Our Kids Play Hockey
Our Kids Play Hockey is a podcast that focuses on youth hockey, offering insights, stories, and interviews from the hockey community. It provides valuable advice for parents, coaches, and players, covering various aspects of the game, including skill development, sportsmanship, teamwork, and creating a positive experience for young athletes. The show frequently features guests who share their expertise and personal experiences in youth hockey, both on and off the ice.
The show features three hockey parents, who all work in the game at high levels:
- Christie Casciano-Burns - USA Hockey Columnist, Author, and WSYR Anchor
- Mike Bonelli - USA Hockey Coach and Organizational Consultant
- Lee M.J. Elias - Hockey Entrepreneur, Author, and Team Strategist
In addition to the main podcast, there are several spin-off series that dive into specific aspects of youth hockey:
1.Our Girls Play Hockey – This series highlights the growing presence of girls in hockey, addressing the unique challenges they face while celebrating their accomplishments and contributions to the sport.
2.The Ride to The Rink – A shorter, motivational series designed to be listened to on the way to the rink, offering quick, inspirational tips and advice to help players and parents get into the right mindset before a game or practice.
3.Our Kids Play Goalie – This series is dedicated to young goalies and the unique challenges they face. It provides advice for players, parents, and coaches on how to support and develop young goaltenders, focusing on the mental and physical demands of the position.
Together, these shows provide a comprehensive platform for parents, players, and coaches involved in youth hockey, offering insights for all aspects of the sport, from parenting, playing, or coaching to specialized positions like goaltending.
Our Kids Play Hockey
Unraveling Mental Toughness in Hockey and Goaltending with Justin Goldman of The Goalie Guild
What if you could peek behind the mask of a professional hockey goalie and dive into the mental challenges and toughness required to play the sport and position? Justin Goldman’s experiences range from playing as an e-bug for the Colorado Avalanche to creating an inspiring online community for goalies - the Goalie Guild.
Serving more than just a peek into his fascinating journey, Justin shares his wisdom and knowledge through establishing the Goalie Guild's unique digital platform. We uncover how he leveraged online tools to make the site transparent and user-friendly. We also dive into the concept of autonomous support coaching, an approach that encourages athletes to problem solve, fostering resilience and independence.
But the conversation doesn’t stop at the rink as we shift gears to examine the impact of technology on youth and parenting, emphasizing the importance of children's independence and presence. We also shed light on the crucial issue of mental health in sports, discussing 'Lift the Mask,' a program Justin created to offer support to goaltenders struggling with mental health. This episode is a must-listen for not just hockey enthusiasts, but anyone interested in sports psychology and the power of community. Tune in for an enriching and insightful conversation with Justin Goldman.
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Our guest today has done a lot in hockey from writing about the game to broadcasting about the game, to being an e-bug with the Colorado Avalanche all the way through their cup run, and he's also created one of the greatest communities I think I've ever seen online in the goalie guild, both socially, but also the website which we talk about today. Justin Goldman joins us today and this guy has dedicated his life to the game, specifically goal tending. But don't worry, remember, as always, with our kids, play goalie. If you're not a goalie parent, a goalie mom, a goalie dad or a goalie to begin with, you're still gonna get a ton of value out of this episode because we dive into everything today, from the mentality you need to have to be playing the sport, how to leave your kids alone and kind of be isolated so they can learn on their own. Really, really important episode today that we've enjoyed and, as always, it's that time we gotta let you know that if you're a fan of this show, you get a nice discount on hockey wrap around com using the code ok ph. For those of you don't know what hockey wrap around is, you have young kids and you're spending a lot of money on their sticks. This is a blade protector that you put on the bottom. It is the number one in the market by far. It fits all sticks, all curves, all sizes doesn't matter. They can cut down to size any blade and it saves you money because it keeps your kids from going outside and scraping that fiberglass stick or whatever they have across the sidewalk, across the concrete. It protects that blade so they can play outside with their game stick and enjoy it all while saving you money. So again, ok, ph at hockey, wrap around, calm and they'll take care of you, given a discount or, if you're inclined, you can go to Amazon. They have them on there as well. But without further ado, let's get to the episode with Justin Goldman on our kids play goalie. Hello hockey friends and families around the world and welcome to another episode of our kids play goalie. I'm leo lias, with Mike Benelli, and our guest today. Justin Goldman has dedicated his life to hockey and goal tending and has a resume to back it up when I say that I'm not kidding. Let me give you just the highlights. He started working in professional hockey in 2003 with the Colorado Eagles as a junior scout and reporter, before graduating from Colorado state CSU with a degree in technical journalism. From there, he worked in several media roles with the Colorado Avalanche that's an NHL team on the airwaves and in publication. In 2011, he joined NHLcom as one of their first goalie specific writers, before being hired by USA hockey in 2012 as a regional goalie scout for the national team development program. In 2016, he was selected as the e-bug for the Colorado Avalanche, a role he held through their Stanley Cup winning season in 2022. In 2020, he was selected for the goalie advisory board for Sense Arena VR, which is a groundbreaking technology that I can almost guarantee many of you with younger kids that you will see them use this, whether they're a goalie or not, before they graduate high school. As I said, there's a lot more experiences I could list, but perhaps the most important and impactful is this next one. In 2009, justin created the goalie guild, which today is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to supporting the global goal tending community. The guild offers a wide range of education resources and financial aid. This also includes scholarships, books, research and their lift the mass program, which is something we're going to dive into today. They also provide the goalie community with services like consulting, mentoring and their annual retreats. It is a groundbreaking community that also focuses on the mental fitness of goal tenders, which is proven in print, as Justin has authored many books, including the one I have here with me in my hand the power within discovering the path to elite goal tending. There's a part two out there as well, and I'm looking forward to reading. Justin, I'm not gonna lie to you, this is the longest intro I think I've ever written, but I had to do it. It was worth it. Welcome to our kids play goalie.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me and I appreciate the awesome intro and it's just. It's been a ride, my friend, it's been a ride and I still got a lot in the gas tank, so just excited, always looking forward to the future and whatever comes next. But thank you so much for having me oh, it's our pleasure to have you.
