jamie:calling on the old type stuff and
Ken:yeah, yeah. Again, nobody's trying to, you know, we want to be good partners our local programs and people that are out there. So, you know, if it makes sense for them, then, you know, we're going to try and do the best we can to align.
Jamie:Okay. So, all right. So now that we have the timeframe kind of, you know, straightened out a little bit. I guess I know we're hearing from a lot of people. So I'll give you a for instance.
Jamie:So the club that Myman Scott's kids play at is the Ramapo Saints. Okay. Ramapo Saints are a New York. It's right over the New York border from New Yeah.
Ken:I know where they're at.
Jamie:Right? Okay. Right. Gotcha. Yep.
Jamie:Alright.
Ken:They've known it a long time.
Jamie:Yeah. Exactly. Correct. So they have a lot of New Yorkers that play there and a lot of New Jersey people that play there. Yep.
Jamie:So I think technically they're grandfathered as a New Jersey club, as an Atlantic club. Right?
Ken:Yeah. They are the, they're, they're an anomaly out there compared to a lot of programs. Right. So again, the, the idea is not to, you know, you can have someone live in one state and the closest rink to them is actually just over the border. Right?
Ken:So nobody's trying to be unreasonable about those type of constraints. Right? That's that was discussed that was put in, you know, there'll be, this will get looked at to the point where they're not, they're not trying to penalize good behavior and limit they they're, they're trying to go, okay, you don't need to drive by 10 clubs to go someplace nor you there's plenty of hockey local you, you
Jamie:know? Okay. So that was the premise of it. Okay. Cause again, we have a lot of questions about like New Yorkers.
Jamie:We're live. We're right by New York City and there's a lot of New York kids that go up to CJR in Connecticut because it's closer than them. Right. Or they come into New Jersey to play. Right.
Jamie:Same idea.
Ken:Yeah, there is a bit of leeway in terms of like, again, we understand the idea is not to make people's lives difficult.
Jamie:Okay. So, so we're
Ken:not trying to make,
Jamie:yeah. So there's not going be like a cap on like how many players a team can have in like New York from New Jersey or something like that.
Ken:Well, there might be like, you know, know, so for example, again depends on where the club's located. Right? Okay. So I have to go back and double check the rule myself because this is new.
Jamie:Yeah, sure. I got it. Yeah.
Ken:So I don't want to give poor information, but
Jamie:you
Ken:know, the idea is that if you're a club in one affiliate that the, you know, the majority of your players should probably be from that affiliate. Right? Like, unless there is a boundary a real boundary issue. Right? Like, in in those things.
Ken:So gotcha. Okay.
Scott:But I have
Ken:to go back myself and, you know, look at the new rule, right? You know, for us
Jamie:some We can have that again, Ken. This is a blast. We can
Ken:do this again.
Jamie:I'm all for it.
Ken:I'll go and I'll go and look it up. I mean, these changes all happened last week. And so we're, we're as staff now. So again, this is an interesting thing for most people. They think that it's us here in Colorado Springs that make up every rule.
Ken:And that's not what happens. It's our, our elected, you know, affiliate volunteers and people from around the country that actually do vote on all these rules and they have committees and different things. Our, as staff, our job is to deploy what the board and everybody else votes on.
Jamie:You know, can you go deeper into that? Cause I don't think a lot of parents understand that Ken. I think everybody thinks that USA hockey is the big bad wolf and everything they do as well. It's unbelievable. You should see the comment section of our videos.
Jamie:They're like, oh, USA Hockey did it to us again, you know, and I'm, and I'm sitting there. Don't even respond to them because it's like, you know?
Ken:Yeah. So for example, our national office staff in Colorado Springs, our job is to follow our annual guide. This, this book that has our rules and policies and regulations that are all created and voted on by a volunteer board that is made up of predominantly people that are elected from every area of our country. So in your, your affiliate, they elect representatives to represent and come and vote on what happens. Now we have guidance under our Olympic Olympic organization that one third of our board and people that sit on our committees have to be athlete reps.
Ken:People that have played the sport recently at a, at a high level. They're supposed to provide some guidance and direction there as well because we do field Olympic teams. But you know, for the vast majority of the people that are make up USA hockey, it's the volunteer base that is out in your local area. Right. So, and
Jamie:that's where the stuff comes from. That's where
Ken:the stuff comes from.
Scott:Yeah. I think that's really helpful.
Ken:As staff, we have the ability to, to, you know, to suggest and try and put forth some ideas. But you
Jamie:can't help what gets voted
Ken:on We how it do not vote. Yeah. We do not vote.
Jamie:That's really good. I'm glad you cleared that up because I think a lot of people didn't know that.
Ken:Yep. It's never us that is the final say on anything. Right.
Scott:Alright. So I have a question here that came in from one of our one of our listeners, and they were asking I'll just read it here. It says, how will USA Hockey ensure the right players are being rostered on NDL teams? I don't if, if this is a league, why not hold player combines across the nation to get an idea of what the talent pool looks like and hold the draft?
Ken:So one, a one, a combine doesn't tell you much of anything from player development and what, what players really are.
Scott:Right.
Ken:You need a scouting, you need people to watch those players over time. We, we trust that the marketplace will find, find players. People want to be successful. So they're going to put players on their teams that are going to help them be successful. Yeah.
Ken:That's typically the way it works. We, you know, you can't micromanage everything. And you know, what I like in a player, even at the high level, we'll have discussions when I was player personnel director for national team program, you know, I would have a difference of opinion on players versus others on our staff. We all like, what we don't like. So variety variability that all those things are, are good.
