Guest wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:50 am
Guest wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 6:24 am
Hometown hockey is dead
It will be like the G this season....next years team will be picked by early January
There's still hometown hockey, just not at AAA. If a kid is good enough they'll be fine
Aaa is not “hometown hockey”.. it never was and is not intended to be. There is nothing wrong with just letting your kids play actual hometown local hockey without the pressure of aaa hockey. It is NOT for every hockey player that is “good”.
The toxic hockey culture is not the players or the coaches. Saying it is either of those is just the continuation of the toxicity. Toxic culture is stemming from parents who are perpetuating the idea to their own kids that AAA is “the coolest”. And when they don’t make it, well surely it must be the coach, the board, the teammates, the ice quality, the humidity, the temperature of the water in his water bottle, and the length of his toenails fault. Then we come on here, and instead of being mature we say “ahhh those toxic coaches had the team picked before tryouts”… obviously and as they should. If your child was genuinely good enough.. they would have made it, I promise you. Every single team and coach wants to win, their job is not to take bubble kids and try to develop them because their parents think their boy is better than “Johnny”. No. NO.
I can promise.. hockey ends for EVERYONE at some point and then you are just a normal person. We have NHL players who are now coaching kids hockey with next to no other career path because “following the dream” was more important than anything else. Yes, they were “super cool” there for a minute.. but now they are being supported by their wives and no one even knows who they are. There is no big banner that flies above their head that says “I played aaa hockey”, they don’t go to the grocery store and are overwhelmed with fame.. they are just the guys standing in-front of the apples I want.
Let it go, let the kids just play fun hockey and respectfully.. zip your lips because you look like a turd.