Speaker 1:It's funny just when I put these intros together. Sometimes they're short, you know, it depends on on who we're talking about. But as I read through all of your stuff, your bios, and you know, again, we do research on this stuff there's just so much great stuff to mention. You know, I love hockey lifers I consider myself to be one. Mike would too, you know, and it takes the same level of passion to get involved in the game and the ways that you have that takes to make the NHL. I think, and I think that you know, when you look at the numbers of people that work in journalism and nonprofits and media, I think it's similar to, in quote-unquote, making it as the NHL. But anyone can do it. But before we dive into all that because and we are gonna dive in all that one thing I would gotta ask you every goalie has got a story about how they got between the pipes, where you've all been told to play goalie, or did you naturally flock into that position?
Speaker 2:I naturally flocked in the position and it's funny because my my background in goal-tending and hockey is very non-traditional. I grew up on a horse ranch, basically in the middle of nowhere, like 45 minutes north of Dallas, texas. So well, hockey hockey was legitimately not a thing in my life, right? I didn't know the sport existed until I was 10, 11 years old, and besides watching hockey a few times on ESPN, I didn't get introduced to the sport full time until the Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas in 1993. So I was 11 years old at the time and I just remember me and, like my best friend in grade school at the time, we were just so pumped that there was like a new sports team and a new sport to really dig into. And we went to one of the very first team practices for the stars and they were just trying to build a fan base, so it was open to the public and they're plastered against the glass at Dr Pepper's Star Center Valley Ranch. And, sure enough, first two players on the ice are goalies and those first two goalies were Darcy Wachaluck and Andy Mogue. And Darcy Wachaluck at the time was wearing this like the sickest all black and green gear, setup right, and he didn't take two strides on the ice and as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh my god, I'm hooked. Like this is this looks amazing like um with a lot of kids. You know, you have a big imagination. I was always obsessed with like medieval knights and medieval history and medieval lore and when I saw Wachaluck hit the ice I was just like that, that's a knight in in armor, like that, that connection um between goalies and medieval knights and like being a warrior. I just I fell in love with it at that moment and that's the only thing I wanted to do and basically the only thing I have done ever since.
Speaker 1:Justin, I consider myself to be a geek who likes sports, kind of like you just admitted to, and I'll tell you there was a game this is a throwback mic, I don't even know if you remember this and an hl 98 it's by esports had one of the greatest openings in the history of video games and sports and I will never forget. One of the phrases was are you afraid of the masked man? Right, and they had Felix Potvin on there just staring at you and I again, I was never a goalie, but I remember that was the coolest thing I thought I had ever seen in my life, right? Um, for another episode in the future, we'll also talk about how you know you were born in the south and, hey, guess what? You're hockey obsessed, because just proving that, regionally, it does not matter where you're from, you can fall in love with this game, which is an argument we have sometimes with people from the northern quarter. But again, another episode, that's. That's not what we're going today. Um, I want to dive right into the goalie guild. Um, because it is an amazing platform. Um, why don't we start from just how you developed it, because it wasn't what it is today?
Speaker 2:you know, back when you created it and just quickly the evolution of it, because it it's really grown yeah, I think the goalie guild was born out of my own experiences growing up again in a non-traditional hockey market. So I was all self-taught. I didn't have a goalie coach in grade school. I didn't have someone um, um, uh, holding my hand the entire time learning how to skate or learning how to get comfortable on my edges or wearing the gear, anything like that, and my parents were amazingly supportive, but they were passive supportive right, they didn't play hockey. So I was really the first in our family to kind of take on this journey of wanting to be a goalie. So growing up, it was always very obvious to me that there was like a shortage of of resources and goalie coaches, especially again in the south. And so I think, just growing up and and getting older and continuing to build this passion for goal tending, it was like wow, there's so many other kids like me that would love to play this position but don't necessarily have the support from the family or the associations or people around them. So how can I help alleviate some of these obstacles, some of these challenges that I know goalies are facing, because I'm experiencing at first hand? So I think ever since I was really young like I can't even remember in high school just wanting to go out and help the junior stars goalies that were a little bit younger than me and wanting to try and find a goalie coach in the DFW area, which was like finding a needle in the haystack. So for me, I think it was just mostly born out of my own personal experiences that like this is an amazing position. The game has given me so much. Um, how can I give back? How can I help other goalies overcome? A lot of the challenges and obstacles that I faced and and that's really where the the genesis point of the goalie guild came from you know, what's amazing too, justin, is when you go to this.
Speaker 1:Um, you know and I've followed you on instagram for a long time but when I actually went to the website, um, it's a different experience. Like you know, most of the time when you go to a website, you're expecting to scroll here's all the information, here's how you can do this. Yours is not like that. I mean, you get there and it's like hey, here's resources. Immediately like where do you want to go? Right, what do you want to select on? So I plodged you for that, because it's almost immediate value. Um, you know, it doesn't look like a landing page where it's like click here to sign up now and you, too, can be part of the goalie guild. Like that's not what it is. Right, there's a clear drive to like how can we help you today, right? Um, I really love that uh aspect of it. Is that something that you knew you wanted to do immediately? Did you want to be different or did it just evolve that way?
Speaker 2:it's so funny because I actually spent this past summer redeveloping the entire goalie guild online experience and it was exactly what you said. Like I'm. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love fast action, high-paced goalie websites and a lot of action and a lot of cool imagery and stuff, but, um, that's not what the goalie guild is about. The goalie guild is a foundation that provides resources and education for coaches and and families. So it's like, yeah, I want to get right to the point, um, and I want to try and make it as clear and as simple as possible for people to understand all the different layers and all the different programs that are involved. So when I discovered gitbook, which is the platform that I used, I thought it was perfect. I know it's mostly for like coding websites and and fin tech stuff but I just thought I was like you know what? this is? Very transparent, um, and there is a lot of information in terms of, like, trying to explain, like here's, how the scholarships work. Here's, you know, all the different coaching resources that we provide. Here's the actual research that I'm doing. You know, a lot of goalie coaches like to lea keep that information close to their chest. Sharing is something that we need to break down that barrier here in North America, um, and so I'm very transparent about the stuff that I'm studying and the resources that I tap into, and it's a lot. There's a lot of different complex layers to understanding, skill acquisition and goalie development, and I've accrued a lot of knowledge over the years, and so I just want to make sure that what I'm sharing is as transparent and as simple as possible to get to um. So I really appreciate you saying that, because I worked my butt off all summer on rebuilding the experience and making it a little bit, um, clear and more transparent in terms of, like, the work that I'm doing on a daily basis and how it all connects together, um, under this umbrella of just giving back to the goalie community.