Ken:Now we will try and the DL at some level will allow USA hockey to be a little closer to these programs than we are. You know, when you have you know, it changes every year, but there's there's a 100 like, we've we've had, you know, teams that have played at quote the tier one level. We've had a 160 to 200 different teams, organizations over, over time. Right? And so our ability to, to influence, be around, share is, is tough when it's that many different organizations.
Ken:Right? So here's a chance for us to, you know, share best practices and, and try and try and help a little bit. Not that we don't do that with anyone that wants help. Like our player development staff will go to any club that actually reaches out and says, Hey, we'd like help. Right.
Ken:You know, 90% of what our player development staff does is with tier two, tier two organizations across country. You know, we weren't, we don't spend a lot of time at the quote tier one level. Right. And I think that's why we're at where we're at right now is this, I think the organization wants to, you know, actually share a little bit more with clubs that are already sort of aggregating our better players. Yep.
Ken:Right.
Scott:Yeah. That makes sense.
Ken:And the change in landscape on, you know, if you look what's happened with the NCAA, like our, our traditional pathway in The United States has been college hockey. Right. Yeah. And it's, it's, we think it's the best route going because it has the longest runway for development for, for our players. You know?
Ken:So we always wanted to see as many of our athletes end up in college as possible. Right. The issue we face now is, is the player pool available to NCAA programs is now more than doubled overnight.
Jamie:Oh yeah. Because Canadian kids want And it to come down.
Ken:Europeans now too. The, the, the, is cons, what was considered professional and anyway, we're looking at, you know, how do we, how do we support infrastructure? How do we do things that allow kids to, to, to progress through our system? And this is where the DL comes in because we we do have some kids that are on the early physical maturing side of things and maybe ready for a little bit. But we also need, you know, tier one hockey to be strong in our country.
Ken:And so we're not trying to take our eye off the ball there either. How do you develop systems? And we have some ideas that will allow for tier one hockey to maybe develop and be better going forward. So this is a, a multi pronged approach for us. It's about creating good environments for kids that match where they're at so that they can can move along, you know?
Jamie:It's interesting you mentioned college hockey. One of the kind of questions that we're getting from people is so with now with NIL money introduced to college hockey and now and now the USPHL and NCDC, giving money, I think they call it performance based NIL money. Is that going to take away from the DL? Maybe not 15U version, but I mean, do you guys expect The
Ken:the deal, the idea is to move our kids on to a higher level of play.
Jamie:Whether that's juniors, it's NCAA, whatever it is. Right?
Ken:Yeah. I mean, well, the path now is basically through junior. Well, it it's not through, but the DL is not an endpoint, right? Like it's to move players. Yep.
Ken:Players through and you know what tier one hockey, high school hockey, prep school hockey, we still. Yeah. Depending on your region of the country, what is important to you? Like, know, the kids in Minnesota, they've, you know, if you're at the right high schools, you got a pretty good spot to stay in and do what you do, you know, like, yeah, like let, but no one goes even it's, it is so rare now that it's someone going right from high school. Yeah.
Ken:Straight to the college. It just doesn't happen there. You can count them
Jamie:on are the Maccabalabraines. Those are the Jack Hughes. Yeah. Those the, yeah, no, I agree.
Ken:So junior hockey is the pathway. And so we want more kids to have the ability to play junior hockey at a really high level. Now there are varying levels of junior hockey.
Jamie:That's for sure. Yeah.
Scott:Sure.
Ken:So, you know, whether you're getting paid, what like, you know, USHL has been a free place to play junior hockey. Right? So they collected a lot of really good players. And historically that was the kind of the path. If you looked at, if you looked at who was going through and I would say, don't just look at leagues, but look at individual organizations because you know what?
Ken:Every league has better, better individual organizations than others. Right?
Scott:Sure.
Ken:Yes. There's a spectrum in every in every league, right? Yep. And so, so don't always, but in general, look, you can, you can look at a league and go, well, what, who ends up where? Right.
Ken:How many kids end up at, well, NCAA division one, NCAA division three, AHCA, whatever it is. And
Jamie:there's club hockey
Ken:is great. Yeah. Yeah. Hockey is great. Yeah.
Ken:There's some tremendous programs in in the ACA. Some of the division one programs there that their kids are. They're good players. So absolutely, you know, whatever your choice in your route is, that's for the kid and the family to decide. We just want more American kids to have the choice Right.
Ken:On where to go.
Jamie:Right. So it's just another pathway, right? That's what this is. You're not trying to come. Yeah.
Jamie:Right. You're not trying to compete with the USHL or juniors. Just want to move as many kids on
Ken:as you to be possible. We move them on to right to
Jamie:we would love bring it better
Ken:To to right through the DL to U. H. L. North American League, wherever, whatever they choose to go to is that's not our decision. Right.
Ken:Right. Right. It's can we can we help can we help along the way? Right? Help help the pathway be better.
Ken:And again, not just our our DL programs, but you know, the same commitment needs to be there to our tier one tier two. And how do we support different organizations wherever the kids are at? So, you know,
Jamie:it almost feels like the DL can and again, tell me if I'm wrong is like you said, it's another pathway for I don't want to say the late bloomer because I'm assuming, let me get, tell me if I'm wrong that the 15 year old that gets drafted into the USPHL is going to go play juniors. Right? They don't have to pay tuition to a club, you know, if that's the year, I would assume that's right. Right. And then the kids who maybe aren't as advanced as that kid who didn't get drafted until like a big time junior club.
