I asked my youngest son for his opinion on the situation you describe. He’s 20 now, a former junior player and a skills trainer but he also coached a U10 local league team alongside me when he was 16, which was a blast). Sometimes, it’s useful to get a more youthful perspective on situations like yours.
So, he read your story in this thread and said, “Jeezus, that’s Evan. Remember Evan, dad? Joe Jr. is exactly the same.”
“Evan,” of course, was a 9 year-old boy we coached. And yes, my son is right — Joe Jr. is just like “Evan.”
Here’s my son’s take. Sorry if it’s a bit harsh — he’s a straight shooter.
First, when Joe Jr. says, “but I have to go to hockey,” you should not say, “No, you don’t.” Instead, you should say, “Why? Tell me, why do you have to go to hockey?”
My son believes that the answer to this question is the absolute key. If a kid does not seem to enjoy the game but won’t just voluntarily quit playing, there’s something else motivating him to stay on the team.
Maybe Joe Jr. goes to school with some of his teammates and hockey is essential to the peer group? Maybe hockey is Joe Jr.’s only non-school based recreational activity, and giving it up would mean he’s got nothing else? Regardless, there’s one or more reasons WHY Joe Jr. believes he HAS to go, and telling him that he does not have to go isn’t a conversation starter.
Second — and this one is hard — you can’t be on the coaching staff. The father of “Evan” had been an assistant coach on his son’s team since day 1, but when my son and I coached the team we refused to add any parents to the staff. Yes, volunteers are hard to come by and most teams have no choice other than parent coaches (which I’ve never been, btw), but hockey will never truly belong to Joe Jr. if you are an official authority figure on HIS recreational activity. He can’t even really be himself in the dressing room with the other kids with his dad lurking around. My son reminded me of the first time I ever saw him play a basketball game — it was for his elementary school team and I’d never seen so much as a single practice. He learned the game without me and, because white hockey dads can’t jump, was better off because of it. One teacher coached and the 10 boys had a great time learning and playing the game. I watched as a pure spectator and that’s how my kid wanted it. Give Joe Jr. the same chance to own his recreational activity and make of it what he will.
Third, my son cringed at the “park Joe Jr. in front of the net so he can score” story. Actually, he didn’t just cringe — he screamed “Jeezus! No, No, No! Goddamn, NO FRUCKIN’ CHEATING!!” Ummm … don’t do that. Ever. This kind of orchestrated attempt to grow a little kid’s confidence is absolutely humiliating for a 9 year-old in front of his peers. Even IF the coaches try to sell it to the other kids as some sort of “we are a team and help each other” exercise and they are OK with it, the whole thing makes Joe Jr. feel like he’s a charity case. I’m serious — my son ranted about this. Joe Jr. would rather never score a goal and hide on the ice every shift than get a fake goal he can’t even talk about because it’s so phoney.
Anyway, you posted for some advice, so here’s what we did with “Evan.”
We built each practice so kids ALL got 8-10 minutes alone with my son for a bit of 1-on-1 instruction away from the group once per week (we had 2 practices). Nobody singled out — everybody got this, and it helped a lot that they all loved having this funny 16 year-old assistant coach who played junior hockey AND fortnite and could show them cool tricks.
With Evan, my son made no attempt to motivate him or light some kind of competitive fire under him. No, he taught him how to control a pass rimmed around the boards — ass against the boards, puck from foot to stick — and told him that he’d keep track of how many times he did it in the next game. He also taught Evan how to screen a goalie — how to move so your ass is always in front of him, and told Evan he’d track that, too. He taught him how to “get his man’s number,” always look for it, and then stick on the guy like glue. In games, when Evan finished his shift and came to the bench, my kid would ask him, “what was his number, Evan?” He even taught Evan how to roof a flip shot from in tight, how a quick chop on the heel of an opponent’s skate would make him fall, and he taught him how to Jack the puck. LITTLE things that Evan could learn but had nothing to do with his temperament as a player. At one point, my son even taught Evan a new “playing rule of the game” each time they had a 10-minute session because, once again, this wasn’t about trying to change the kid’s compete level. Lots of laughter and joking around — Evan knew that this young assistant coach truly liked him and his 10 minutes or so of 1-on-1 time would be fun.
No pressure— and every kid got something different. Mentorship, in my view, can be a total game changer for a kid IF the mentor knows how to connect and the kid trusts him. My son snagged free tickets to his junior B games and gave them to all the kids — he even asked Evan to “do him a favour” and count the number of times he used a flip shot to clear the puck (he was a defenceman) or some other thing he’d taught the kid during practices. Evan wasn’t the only kid he did this sort of thing with, but he made the boy feel important and part of the “hockey community” — a welcome part of it.
Evan didn’t become a star hockey player and his overall on-ice demeanour didn’t change a lot. But changes to those things were never the goal. The only goal was to make hockey more fun for Evan, and that mission was at least partially accomplished.
Sorry for the LONG post — there’s lots of good advice here, so take mine as just one more contribution to the stew.