Speaker 1:Well, look, the reason I bring it up is this is that this is not true of just hockey. This is actually almost everything, but it's just kind of oh, this is the way we've always done. It is the general mentality for things and that's the most dangerous way you can think about anything. So, whether, again, you're born in Texas, so you know you've already always had to think outside the box. But I think what you've done is create somewhat of a model of other organizations or four other organizations, excuse me, they can look at and say, wow, this is a different way of doing this, because I'm like you, man, I'm again, I'm a bit of a nerd. By the way, the guild part of the name makes a lot more sense now. But yes, the idea is that you know, mike and I are constantly studying the game and finding stuff, and it's like. You know, social media is there, but, like, we would just want to give, like, one of the reasons we made the podcast is because we want to create communities and places for people to share this type of information, and I think you've done that digitally in a way that's not looking like just a sales pitch, and I really appreciated that when I saw it. So that's really cool
Speaker 2:yeah, I know, and I appreciate that feedback because it is one of the things like I'm not, I'm not selling a product right. Like I'm, I'm sharing knowledge and information and trying to make it easier for non-goalie families and non-goalie individuals to still want to learn more about the position in a very like, non-obtrusive way. So I really appreciate that. And I'm also very non-linear. Like my background is very non-linear, my development path has been very non-linear and so I'm not afraid to try things that maybe haven't been tried before and not care if people don't like it. You know what I'm saying. Like I I stay in my lane and I stay in my zone and if I feel like something's gonna contribute to the growth of the foundation or just make it easier for goalies and people to get involved, like that's really at the heart of the decisions that I make with all this stuff yeah, I think, I think like for me.
Speaker 3:I mean, your platform is a great resource for a non-goalie person which I am a goalie person but for somebody who's not studying are you, though, mike?
Speaker 1:are you though I am?
Speaker 3:I am, I mean, I think I'm teasing like my goal attending, and I think it's because I think it is, you know, it's, it's. It's such a weird position to try to manage in, in saying, okay, you need to be the best player on the ice, but you also have to be the mentally toughest and you also have to be the person that doesn't show any emotion. But you have to show emotion and we have to count on you. But you know, and you can't just stop a puck, you know, come on, you know. So it's like it's all those different things. And what I like about it is that your, your platform is enabled to allow me to kind of talk about the current events of goal-tending, like because goal-tenders are geeking out, right, I mean, you know, like it's, like it's almost when you get, like you know, two chemists in a room together and they start talking about things, you're like I don't know what these two guys are talking about. They're gonna be having a happy time and talking about this. Like my goal tenders, I want them to talk about like, oh, what's the, what's the latest stick you just got? Or what kind of pads did you just buy? Or what kind of strapping do you like better, this, this or this, or you know all those kind of really cool things and for me, you know, having a knowledge base there that I can refer to. It allows me to communicate with my goal tenders in a way where it's not just about, hey, you know, you got to get ready for the game, all right, well, and guess what I saw? I saw this goal tender do this. That was really cool that you might want to look at doing, because I see you're struggling here, I see you're struggling there, and sometimes the goalies, because I think the kids I work with you know these are all 18 and under kids they're so adept at being online and finding all that information out, but but, just like anything else we talk about on our show, sometimes it's way too much information and they need help fine-tuning that and and and making sure that they're getting, you know, not only trusted knowledge base, but also something where they feel confident that it doesn't have to be one way or the other, like it doesn't have to be like. This is who you need to be and you can't evolve. And I think you know, from your point of view, working all these different goal tenors. They're constantly evolving, they're gaining, you know, at every level.
Speaker 1:So, justin, before you dive into that, mike, you accidentally alluded to in a great way a question that I was going to ask. I think Justin plays into this In your book again. I got to hear the power within. For those of you who can't see the episode, this great cover. By the way, you got a yin yang sign on there, which I've studied a lot, but it's a goalie sitting kind of in a in a Buddha or Zen place. But, justin, this is something that's stuck out to me. All right, there's a chapter in here, chapter 17,. It's called the Truth. Okay, it's a very short but powerful chapter that discusses how there's so many voices, mike, that you just said that surround our kids in the game. But at the end of the day, it's the athlete's own internal dialogue that is really the most important, and I believe that coaches and parents play a major role in developing that voice and then having to know when to let go so that the player can kind of do it on their own. Do you agree with that and, if so, how can we all get better at that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm shaking my head like yes, I agree big time. Autonomous support of coaching is is what this is known as, and I think it's one of the most important components to coaching right now in any youth sport, at really any level. And you know, again, this is something I experienced firsthand when I was growing up. I had to find my own way, I had to solve my own problems, and we know that every athlete is a unique individual cognitively, emotionally, physically and when a goaltender or young athlete can actually learn how to solve their own problems in their own natural environment, whether it's at school or it's at home or it's on the ice they develop that inner confidence and that sense of agency which allows them to go out and do amazing things without needing to lean on someone else for constant support. So one of the things that I've learned, especially in goaltending I've learned this from a lot of the greats, for example Mitch corn. He always made sure to tell me that you don't want your goalies to lean on you as a crutch. You need to know when to step away and, like you said, let go and allow for the goalie to evolve naturally in their own environment. And so what's great is that now there's, there's a whole science around this right. Autonomous, supportive coaching is not only psychological, but it's also. It's also just looking at their natural environment and their surroundings and the things that are impacting their decision making and how they problem solve on a daily basis. So, yes, I'm I'm I'm very passionate about agency in goaltenders and allowing them to make some of their own decisions on how they develop and what drills they want to do and what things they want to work on, because that empowers them to know that they can find those answers that they don't have to always seek externally where they're going to figure out why they're getting scored on glove side or why they're giving up bad rebounds. And it's a lot of trial and error and so through that trial and error, you know falling down 50 times and getting up 51 times. You learn that resilience. That resilience actually naturally evolves within yourself and that's so empowering Because when someone tells you you can't do something, you're like you know what I actually know. I can do this because I've failed a million times and I know how to struggle. I know what it's like to lose hockey games. I know what it's like to give up bad goals. So that's really only something that can actually happen if your coaches are able to take a step back and be like you know what. I see there's an issue here and I know we can solve it, but it's okay if I just let the goalie try to figure it out him or herself and then, when the time comes and they really need that, you know someone to step in and say hey, you know what, you can actually try doing this, you know again. I think that's a very empowering experience for the goal tender. You're showing that they have the capability of figuring it out and they're going to respond to that, because kids are extremely keen and they're very aware of situations like this. So, yeah, I love, I love studying autonomous, supportive coaching, done some work with it in the past few years in Breckenridge and I just think agency is a very, very powerful tool Again, not only when coaching goalies but any athlete at any age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say this goes well beyond goal tending, although I can see why it's so important for a gold tender. This is, this goes beyond hockey. I mean, this is a life skill, right. When I, when I work with teams, justin, one of the things I talk about is what is the perfect team, and I always say it's. It's an accountable team, right, where there's a culture of accountability, because mistakes are inevitable. In sport, the whole game is based off of capitalizing on other people's mistakes, right? So it's like can you be accountable? Are we teaching our athletes, our kids, each other, to learn? Right? You