Jamie:Maybe they stay with the DL at fifteen sixteen, and then they pop and then they move on to juniors. Is is that fair?
Ken:Yeah. I mean, the idea we're not trying to keep our players back from any opportunity. Like that's not what USA hockey does. Like we, you know, our goal, you know, we would we hope that every kid that plays reaches their dreams and gets to the highest level possible. Like, you know, we would love to.
Ken:We would love for the National Hockey League to be populated 100%
Jamie:with USA players with
Ken:USA players, right? Absolutely. So but if you go back to the college example, you know, they've there's there's more choices available to those NCAA schools, and they're gonna go choose the best player that they think helps their organization. Right. So our job within USA Hockey is we want more Americans to play the game well.
Ken:Right. So that when it comes down time to choose between someone from The U S or Canada or Sweden, they go, oh no, we're taking the American. Right. That's the goal. Right.
Ken:We want our kids to have the opportunities. Right. Yeah. Right. Like I'm not in this for the betterment of the Canadian hockey player.
Jamie:No, no, I wouldn't think so. Sorry, Canada, but no.
Ken:Yeah. I mean, We've got lots of good Canadian friends, but our job is to help our kids be Yes. Be better. Right.
Scott:We had a, we had a coach write in and he was commenting on the idea of giving, like, adding another level or tier or, you know, destination pathway above tier two. It's kind of like widening the pyramid and he was said that he he said, it feels like the it sidesteps the issue of the number of tier one teams inflating. Is there any and again, know, like, depending on where you are, there's like a spectrum of how good certain teams are within certain leagues, etcetera. But, like, the number of tier one teams and the dilute the quote unquote, and is dilution potentially of, like, the level of play within some tier one leagues. Is that, is that something that came up in conversation by adding another layer on top?
Ken:A little bit. You know, like it's I think a bigger part of it though, is, is, you know, how do we, how do we influence things like, so myself and Bob Mancini were around when the NTDP started. Yep. And, you know, it's a nice program and we're, we're very happy with what goes on there, but maybe its biggest legacy was reestablishing what a standard for development could be for organizations, junior teams of a similar similar level. And so, you know, in 1989, 1987, or sorry, 1997, '98, right in there when they started, you know, okay, we're having a full time we're having strength and conditioning coach.
Ken:We're gonna have, you know, we're gonna have a skating coach. We're gonna have, like, infrastructurally, they're like, we're gonna put in place these things that we're gonna support players. We're gonna value practice and training. We're gonna do right? We're gonna set the right schedule.
Ken:All these things to support the development of the players. Well, next thing you know, teams are looking around going, because it took years for even our top junior league, the USHL to have a quote strength and conditioning coach for every Oh,
Scott:wow. Yeah. You
Ken:know, there, there were, there were, there was time where, okay, we required them to have a strength and conditioning program. Well, some of them, was, Hey, here's your membership to the Y go work out. Right? And that was, that was in the, in the nineties and, you know, and ratio. What NTDP did was kind of reset a standard for what is possible and at those levels.
Ken:So we're hoping that the DL, you know, rising tides raises all boats. We're starting with 32 teams.
Jamie:Oh, interesting. You think it may expand or contract.
Ken:Okay. So that, and that's an interesting point because I do think that one of the things that has happened in our our marketplace with out there around tier one hockey is, you know, our affiliates will assign a, somebody gets a tier one status within the affiliate. They just they've decided who gets that and what, what goes on. And that's in our 34 different affiliates and all. And then things change over time.
Ken:And maybe it was a good idea for that particular organization to have a, to be a tier one program when it was first decided. But you know, all of a sudden there's nobody left in that organization anymore that was there at the beginning. So maybe it's right. Maybe things have changed and they don't do what is it. I would the plan and not from a, again, we come at these things from a let's help everybody be better.
Jamie:Right.
Ken:But the idea is, you know, along the way, be better, but if you're not upholding a certain standard, then we're gonna yank it. Well, you look, and you will have
Jamie:Yeah. Plenty of
Ken:Well, you will have plenty of time to show the ship, so to speak and get on board like, but if after time you're not meeting the standards, then you know.
Jamie:Yeah. Okay. That was a question. I'm glad you actually, I'm glad you said that because the one of the questions was does, can a DL team kind of come and go, you know, or okay. So you just answered it.
Ken:The potential for that to happen will be built into this process as teams apply for this, right? They haven't necessarily applied. We asked for a Interest. So interest, right? We asked who would be interested in this concept.
Ken:Right. And so we collected some information there. We will have an application process that will start in the spring. But yeah, and that will be right, right. Mentioned in, in this that, Hey, if you don't do what's your end of the bargain.
Jamie:Yeah. And it's interesting because I meant to ask Bob and I forgot to, because we, again, there's so much information here, right? And I just forgot to. So USA Hockey technically does have quote unquote teeth to enforce. If you guys are not happy with the level of development that's gone on and when this DL program, you have the ability to say thank you, but no thank you at that point Okay.
Jamie:In
Ken:Yeah. This is, I mean, the organizations are applying, right? They want to be involved. Right. That's the, the understanding.
Ken:Well, you need to know what you're signing up for and what you're agreeing to. And hopefully this is a partnership where we can help organizations continue to be better at what they do for the betterment of our players and those things. But then, you know, I fully expect tier one programs to go, oh, well, I didn't get selected right now, but this is what they're asking. All right. I'm going to do that too.
