8yr old goalie

Question
Hi Rob-my 8yr old son has played for 3yrs for our local hockey organization-2yrs in Mite A as goalie. He will be moving up to the Squirt travel team. He loves his position and wants to go as far as he can. Our local AAA hockey team coach called and invited him to play with them in the fall.  I know it is more money and committment--we are not sure what to do. We want to do what is best for him.   Is he too young for AAA hockey?   THANKS so much for your advice.....

Answer
Ann,

Thank you for writing me.  Well, now we are getting into a gray area.  USA Hockey is trying to move away from having Squirts travel...anywhere.  Plus, they are also eliminating Checking at the Peewee level. (just food for thought)

I'm not sure how they do it in Canada.  However, if you were in my program, I would say...go for it.  Here's why I say that...

First and foremost, he is different then a average hockey player...he is a goalie.  A position that takes guts.  Who on god's green earth would stand in front of a puck going at 107 miles an hour.  Sorry don't mean to scare you.  But this is the type of player that knows how to read and react better then any player standing on the ice.

Now, for your son to be invited to play up, means a lot to him.  Most goalies never get the call to move up...never!  Plus, once he is there, the odds are really good that he will stay.  Why?  Most coaches don't know anything about training goalies...they have no clue whatsoever.  In fact, most coaches just count on luck that they have selected a good goalie that will turn great by magic.

So on that note, because 95% of coaches don't know what they are doing with this position, once they find a goalie that is halfway decent, he never looks again at another goalie.  Why?  Because he knows exactly what his goalie can and can't do when it comes time to placing him in the net, for crucial games.  I don't know how may coaches I have talked to that have said..."Thank God you are here because I have no idea what to do with my goalie.

So, year after year, I see goalies in travel teams that couldn't even stop a beach ball.  But, because the coach doesn't want to take the risk, he never allows other goalies to try-out for that position.  A lot of coaches also feel guilty about cutting goalies because they (the goalie) has taken the team to where they want to go.  Can't win the Stanley Cup with a sieve in net, and boy, have I seen a lot of them.

Now, how do we guarantee that he NEVER gets cut?  Well, he has to be a brick wall and nothing goes in...nothing!  Ok, so how do we teach him that?  Simple, yes I know you didn't ask me, but I think it's time for him to start, that is if he's not doing this already...you never know.

Ok, back in 1965, the Russian's we trying to find a better way of becoming the leader in the cold war.  So they experimented with mind control, hope that they could maybe drop a house on us...and your little dog too!  But what they found out was that the mind (which is the greatest computer ever)could not determine the difference between the conscious and subconscious. So, this is when they started killing everyone in sports through the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Here's what they did.  They took two basketball teams, in which they placed one in a darkroom on recliner chairs with head phones on listening to music and the other team on the court with actual practice.  After 6 months, they place the two teams together for competition and found that the team that did the meditation, beat the other team by a large margin even though they had no physical practice.

So, here's what I always tell my goalies. Every night, just before you go to bed, you lay down on your bed and put a pillow under your head.  Then, you listen to your favorite song with a lot of beat with the base.  Then every time you hear a beat, you picture in your mind the perfect skate save, the perfect butterfly, the perfect two legged stack pad save, one leg butterfly, a blocker save that take the puck from going in at the last second, a stealing the puck out of the air when the player is starting to celebrate and can't wait to ride his stick, a move that makes the fans in the stand to say...Holly smokes, did you see that!"

Now he has to picture this on every beat. 126 best per minute is a good start.  Now, he must do this every night for 30 days...the more he does it after the 30 days, the more of a brick wall he will become.  

The Russians found of that the mind works on the last 5 minutes of what the conscious mind sees for 8 hours!  This is why when you are watching your favorite TV show and when it ends, one of the commercials come on before you can hit the off button and the next morning you are singing that snappy little tune that was on the commercial.  Trust me, the advertiser is hoping that you catch about 10 second of that song so you can work on it for the next 8 hours.

However, once he puts his head on the pillow and he start picturing in his mind the most unbelievable saves, what he will be doing is programming his mind to do it when it actually happens, as far as the mind is concerned, it had already performed this in the past.

Just 30 days. People in the stand will say...What the heck did you do to this kid!  Yes, he's probably good now because his going AAA.  But, he will be better with this and you will say to yourself...wow, this works.  Please make sure that the song, is a song with no bad thinks in it.  I recommend a song with now words...just a beat.  Now, if you don't have one, contact me here: coach@passthepuck and I will send him a song that's perfect.  Don't let him listen to the radio while he sleeps.  Every hour on the hour comes news, and news is always bad because that's what sells newspaper.  But, we are not building a serial killer, we are building a Stanley Cup holder!

Rob Lopez - CEO
Pass the Puck, Inc.
www.passthepuck.net
www.facebook.com/passthepuck
http://www.linkedin.com/in/passthepuck
Skype: pass.the.puck