know, one of the hardest things about being a parent and everyone listening is going to agree with me on this is you have the knowledge. You want to give that knowledge to your kids. You want to give it all to them, everything you know. But the truth is this they're going to fight you on that, right, and I'm realizing more and more you have to teach them how to learn and how to do this on their own. A great example from that chapter that it was such a powerful point is the messages you give yourself, right, and I want to equate this to how we can teach them giving action items to the audience here, right, you basically talked about. It can be a negative response or a positive response, right, about how you look at something that's happened to you. Like you know, I'm going to do this better next time to get the next save, not, oh, I screwed up and I let the puck in the net. A lot of this goes to how you talk to your kids at home. I heard a great example from another public speaker about you know, when they leave their plate out, it's don't leave your plate out. That's not actually not what you should be saying. It's hey, take your plate to the sink. The action, the outcome, right Now, that's not negative, positive, but it's. It's how you teach them to do that. When we teach our kids not the action, but the problem you didn't take your plate to the sink, you left it out. Well, we all know how our kids respond to that, right, but if you give them the action of this is why it's important that you do this and you learn to do this they're going to mimic that behavior. So when a puck does go in the net or you turn it over, you put it in your own net, whatever it is. You know it hurts. I always tell the kids you're going to feel bad. I'm not telling you should be jumping up and down when you fail. That's, that's ridiculous, but you should go okay. What's the lesson here? What is the sage perspective on this scenario? What am I, what am I being taught right now? The kid that learns to do that, screw that, the person adult, it doesn't matter that learns to think that way, is going to advance at a level so much faster than the person that doesn't that you will find success. Like you said, you might fail 100 times Right. So again, I'm talking a lot here. I just that chapter really stuck out to me is a real short chapter. It's only like a page and a half.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that and I think a lot of it is framing right. So it's it's understanding that images are really powerful in the mind and I think when, as a head coach or a non goalie coach or even a parent, you just take a little bit of time to understand what it might feel like to be the last line of defense, great, that framing is naturally going to change to be more positive. And, again, I think that's why empathy based learning is such a big thing right now and something that you know. I'm constantly trying to learn and I know that's very important in a lot of coaching circles as well. Maybe you learned a little bit about that at the bronze level, golly.
Speaker 1:Mike told me to go to that. By the way, I'm holding up here, joking.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Mike's the one who convinced me. I said I'm looking at this. Yeah, you should go to that. I said All right, mike says I should go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go by the time this episode's over. Mike's going to be so full send on the goalie union, that's for sure. Yeah, I think framing is so important. One of the things I like to tell parents again, you're talking about actionable, you know things that parents can take away from this. One of the biggest things I say to a lot of new goalie parents is just because your kid does something wrong on the ice does not mean there's something wrong with him or her. And I think that's extremely important for young for sorry, not young parents, but parents of young goalies to understand because naturally, as a goalie, when you're eight, nine, 10, 11 years old, your brain is forming and you're dealing with all these new emotions that maybe you're not used to. When you give up a goal, you do feel bad about yourself. You know you let people down, you let your teammates down, you let your coach down, you let people in the stands down and if you look into the stands as a young goalie and you see your parents go like this or having that negative response or, like you know, having that negative energy, you know you feel even worse. You know, and that's the last thing you want is for a young goalie to feel like they did something wrong or that there's something wrong with themselves. Now, naturally, this is going to occur in hockey games. The sport is competitive, we're all trying to get out there and win hockey games, but I think that's where the framing is. So important is understanding that just because you lose a game doesn't mean you're a loser right. So goalies naturally internally process these things as if there is something wrong with themselves as an individual, because they don't quite understand that, like they're going to go through this journey, that goal tending development is very, like I said, nonlinear, and so for the parents it's just important to try and constantly stay positive and just remember that this is a very lengthy process and it takes a lot of time for goalies to get comfortable moving in the gear and feeling comfortable on the ice and playing that position. You know, I think forwards and defensemen, they don't have to deal with that much because you know they're wearing shin pad. You know the gear is more molded to their body, whereas with goal tenders it's heavier, it's bulkier, it's not as comfortable, it's a little bit cumbersome and that's going to affect the way that you perform and the way that you feel when you're just out there on the ice playing a hockey game. So I think framing is really important. I think that's kind of what you were speaking to really clearly and very well about the role of the parent in all of this, and so I think that's really important. We talk about framing and I just love that quote that I shared. You know, just because you make a mistake does not mean that there's something wrong with you as an individual.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and it's not just parents, this is a coach's job too, like I have heard Mike I know you have too and this always bothers me. I have heard coaches multiple times in a one nothing loss or a two to one loss, blame their goal, tender and say something and I'm like you've got to be kidding. They can't score the goals as well, right? And what a lack of accountability in that situation, right, you know? And it's one of those things where, especially in youth hockey, the message you're giving your goalie between periods or after the game, especially if it's not your own kid, right, I mean, you know, one of the things I think I try and say, and I hope other coaches do, is I'm not really worried about the score. I tell the goalie that it's just. I just want to make sure you're doing everything you can. Because here's another one. This is one I'm learning with my own son. He doesn't know what he doesn't know. Right, you know, in, in, in, squirt a lot of goals going up top. And I told my boy the other day well, yeah, you're not six feet tall. Right, you know, when you shoot for the top bar in youth hockey, you might be pretty close to the head, right, it's not the easiest save to make, so we talk about just what are the things you can do to help yourself in that situation. I'm not I'm not worried that it's going to go in, so it's, what are we going to do? Another thing, too, is you mentioned this too, and I think that, again, this is for all hockey players this isn't just gold tenders. Gold tenders deal with this way. More than skaters, though, is when a negative thing happens. This is for the parents listening. What is the reaction of the kid to you? Is it to look to you with fear and am I being judged? Or is it I look to you for comfort? Or and this one's fine too I don't look at you at all, because because I'm not basing my success on what you think, which is also great, but if your kids, looking up every time they make a mistake, wonder if you're gonna yell at them, that's a dangerous place to be, especially if they're young. Right, it's not, in my opinion, justin. That's not the relationship I think you want to have with your kids, and I don't think it's going to help them. I think it creates anxiety. It doesn't reduce it. I think, especially if we're talking gold tenders as we're getting to, there's a zen you have to have. You have to have a very goldfish memory in that position. You know you can't go too long in that spot thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I mean again we talk about framing for parents and it's also important as part of that is Don't be results driven. When you're dealing with a young gold tender, the result is the result. It's not a direct correlation to how that gold tender performed or what he or she may have learned In that experience or in that game or in that tournament. And so, again, just letting go of the results or the score, like you said, is extremely important Because there's so many other takeaways beyond just what the numbers look like in a game, and the goal-tending position inherently means that you're going to be coping with so many uncontrollables. You can't control pucks bouncing off your own D man. You can't control your coach deciding to pull you halfway through a game when you know you've still got a lot of fight in you. You can't control other coaching decisions. You can't control what other players you know there's just so many control the other team.