Ken:And you know what? All right. Right. Maybe like, let's bring them along.
Jamie:Right. This,
Ken:this should be fluid.
Jamie:You think you think it's gonna spread to the even the ones that didn't get picked. You think it's going to have a positive impact on all these People clubs if they want
Ken:want to be better. Right? People, you know, we're Americans, we're competitive. Right? I mean, so, you know, if somebody else has a good idea and they're doing this and you can see value, then we're going to do that too.
Ken:So I do see a bit of that. And it's what's happened with our NTDP program over time. It's helped raise, raise the bar across lots of organizations, at least in theory to, you know, they, they give lip service to it now. Before the, before the national team development program came on, came on board, you didn't hear the word development in our lexicon in around youth hockey and junior hockey and everything else. Now everyone's out there developing.
Ken:Right? So, okay. Well then, you know, how do we measure this? How do we, how do we show, you know, people are moving forward? And that's the idea that we're not trying to penalize organization.
Ken:We want them to be better, but this is a way for us to start to help you know, and re reset the bar a little bit on what's going on out there.
Scott:Right. Let me let me ask you this. We asked Bob this as well, but just curious your take on it. So as as we were talking before we started recording, just the conversations Jamie and I would have about how crazy the landscape can be, and you have crazy hockey families at the younger ages, you know, doing like before school, before practice, you know, there we had we did an interview with with Alex Kim, who's one of the coaches with the junior ducks and a number that he hears families or players throwing around, did you get your ten hours in this week? Like ten hours of ice a week.
Scott:So He's
Jamie:shaking his head already.
Scott:Yeah. I know. I know. But that I mean, this is what this is what's happening. But so my question is just like the so that downward pressure, right, of having like even more elite hockey to chase for less let's start with the 15 age group year year olds.
Ken:Some of this is going to be like, again, we've talked about a re you know, 55 games before that.
Scott:Less hockey.
Ken:Right. Less, less, less games. Right? Like, so, you know, we make hockey expensive by the amount of travel and the things that we do. Like the NCAA is a wonderful development system.
Ken:And the teams play about 40, you know, 45 games
Scott:a year. The CL for example.
Ken:Right. Well, and that's why it has advantages over the CHL.
Jamie:Right.
Ken:The CHL is the game density is so high in the CHL that they actually take off training time for recovery. Don't practice the way they write the way they're the way they should. The things that we've learned about teenagers at NTDP, you know, monitoring load and, and, and what's good, what they're, what they're capable of in building capacities over the course of the year. When to push, when not to, you know, it's even the CHL that plays lots of games and they take off training time. And we see it.
Ken:I can tell you that when we have gotten players back even from World Junior and we we look at their their their scores on our we we monitor load through different sensors and things and where they're at, they their fitness levels aren't the same because they take away in some areas. Again, this is it it it's it's a systemic problem. Right? Like if you go, if you're in the Western league and you go on a ten day road trip and play, you know, four games in ten days or five games in ten days, you're not lifting weights. Right.
Ken:You are not, you're not training the way you might. You look at the games that our kids at NTDP make over the course of a hockey season. Like it's dramatic, but physiologically they are ready for that at that particular time. So it's about matching what the kids are capable of. What's good for them at the right the right time.
Jamie:Right. Right.
Ken:Yeah. So you had mentioned developmentally earlier, what's good at the right times, you know? Yeah. I think the biggest or one of the bigger challenges we have is the, and you were talking about it here already was this over acceleration at a young age.
Scott:Yes.
Ken:You know, ten hours a week at, you know, nine, You 10, know, what we see, we've had our NTDP program for twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty nine years now. And you know, when you've got a program like that in place for such a long time, you really do look at where all your players have come from, what their backgrounds are. Heck, even the NHL-
Jamie:A lot of data.
Ken:Just a few years ago, the NHL did the NHL PA did an internal study of membership. So the players themselves in the league self reported that ninety eight percent of them self reported that they were multi sport athletes until at least 14 and well over 80% self reported that they were multi sport athletes until at least 16. Right. Right. And so, you know, you see it's all well in our NTDP players.
Ken:We actually look we're looking for the multi sport kid. Yep. It's it's something they seem to have more capacity to continue to get better. The ones that have overdone it or specialized, it's almost like, yes, they've refined their movement skills in a normal pattern for ice hockey. Right.
Ken:But what makes a player great is their ability to do things outside the normal range of motion. Norm,
Jamie:like what's their robotic
Ken:to adapt. Yes. And then interesting, you know, do they have the emotional energy left to put it like the kid that plays year round at nine, 10, 11, 12, you could, they'll say, oh, I love it. I love it. I love it.
Ken:Yeah. Just fine. They probably do. But then they get to 16. Yeah.
Ken:And now now's now's the time to really ramp it up. Right. Now's the time for the ten hours a week and more in the gym and everything like now you're learning to be a three sixty five day a year athlete. Right. Right.
Ken:So you are training in some capacity, you know, five, six days a week and yeah, you know, year round. Right. They don't have the emotional energy left to put into it.
Scott:Right.
Ken:And so you see them not being able to adapt and we, we, the continues to adapt, who continues to like they have to have a love for it. And as a as a parent, like how do you keep the hunger there? Right? It's I don't care anything you do. You know, my kids growing up, if if I had pizza, know, every night of every day, they'd probably But love it for a even after a while, they might go, meh.
Jamie:Let just try something else. Right?
Ken:So, you know, how do you and this goes back to, can you take some time off? Right? Can you things that are kid driven through development when it's self regulated by them. Yeah. Not too bad.
Ken:But if we're the ones driving it as the adults, you know, and it's quality, not the quantity that matters. It's not, you know, it's, it's the value that you bring to the hour of ice time, not the hour of ice time.
Jamie:Sure. Right. New Jersey devil said that he's like, why don't you shoot 50 pucks the right way as opposed to like 300 pucks all over the place? Yeah.
Ken:Yeah. Exactly. So how do you how do you your quality over quantity is always more important to me. So how do you how do you do that? And so I think people chase the, the overdo it, you know?
Ken:Or they're going to run off to the next quote showcase event in the off season because they think somebody's there watching at nine and ten and nobody's watching. Nobody's watching. Nobody's watching. No, one's watching at the level that they think they're aspiring to. Right?
Ken:It's there's a lot of research around who's good in sport and being, being successful pre puberty in our sport is not a, not an indicator of who's good after puberty. Go through puberty. We don't know. And anybody that tells you that they know, like, I want to make multiple bets with them because I'm going to be a really rich man on, you know, because you always you always see the guy out there like, well, I made, you know, x y z, you know, NHL player. Oh, yeah.
Ken:Really? Make me 10 more. Yeah. You know, they
Scott:Yeah.
Ken:Yeah. And No. Tell me. Cause they'll tell you that they know and then they don't really know. It's
Jamie:a lot of bad information out there that gets that gets passed around to other parents and it's like a bad cycle is what it is.
Ken:Well, and it's what you're doing with the podcast right now. You're trying to help people get good information and, you know, take a step back and slow things down. The fear of being left out is, is real. Like, I I get it. Parents yes.
Jamie:It is. That's true. Like,
Ken:we have staff members. And one of one of one of our former staff members is now an assistant with the with Montreal Canadians, but Roger Grillo, you know, he said that he even him like he's division one college coach in the past. He's one of our player development managers coming up through and he's like. Even I with my own kid coming along was like, well, what should I do? Like, what?
Ken:And I'm questioning something. But
Jamie:And he knows better.
Ken:And and he knows better. He goes up because the pressure is real.
Jamie:But, you
Ken:know, I take a step back and know his kids sport was baseball and scholarship baseball kid and all that kind of good stuff. But, you know, like Bob will tell you, I'm sure he talked about probably he might not have talked about his son. No.
Jamie:We talked about Victor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure we did.
Ken:You know, they didn't do all the same things that everybody else. That's right.
Scott:Like, he didn't play tier he played tier two through 13. Right?
Ken:Yeah. If I'm mistaken. And and even even that some of the kids that he played with, they're off chasing this and Vic's taken the spring off. Didn't play summer hockey year round and
Scott:Yeah.
Jamie:That's right. Yeah.
Scott:Yeah. Yeah. It's just like
Jamie:Look where he is now.
Ken:Yeah. Well, and that's the point is is he's the one that's, you know, filtering around the National Hockey League. Got called back up today.
Jamie:So Oh, that's great. Oh, good. I know last we spoke to Bobby, he went down after four games. Good. Oh, he's back.
Ken:Yep. And so he's back up. So, You know, the the organization's kinda figuring out where he fits, but he's
Jamie:Yep.
Ken:He's a he's been he's he's he's played he's played a fair number of NHL games, and people think he can play at that level and be a regular. So it's it's good. He's a young guy. And Yeah. But the idea was is they were patient.
Ken:Like, can remember Bob back in the day we were joking because I and I'm like, so how's Vic doing? You know? And and he says, well, everybody wants to know what power skating coach Vic went to over the off season. I go, what did you tell him? He goes, none.
Ken:He took a martial gymnastics class and he took, you know, some swim lessons and stuff, you know? Right. Right. He got more coordinated.
Scott:Right.
Ken:That's right. Right? That helps your skating. It's Yes, it does. Yeah.
Ken:Anyway.
Scott:Yeah. When you're when you're in the middle of it, it's sometimes so hard to see the forest through the trees Yes. You know, even, yeah, and it's just so refreshing to have conversations like this and just as to be a constant reminder to families that listen and parents that just like, it's a long runway. It's not the runway of like the, the Maclin Celebrini's, all of Instagram sensations and the real, you know, whoever else it might be that just had a real shortcut They're to the high
Ken:the one offs.
Scott:They're the one it's a long Well, you brought up sort
Ken:of the late developer, early developer type of discussion. You mentioned that a little while ago. We're, we're actually doing research around that right now, looking at, you know, biological maturity in our players to understand where, where we're at. There is good research in other sports. We're gonna back it up in ice hockey, but looking at, you know, when a kid is an early physical mature, they, they may not be physically bigger, but they're a little bit more coordinated.
Ken:They're a little bit, maybe a little faster. There's factors that go in. And so they're the ones that through that puberty time have an advantage. And so maybe they get picked to some teams. What's what's happening though, is in the long run, sometimes it turns out to be a disadvantage.
Ken:Right? So what we're seeing is the kid that was the early physical mature that gets, gets through our system early because they're, they can solve problems on the ice through power, strength, speed, those things have a less developed toolbox when all things shake out in the wash after everyone goes through puberty.
Jamie:Yep. And
Ken:so They can't solve the problems the way they always have. They're frustrated that, you know, so how do we help them both the late physical mature realize that maybe, hey, I'm just a little bit behind because I haven't hit my growth spurt yet.
Jamie:Right.