Speaker 1:Can't control your own team.
Speaker 2:Right. So, and this is this is why, like young goalie struggle a lot of times. This is why a lot of things you know, we see a lot of goalies and it's not uncommon, it's not a. This isn't meant to be negative, but goalies deal with a lot of anxiety in OCD it's. It's naturally developing within themselves because they're playing a sport as the last line of defense. I use that line last line to defense a lot because I think it really frames like the struggle and the pressures that goalies face as the last line of defense. It sucks to play a game that you love when you have to react to what's happening out there. 95% of the time you don't have that agency. All the time you don't get to walk up to the plate and get ready to swing and hit a dinger right Like you have to wait for the game to come to you and there's a lot of stress and anxiety that is inherent with that, especially when you're also feeling external pressure of like I have to win this game, I can't give up bad goals, otherwise I'm not gonna play the next game or I'm gonna get benched. So there's so much happening within your own mind as a young goal tender that, like anything you can do to help alleviate those results driven overly competitive Voices, whether it's external or internal, is really gonna help. So again, it's like a lot of cliche comments, but it's just like it's about. It's about the journey, not the right, like it's about the journey, not the destination. And all of these different things really do help a young goalie, you know, process the game a little bit better and just like calm themselves down and, and most importantly, just have fun with it and not feel like they have to win every single game or always be the best player on the ice To feel like they're effective or they're, you know, they're part of a team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love to add into I mean knowing that right and thinking about how you frame. Because I do think, like there, you know, we talked to our youth players all the time about you know what you can control. What you can control If you have two defensemen and one defenseman's covering a play and the other defensemen has no idea where they're going and your scored against you. You can't just yell at two defensemen. I mean you just had to say, well, you have to use level, especially you. You're doing your job. Now Can we go? Can we go? Look at what happened prior to the goal, like where, where were you positioning? Did the puck out of zone? Did you? Did this lead to this? Like all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, at the youth level, it's all about like, what are you doing as an individual and are you getting better or you're getting worse? Are you improving or you're not learning, like you know. So I think you know, knowing your background from a goal-tenning perspective and some of the technology you're involved in, like I know us in our school, we just put in a censorina room, you know, for the goal-tenners, and it really was more, because it was a lack of Ice and and and the ability to say, well, listen, you can't ask these kids to throw the pads on, throw the skates on, and so what you know maybe you could talk a little bit about you know, knowing that goal-tenning is such a unique position and not, you know, not necessarily have to have a censorina program, but what can you do off the ice as an individual goal-tender To kind of quiet yourself and be in positions where you can get better without a coach, without a, you know, without having to have full-time goalie coaching but I have to have a shooter with you and also the things that you can do to work on your game, because, just specifically, you're the goal-tenner needs to work on specific things In relation to you. So maybe you could talk a little bit about you know, not to get a whole you know off ice training program here, but you know what can goaltenders do to strategize, to say, listen, I'm on the ice twice a week of my team. Yes, sometimes I have a goalie coach, sometimes I don't, but I know where my deficiencies lie and what can I do to improve those without getting on the ice. Yeah, yeah, no, and that's a great question and this points to a couple of things First of all that sense of agency right?
Speaker 2:We know that goaltending is and I'll say this a million times we know that goaltending is very nonlinear in terms of Like that development path, but it's also very self-organized. And by self-organization I mean what I spoke about much earlier is like being able to solve your own problems. And you know Lee's reading the, the first, the first episode of the trilogy of the power within, and Lee, as you get through the other two books and you get to the end, and you've Probably heard from 35, 40 NHL goalies that have all been on extremely different paths to getting to that top of that goaltending mountain. But there are correlations and things that they've that you will find that are similar in all of them. And one of them to Mike's point is, like every goalie that's achieved a level of greatness or have reached that high level, they all, at some point in their junior career, have reached that high level At some point in their junior career, some point where they were of age. It's different for everyone doing some type of off ice mind body awareness practice, whether it's yoga or Pilates or breathing techniques or visualization, but one thing about the mind body connection is so incredibly valuable for a goaltender to find that level of inner performance. You almost don't get to that high level of performance unless you're doing something like that on at least some type of regular practice. Now, it's not like they're doing it seven days a week and that's it, but at some point in their journey they picked up some type of mind body awareness practice and they gravitated to it because they realized that it helped them feel better about all of these different aspects of their development. Does that make sense? So, mike, that's that's one of the first things. Like right now, breathing exercises and just having a basic understanding of why it's so important for a goalie is huge right now at all levels. And I think about when I was a goalie at a younger age, like I wasn't breathing half the game because I was so like just tense and so caught up and tracking the puck and making sure all the bajillion things of my positioning and my technique were dialed in right. So half the time, like when you're killing a penalty and the pressure is on in a three, three game, in overtime, it's like you're not breathing, you're holding your breath and you tense up right, and so just having that basic understanding of the knowledge and the awareness of I'm not breathing is going to, you know, hopefully lead you down this journey of like, okay, how can I get better at this when I'm actually performing? So, yeah, that's just one example. And like to your point about sense arena, why I love being involved with the sense arena program is because, again, it provides agency for the gold tender. They can put on the headset and they can go in and they can choose what drills they want to work on and what areas of the game they want to work on, and it's all through their own research and their own drive and their own passion for wanting to figure things out. And and yeah, it's great, you can have a coach say like okay, here you're going to go in and do the x, y and z, but like I personally just love giving them a headset and be like, here's how you get into sense arena. You let me know what you you find, yeah, tell me what you experienced, let me know what you thought was cool and what you thought wasn't so great, you know. And just listening to their experience guiding themselves in their own development path again circles back to all the stuff I've been talking about about self organization and and autonomy and agency and like that's where I think goalies truly learn. Like we know, learning happens everywhere and you need good coaches to provide some structure. But when I see goalies just go in and tinker in the headset themselves and come back to me and they're like I want to take this drill that I did and, since we're in the iPhone, I want to do this on the ice. Can we replicate this? It's like all right, let's figure out how to do it. Yeah and that's, that's, I think, very powerful for for goalies and and like you said, and players.
Speaker 1:So we got to quickly make sure all the listeners understand what censoring is. So it's a VR experience, right? So oculus, somebody might have oculus, but you put a headset on layman's terms I know some of you know out there but I got to tell you, man, I tried this thing out about a year ago and I remember I was skeptical. I'm like I, this is gonna be met. Man, I was in the NHL for a minute. I mean, it was insane. You put this headset on and you're on the ice making waves and I'm not even a goalie and it was like wow. In fact, mike, it gave me hope. As I get older and my body really won't let me do this anymore. I'm like I'm still going to get to play. So, because this technology is only going to evolve to the point where we can all use it.
Speaker 3:But yeah, and the cool thing about anything like that is a lot of the components that are in. There are, like for a guy like me, like has you know 2530 athletes and I'm like I got to get more reps for them, somehow unsupervised by me. So it's just another tool. But all the things that are in there are things that guys like Justin, I've been doing without a VR, like it, just it, just this. Again, it's just another tool, but you can, you know to your point, justin, as a goal tender and as a parent, you can find all of those in your living room, I mean for free. Like visualization doesn't need equipment, but the equipment definitely enhances and helps. I guess, in a place where sometimes our kids, you know, don't get, you know, and that like, like you saw, every goal it does, I don't leave. There's a goalie in the world that doesn't know how to juggle right. Like every goal, like every goalie, like juggling.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to juggle, you got it. You got it, come on.
Speaker 3:But I mean, but every goal, you see, they have a ball and they're juggling or they're, they're throwing the ball off the wall, like that's basically it's free, right, I mean so. So you can do a lot of those kind of things, and whether you're doing it for hand, I coordination, whether you're doing it to mentally prepare, whether you're doing it just for you know, getting your body in motion and warm and flexible, like so it's all different variables to why you do it. My point was just, you know the goal tending position, and it took me a little while as a coach, especially at the college level, to understand like, okay, I gotta get these guys, like they're gonna leave the room and they wanna do their own thing, like I want a team Well, and they are part of the team, but their preparation and, honestly for me, like I've allowed all the players to do that, like all the players now are learning how to prepare differently to help them. Yes, there is a time to be in the locker room together and everyone, you know, being synergized with what we're doing, but there also is a time where certain players need to get themselves ready in certain different ways, and then we as coaches have to respect that and I think also, like you mentioned about you know the breathing exercise and things like that like there's some listen, there's a lot of old school coaches still that don't give a crap about your breathing, don't care that you're not ready, or like, listen, just get in the pipes. I'm not taking the time out for you. You gotta suck it up and be you know and be prepared. How you do that I don't care and I don't wanna know. And I think that's where we've all evolved especially from a USA occupant perspective in the bronze coaching clinics and things like that that we're just giving so much more education to the everyday coach to know that. Okay, this is another point of emphasis that we have to have for all of our athletes. It just happens to be that this one athlete is a very important cog to the wheel, because we usually only have two of them and then we have to, you know, cater around that player to get proper positive reps so that when they do get to a game, you know, we can just let them go and do their thing. So it's just because you're absolutely right If I have a defenseman that has a bad first period, I could sit that defenseman for the next two periods If I have a goalie that has a bad period. It's not so easy. You know I mean I you might not have a choice.
Speaker 1:You might not have a choice.
Speaker 3:Well, not only that we've seen plenty of times where you pull a goalie, he's out. Then you the hell, this kid sucks too. Throw the other guy back in. Then he's like, okay, he's terrible.
Speaker 1:You saw, everybody knows how to juggle and hockey right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't. Just you know you don't have six goalies on the bench and you have to prepare for having players that have a different. You know there's a different piece of how that player needs to fundamentally prepare and recover and think about the game and you as a coach need to understand it that you may need to take a little extra time and have a different communication. You know vehicle or portal with your goalies, not so much like to cater to them but to understand that last line is offense mentality and how that presses on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a couple of that's all very great points and it's a lot of. The conversation we're having right now is a conversation I'd love to have with non-goalie coaches, because we're all just trying to find alignment and how we understand what it means to be a goalie. And again, real quick, a point on sensorina. One of the things I absolutely love about it and how it's evolving is that it does generate empathy. When you put the headset on and you play the goal-tending position in sensorina and you've never been a goalie before, all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, it's actually not very easy to see pups from the point oh my God traffic does suck. Oh my God, just having a mask on your face with the bars. Oh my God, things aren't as clear as I maybe thought watching from the bench, so like-.
Speaker 3:And you know what, and you can't get hurt. That's true, that's true, you can't get hurt.
Speaker 2:But that's the thing I think that's so important is like I challenge parents and I challenge coaches that have never been a goalie before to put on the sensorina headset and do a goalie drill, just to get a very simple idea of like oh my God, this is not nearly as easy as I mean my life.
Speaker 3:I got a couple of dads and moms. I got a couple of dads and moms. I think I'll invite Dara.
Speaker 1:It'll change your life. You'll never yell at a goalie the same way again.