Ken:Stick with us. I'm I'm I'm not bad in the sport. And the the early physical mature that is relying on the wrong things. So how do we help them be more aware? Right, right to.
Ken:So there's some things around this biological maturity that when kids and families know where they're really at, typically people stop evolving in our sport when they stopped adapting. So how do we give them information at a time young enough or earlier to where they're not blindsided by it later on? So, you know, so we're looking at these things, both we have universities that are studying a lot of this stuff. Look, we have a university of Toronto. One of the top talent ID talent development institutes globally headed by Doctor.
Ken:Joe Baker. He's the chair of the Tannenbaum chair there. They they're one of the best with this. Like they are gonna, they're designing studies right now to look at our DL, look at what's going on in our system to say, okay, are we doing the right things? Are we, you know, is this a good idea?
Ken:What what's working? What isn't? We try and base our decisions on legitimate research and facts. Not Yeah. You guys know opinion.
Ken:Right? Yeah. We do. I mean, we have a number of research projects that are are going on across the board trying to help our player. You know, how do we take the information and then get it back out?
Ken:Yeah. So yeah.
Scott:Well, I'll go ahead, James.
Jamie:I just have one other question. Yeah. Go for it. Well, because I don't wanna keep you all night, Ken. We could, but I don't wanna keep you all night.
Jamie:Sure. The I guess the the tuitions for for the teams that do, you know, get, do you guys call it like a charter? I'm calling them to call it a charter.
Ken:I don't know what you, what
Jamie:you call it either. Mean, yeah. Well, I'm gonna call
Ken:it a charter just for, don't know what
Jamie:to call it. So the teams that get selected, you know, I'm a, and I think I know the answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, because there's somebody wrote in on a question. I'm assuming that the organ, the affiliate is gonna, is gonna be responsible for the tuition costs. USA hockey is not gonna have anything to do with that. Right?
Jamie:I'm assuming. No, look, there's still pay
Ken:to play organizations like, like everything else. But we will be very aware if anyone thinks that they're gonna, you know, all of a sudden, okay. Cost of, of this, you know, right? Like that's not the point here. And then, you know, how do we, how do we support organizations to maybe lower cost?
Ken:Maybe there's some things that we can do. Oh, interesting. A lot, a lot has to be explored, but
Jamie:you know, we're, you guys give them guidelines on what to and what not to charge or you just kind of let them.
Ken:Well, again, hockey costs different in different parts of the country. Very true. But just the ice cost alone, no question in Southern California or wherever it's 600 and whatever dollars an hour is different than in Iowa or someplace. I mean, are still places,
Jamie:Right.
Ken:Not as many as I would like, but you can still get ice in some places in Wisconsin for $120 an hour. So Wow. You're kidding me. Oh, no. Really?
Ken:That's what
Jamie:you pay a skills coach here for an hour.
Ken:So, you know, there are right. Like how do we, you can't control the variation that way, but you know, the idea is not to use this in any way, shape or form to charge more for our players. Like that the, yeah, no, we're very conscious of that.
Scott:Yep. Gotcha.
Jamie:So you guys will be paying attention to
Ken:the organizations and what they charge for the DL. Yep. And again, look, we're not unrealistic to know that look, things cost what they cost. Yeah. And they do.
Ken:But you know, there'll be, there's an eye towards someone that was out there thinking they were going to price gouge on this, so to speak.
Jamie:You know, like that's That's not why I'm glad you said that. Cause that's something that we're hearing in the comment sections.
Ken:It's like our, know, parent and you guys as well, you, you pay a USA hockey membership fee every year. Our membership fee is tied to the, you know, the cost of living index, the government that puts out like it, whatever that is that we're not trying to get right. Understood.
Scott:Yeah. That makes sense.
Jamie:I get it. Absolutely.
Scott:Alright. Well, we're we're at just over an hour.
Jamie:Yeah. We can't be all night, but
Scott:I just just wanted to ask, you know, in terms in terms like like, just broadly speaking, in terms of like the rollout of the DL, is there anything in particular that you yourself from your position where you sit in USA Hockey that you're like looking forward to the most? Is there anything that maybe we haven't touched on that like you're just really excited about Yeah. Once this rolls
Ken:I think I'm, you know, I'm excited about potentially having a closer relationship from a national level to some organizations out in the field. You know, again, our, our player development staff will still do what we do, but being able to share more closely with some organizations that seem to hopefully have like minds on around development and the support of our American players and supporting coaches to, to, to be better at what they do. I think is exciting. Like we want everybody across our country to be a little better tomorrow than they were today.
Scott:Sure.
Ken:At creating something for our kids. But this is a way for us to maybe, maybe be a little bit closer to a few clubs and and share more, right? Yeah, we're not. It's a partnership. Know, we're not in there to dictate everything that every club does.
Ken:We don't expect them all to be the same, right? You know, they're all going to value as coaches. Every coaches value different things, right? Yeah. What they see in players and that that that's just fine.
Ken:I think that diversity of opinion and approach is at the end of the day, a strength. So but there are certain principles around development. There are certain support things that we know that teenagers some things that we've learned through NTDP and then working a little, you know, what can we share and how do we best do that? So I'm excited that the organization might be able to do that. And then hopefully raise the bar that others can follow along with.
Scott:Sure.
Ken:Again, anything we do with the DL, we'll certainly be willing to share with our tier one programs. Like this is right. Like this is not a, you know, this group only, this is a, how do we,
Scott:it's a we thing.
Ken:It's a we thing. Yeah. Cause that's the way, you know, The US hockey gets better.
Scott:So Yep. That's awesome.
Jamie:It's great, Ken.
Ken:All
Scott:right, Ken. Well, listen, we're gonna wrap it up here. Was such a treat. Thanks so much for your time. Really, really appreciate Yeah.
Scott:Was a pleasure meeting you.
Jamie:We'll have to have you on for two, three, four, and five, Ken.
Ken:Well, look up the new rule here.
Jamie:Yeah, we'll definitely come back to you on that. No, no, listen, I definitely appreciate it. It was very insightful. The listeners have a ton of information here, so again, thank you.
Scott:Yeah, thank you so much.
Jamie:Yeah. We'll see soon, Ken. Thank you so much.
Scott:Thank you.
Jamie:You bet. Thanks.
Scott:Alright, everybody. Welcome back from that amazing interview with Ken Martel. Dude, more info on the DL, more info about USA Hockey. And I I have to say that like it was definitely informative terms yeah. How how how like not I don't wanna say small USA Hockey is, but like in terms of the number of people that are in the office, it's not a massive office.
Jamie:No. It's
Scott:not. And how the, the voting on what changes get implemented, etcetera, etcetera.
Jamie:That's interesting, wasn't it? To hear that.
Scott:Yeah. That the staff members don't vote. I'm glad he cleared that up. And it's all elected affiliate, people that are elected by affiliates from all over the country.
Jamie:For the regions. Yeah.
Scott:Yeah. That was I was glad
Jamie:to clear that up. Yeah. Me neither. I was glad to clear that up because I think, you know, average time kind of talking in our comments for some of our Instagram clips. You have a lot of people that have a lot of toward USA Hockey.
Jamie:Not sure if it's really warranted.
Scott:Right. It could just be like a misunderstanding of how the whole system works.
Jamie:I think so. Yeah, it sure seems that way because from what I can tell from speaking to Bob Mancini a couple of times and now Ken Martel, right? And we're trying to have, another USA hockey executive on as well, which will be coming shortly, I think. From everything I can tell all they care about is developing young hockey players. They don't care where you develop, how you develop, they don't care how long it takes.
Jamie:They want you to maximize your potential so you can make US men's national development program or the Olympics or the NHL or or some NCAA team in some way, shape or form. Yeah. Right. That's that's what I can tell from talking to everybody from USA Hockey. Get the exact same thing from all of them.
Scott:Yeah, no, listen, nothing's really come up in our conversations that had me kind of like raise an eyebrow, you know, that there was, yeah. Anything that was kind of a, what's the word I'm looking for expression as I come into me.
Jamie:All say the same thing. Know
Scott:what I mean? Yeah.
Jamie:You know, I think they're just interested in developing American hockey players. I mean, you heard him say, he said it a couple times. He's like, if we can have, you know, the NHL be 100% all US born players, that would be great.
Scott:Right.
Jamie:Right? I mean
Scott:Well, you know what else is what else is interesting? I mean, as far as the amount of and Ken was saying, and and so did so did Bob Mhmm. About how a lot of the work that USA Hockey does is within tier two and kinda like the grassroots movement of getting players involved in hockey across the country and that they don't spend that much time in, you know, with the tier one programs. And I wouldn't be able to quantify, right? Like, I don't know how much is a little, much is a lot, you know, I'm wondering if, you know, people might think that you, you know, it's USA Hockey that has their organization doing one thing or another, but when it's really organization that's making certain decisions and, you know, like, like they've said multiple times, like they can't micromanage everything.
Scott:They, you know, there's there's a lot of affiliates, know, or or teams that are part of USA Hockey. Yeah. And they have to put some, they have to have trust in their partners that they're also going to do the right thing. And, you know, it's, it's not always going to be that way. And so,
Jamie:yeah, no, some of the stuff that we got out of, out of Ken was interesting. I thought the boundaries conversation was interesting about, you know, how they don't, I think Ken mentioned they don't want you driving past. I just want to highlight some of this for people. If you didn't listen to the whole interview, if not, you should go back and listen to her. But he was saying they don't want you driving past 10 different clubs to get to the club you're at.
Jamie:Right. They still need to clarify the boundaries questions for us on how many players can go over, you know, the boundary, right? We talked about kids in like New York City, you know, being close to, you know, to Chelsea, Pierce, Connecticut, or closer to like the Avalanche in New Jersey, North Jersey, you know, so there's a, there's a, I think there's still some things to iron out, but it doesn't sound like they want a lot of people going across lines. Right?
Scott:No. But he he also said that it you know, while there there might be limits in terms of the number of players that can be out of district.
Jamie:Right.
Scott:That, you know, that there are there are scenarios where, like, there are rinks near borders of states.
Ken:100%.
Jamie:There are gonna be certain situations that that's gonna
Scott:Or there's a common sense.
Jamie:Correct. Correct.
Scott:That's part of the equation.
Jamie:I think so too. Yes.
Scott:I think That's what I took from it. You know, time will tell us I how that really shakes agree. And we should touch base
Jamie:with Ken again to kind of, you know, kind of brush up on that and see what that looks like. But what I was also kind of glad to hear was is that USA Hockey is going to kind of it's funny. I didn't think they'd be involved in this. And when Ken said that otherwise, was surprised when Ken said when I was asking about the tuition, you know, I didn't think that USA Hockey would have anything to do with the tuition for the DL teams. Yeah.
Jamie:And I was wrong. You know, they're going to watch and they're gonna kind of make sure that there are these new teams aren't gouging, you know, parents, you know, for coming and playing on these new development leagues. You know? So that was interesting.