Speaker 2:It's true, but that is the power of empathy-based learning, and that, I think, is what, for years, I was trying to hammer away at with coaches was, like coaches that don't understand the position. I'm not saying this to separate them. I'm saying take the time to truly try and understand what it means to be a goalie, and VR is an amazing way to do that, because you're immersed in it and you can't not experience what it's like to be a goalie when you're wearing the headset. And I think that can be so, so powerful because, again, already you're starting to empathize with like oh my gosh. How do you even see? Like oh my gosh. Now, when you give up a goal from the blue line, you're not like oh my God, what the heck was that? That's terrible. You're actually thinking about, well, what got in the way of his vision? What did the puck actually? You know, what are you seeing from the goaltender's perspective that you don't see from the bench? Or the stands are 200 feet in the press box, which is another conversation. But that, I think, is what ultimately, my goal is in the goaltending community or in the hockey community is like help coaches and parents and people that have an experienced position find that level of alignment with the understanding of what it means and what that experience is like, so that we can all treat goalies a little bit more like humans and a little bit less like targets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's funny to see how this technology is gonna evolve because, like I can already hear some people like ah, it's VR, like yeah, it's coming, it's coming big time, it's already here. Actually, it's just a matter of how it's gonna expand. Justin, before we get in the lift of mask, which is something we have to talk about, and we're kind of leaning towards that in our conversation. Anyway, one of the signs of a good writer, which you are, is you're able to really consolidate sentences, to not be bloated and just say something very good. And in your book, you had a small quote that really stuck out to me, which we kind of talked about a little bit today too, which is inspiration is often found in isolation. And this talks about also mindfulness. You know we were talking about the ability to breathe and you know a lot of people go. I don't know how to do that it's. You know it takes time. It takes as little as a minute or two to just kind of do it, to be focused, to be present with something. It's something we don't teach enough. But when you say inspiration is often found in isolation, it's obviously not limited to goaltending, like we're saying. It's a life skill. But how important is it and this is the question I want you to tell our audience how important is it to create that time for yourself and your kids? Right, because sometimes, as parents, we need to learn how to lay off and let our kids be isolated. We've been alluding to that the whole time, but I think, again, talking to the parents and the coaches, we have to give them the isolation I look. I've had to learn this lesson an infinite amount of times with my own kids because I'm just very hands-on, I know the game, I want to get involved, and a lot of times I have to tell myself you need to let them have a minute, stop telling them what to do and let them figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's extremely powerful and, you know, my experience again was that I had parents that truly supported everything that I did and I was into a lot of different stuff. Like I said, I was like really into medieval nights and I wanted to play the saxophone and I want you know all the things that kids want to do when they're growing up, when they're discovering themselves. There are ways you can support it without hammering down on them every single day and trying to structure what is naturally unstructured. And I think development for kids is a lot of like. There's a lot of research about how we're just wired to create, like creativity is a natural instinct that we all have and there's a lot of things that pull that creativity away and destroy that natural creativity by over structuring it or having too much of an impact on a kid's day to day journey or day to day, you know, different tasks that they have to get through, and creativity is really reinforced and developed and nurtured when kids are able to be in their own environment. So when they flock to something or they find something that they truly enjoy, whether it's running or it's riding a bike or it's doing some activity that's fully autonomous, right, like they find the answers are out there in the distance, but they're not always. You're not always going to see it right in front of you, and so you have to be able to process your daily life. You have to be able to process what you truly enjoyed and what you didn't like, and you're forming all of these different, different gosh what's the word I'm looking for? You're forming a lot of different behaviors just naturally by going through life, and so I think for young goalies and for parents, it's just again. They're gonna find those solutions if you just let them figure it out themselves and in isolation, you're able to process a lot of the stresses that you go through, and for me, I think it was just. This was naturally easy for me because I grew up in the middle of nowhere, right Like I didn't have a lot of structure to my day to day.
Speaker 1:You grew up in isolation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in isolation, like I was outside all the time and I was in nature and I was really in tune with my feelings because of that, because there weren't a lot of voices, it was just nature and it was just my natural surroundings. And it's harder and harder for kids to find that because we're in such a more technically dominant world, right. And so, again, just when you see that your kid is maybe in his room and he or she is going through something, it's okay to let them be in that environment for a little bit. And then naturally, I think as a parent you have that instinct for like, okay, now I feel like it's time to maybe say something. But to your point, lee, if you just allow for some of that to naturally occur, you're not damaging anything, you're not being a parent just because you're not around the entire time. So, caveat, I'm not a parent. So again, I'm saying a lot.
Speaker 1:No, there's a lot of truth to that man. There's a lot of truth in what you just said. What the hell do you know that?
Speaker 3:Yeah like but you're absolutely right, I mean, it's all parents we have to remember that. Like it's great to go, like oh yeah, that is what kids like to do. Like you know, I think that's what a lot of us parents forget how much freedom we had, how much time we had and how like I remember, like I don't remember my father ever watching my hockey practice ever, and now like parents are filming the whole practice like a whole crack out, what the hell you doing with all that film, mike, I gotta tell you real quick. The iCloud companies must be making a fortune off these hockey parents.