Scott:Well, mean, obviously, as you said that they're, you know, like the cost of hockey in different parts of the country is, you know, it varies variable. It's not gonna be like a standard price across, you know, across all teams that are part of this thing. But it definitely, you know, sounded like anyone that's looking to use this as like a financial
Jamie:Correct. Club.
Scott:Yeah. To to like you said, price gouge or
Jamie:head or whatever it is. Yeah.
Scott:That's something to be looking out for too. As well they should, right? I mean
Jamie:Listen, I normally they don't get involved in that stuff, so I was But listen, like Ken said, they want to be more involved.
Scott:They want to be closer.
Jamie:Yeah. They're trying
Scott:to organizations. Fix Yeah.
Jamie:The I wanna say the holes. They're trying to really, I wanna say fix, you know, hockey here in The United States, but they're definitely trying to get more involved.
Scott:Yeah. Look, when they're when they're when they're outnumbered in terms of like, there's way more
Jamie:clubs Yes. Than there
Scott:Our USA Hockey. Yes. You know, I guess like staff, if you will. Yeah. Closer they can get to clubs and like that, you know,
Jamie:I think it's a good thing.
Scott:No. And then he was also saying how this will give them an opportunity and that's one of the things that he was actually most excited about was getting closer question. Yeah. To organizations and hoping that other organizations that maybe aren't part of the DL to start are gonna see what their DL clubs are doing
Jamie:and,
Scott:and implement some of those best practices as well.
Jamie:I think they think you're going to have a little bit of the water wheel effect where it's going to kind of filter down, you know, to, to clubs down below organizations down below, which I think it probably will, you know, I'm sure I'm sure some it won't, but I think it will tell. I think it will to a bunch of them, you know, that wanna be involved with USA Hockey.
Scott:Yeah. The the one the one thing I when when he he was talking about, like, having less less games, which is definitely part of it.
Jamie:55. Right?
Scott:I forgot the number exactly. But I'm just thinking like, if that's something that they were really trying, if that's if that's an agenda they want to see other, you know, non I'm deal teams kind of take just wondering from like the dollars and cents point, like selling ice, if like you're having less games, those are less sheets that are being bought unless they're being bought for like developmental per like, you know, for practice purposes.
Jamie:Was gonna say maybe you use them for skill sessions.
Ken:Yeah. Use them for
Jamie:coaches to do privates around here. Coaches have a hard time finding ice for privates. Right.
Scott:True.
Jamie:You know, so maybe you use the ice that way.
Scott:Potentially.
Jamie:Right? So then maybe kids can practice and work on their skating and their stickhand and their shooting and you whack up the ice a couple different ways and you have six skill coaches with one, two, three kids each. And because coaches complain around here that there's no ice for privates.
Scott:Yeah. Maybe it's just like if, if like a team between games and practices has how, like X number sheets of ice per season, just like the ratio between games and practices changes, right?
Jamie:Yeah. It's gonna be interesting. You know, we'll see how it goes. It's definitely gonna be interesting to see how it all kind of plays out, but I think it's great that USA Hockey is getting, you know, and I again, I don't know, I'll pump USA Hockey's tires, but I think they're doing the right thing. Again, everything we've heard, Scott, it's hard to say this is not gonna be good for the sport.
Scott:Yeah. Look, I'm sure there's plenty of things that like remain to be seen and like anything else in life, it's not gonna be a 100% and there's gonna be people on the outside looking in and there's gonna be things about it that's not going to please or work for everyone and some things, you know, might need retooling. But, you know, on the whole, it's, you know, it sounds like it's a it's a good opportunity for, you know, organizations to get involved with USA Hockey a little more deeply and then also to take best practices from, you know, a country that's been doing really great on the national stage and, you know, from the NTDP to, you know, juniors, etcetera. Yeah. You know, and so that, you know, yeah.
Scott:Things things sound like it's, you know, should be good.
Jamie:Yeah. I think so too. I I think I think it was great. I really thank Ken for coming on. The guys at USA Hockey have been very good to us.
Jamie:Yeah, we're going to try to have another person off from USA Hockey. We have some very cool things planned here, Scotty.
Scott:No doubt, sir.
Jamie:I mean, Jersey Jim Dowd is coming up, right? And looking forward to that. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. Another USA Hockey executive, some top line guys, retired NHL goalie. I mean, have some very, very cool things kind of lined up here.
Jamie:We also are going to have somebody on from from Sweden who's very close to Sweden's developmental program, which is awesome. Kind of, I guess I guess you can call him like Bob Mancini or Ken Martel's counterpart over in Sweden. Right?
Scott:Sure.
Jamie:You know, that we hear wonderful things about that we hear is going to be a fantastic interview. So we're going to have him on. We have a lot of really, really cool things planned for you guys. So stay with us. A lot of really cool things.
Jamie:Not bad for a small podcast, Scott?
Scott:No, no, no. We're going in the right direction,
Jamie:dude. Not terrible for a bad, a small podcast. That's in 44 countries.
Scott:Oh Jesus.
Jamie:Just saying.
Scott:No. Okay.
Jamie:Just saying.
Scott:Alright. So I
Jamie:hope this was fun, man. Listen, nice job. I'm glad you did this. You you were a trooper and you pounded through this. So feel better and I will see you on episode 52.
Scott:That's it. That's a wrap.
Jamie:Alright. See you everybody.
Scott:Take it easy, bro.
Jamie:See you, buddy. Bye.