Speaker 1:My God, wait between that and Live Bar. I gotta tell you really funny thing happened the other day. Keep in mind that my kids started playing during COVID and, like you know, you kind of had to be there. I was at my son's squirt practice weeks ago and I realized there was no other parents there and I realized, cause he's old enough. I was like I don't have to be here and I got really excited. He's like I just got an hour and a half back to my life. And not that I don't love watching him, but I think it's also important that he plays without me there. Sometimes he knows I'm not there, whether we have a good relationship or not. But, justin, listen, whether you're a parent or not, the point you just made this is what I will tell you that you probably don't know. Okay, the point you made is absolutely true. You are not a bad parent if you just let them be. All right. A lot of us forget that. What I'll add to it is this it's really hard to just let them be. Especially, like I said earlier, you want to give them the knowledge, you want to share things with them At least, I hope you do but, like most things, you have to let them do it on their own. You talk about empathy and epithetic learning. All of us adults have to try once in a while to be like what was it like when I was nine? What was it like when I was 15? Remember your own life at that time, not from the viewpoint of an adult, and look, you're naturally going to say, oh wow, my mom or my dad was right about that. View it as a 15 year old. You're going to see things totally different. I try and do that with both my kids. Okay, what was I thinking, if I can remember at that age? Or, more importantly, what was I not thinking at that age? Right, wasn't worried about these things, I just wanted to have fun. So I think that's an important part of it as well. But what you said is that inspiration happens in isolation for everyone listening. This is why, just to prove the point, most of our great ideas in the world come when we're taking a shower or we're at the gym, or you're out for a walk or you're driving, because you're typically by yourself in those situations and your mind is quiet for a change, or it might be very loud, depending on how you want to look at that Right, but that's when you're able to be present, right, and you're able to think and this is something we can teach our children to do Right. There's a big misconception that you can't teach kids this, because kids naturally wander. Your mind is wired to wonder and wander Excuse me Right, wonder and wander, it works. But you can teach someone, hey, let's be present for 30 seconds, let's focus on our breathing for 30 seconds. That's a learned skill that you can gain, right and to your point, justin, we do a lot of this with my kids. I think there's a lot of moments that make me proud as a parent. But when I see my son or daughter breathing on the bench or in the net and I know they're doing it on their own it's like wow, it's wow, that actually worked and they're and they're a lot relying on it to stay calm and not get anxiety, which they definitely have anyway. I'm talking a lot.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I want to get good, justin, share your thoughts, but we have to dive into this, lift the mask thing because it's massive.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because it just reminds me of something I saw online last week about this viral video. This viral video on Tiktok, about a girl who's like absolutely amazed because she went on a walk down in her neighborhood without her phone for 10 minutes and she's like, oh my god, it changed my life. Like I feel I have such a clear mind and us old people are like okay really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's 20 years of my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so similar so similar because I'm in a car right now with a new driver and you know when my son's driving and he's like man, I never realized how. You know, beautiful, this area is Really nice. I go, yeah, cuz you're, your head is in your phone when I'm driving like so I think you know, when, all of a sudden, he's now behind the wheel, driving like I never even noticed that there. Wow, I didn't know that was so close to us. Or wow, that's there, but it is, but it's. It's actually uplifting. I'm like well, number one, you're looking, you're looking around the road. But I mean it's just funny to see, to see that you know, you know, you're like it. There's a, there's a coach chippy, you know the kid that does the online thing. He has a great joke about the junior guys going into a walk in the woods and he's like and the guys like, yeah, let's just put our phones down by the tree and we'll go for a walk. And he's like. He's like, yeah, we're gonna put our phones down, you know for for he goes. No, I'm not doing that like I can't, but it's just funny how like it's so foreign to these kids Not to have this device stuck into their hand, which you know, which gets me, you know, that's. That's the, the juggling act of technology, right?
Speaker 1:we're all guilty of and using.
Speaker 3:But but even for the players right, it's like the whole the controversy or the discussion about having iPads on the bench and not like you need that instant Look is it? Is it helping? Is it hurting, like all those kind of things. Is us juggling this new world of? Wow, we have all this great access to all this stuff, but is all this stuff way too much to to use?
Speaker 1:and I'm torturilla of the flyers says it's distracted and he, yeah, he's taking them off his bed. Well, he's an expert, I think.
Speaker 3:But I think it's a but again. But that's, that's the juggling act right, because there's a. There's plenty of people that will say this is the greatest thing you could ever have as an athlete. Like you know and I'll tell you right now hitters know it. Hitters have known this forever. Right, like the hitting book has become a video book, which has become a huge teaching tool that they're looking at prior to getting in the box to hit. Like they're there, their whole Game has changed based off of the information they're able to digest. So, but can we? But are we doing? That is what you know. Imagine there's gonna be a time, right, there's gonna be an iPad attached to the back of the net and on a goal a goal. He can turn around and look at the goal.
Speaker 2:It's gonna happen. We already have the, we already have the go pros.
Speaker 3:Well, even even the pro guys look at how many guys gets a goal scored and look up at the Jumbotron. They're watching the whole, the whole thing in real time, and also we're. We're bringing that down to our eight-year-olds and expecting them to process it the same way and like to me. It's so mind-boggling.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot of books out there that prove in a million different ways that nature is healing and I think anytime you can get away from the daily grind or away from the technology, it does so much good for you and it does help you find those answers from within, which goes back to the autonomy and and the agency, and that was huge for me. As a young kid growing up Like I was very blessed to be surrounded by nature all the time and just again have parents that really cared about me, but they cared more about just me enjoying the process than it was like, oh, you need to get to the next level because we spent this much money on gear. You know there was. I never had that and that was something that I'm so grateful for now. It's probably a big reason why I'm still so passionate about the position, because they didn't take it out of me, they didn't teach it out of me or coach it out of me. That's another thing that I've learned from a lot of great goalie coaches is why you just observe more and Talk less, because you don't want to coach good skills out of a goalie and some of those skills are gonna be skills that you can't see. It's not gonna be the hand quickness or the ability to recover back to your edges. It's gonna be how they process the game and how they overcome a lot of the challenges, and you don't want to coach those things out of a young goalie, so you have to just sit back and let things happen. And that's really challenging, like you guys said it is. It is you know something.
Speaker 1:You've done, a little transition here to help people with those challenges, and just that. I don't want to sugarcoat this is actually a really important thing you've created. As I've, as I've fallen into the goalie world more and more, this is something I hear about every month from the other goalie parents and sometimes they go away themselves. It's a brilliant initiative that you bet. I actually like to see this go beyond goal-tenning. But let's talk about lift the mask, which is a mental health support program for goal-tenors that you operate through the goalie guild. It's also a monthly challenge that you share with your audience. Let's just dive into why you created it. Maybe some of the important stories you've received from the initiative and they may be good or bad, or positive or negative right, because it's really important in hockey that we're putting the mental health and mental fitness of our kids on an equal playing field as the physical side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lift the mask was essentially born out of the same situation with the goalie guild it's a lack of resources for the goal-tenning community, and this was back in 2017, 2018. So it was really at the beginning of my biggest challenge as an athlete, which was like trying to be an emergency backup goalie as a guy that never played pro hockey before. So this, as, while it was a dream come true, was also extremely stressful and I dealt with a lot of anxiety because of it, and so for me, it was looking again at the hockey community as a whole, or sports as a whole, and like, wow, there's actually no mental health support programs for goalies. Well, if there's a gap in that In anything in the goal-tenning community, I'm gonna be there to help fill that gap. And that was a big one. For me is, I think back then in the mid 2010s, you know, 2015, 2016 mental health really came to the forefront. We started to see athletes actually open up about this, affecting their ability to just live happily and live with fulfillment, and I feel like goalies, for whatever reason, were at the forefront of this in pro sports, whether it was Robin Lenner or it was Scott Darling, who has a really incredible story of, you know, going from being this top flight college athlete With the University of Maine to being a top draft pick with the Coyotes organization to Literally living on the street in Vegas making a hundred bucks a week, spending it all on alcohol. He went from the top all the way to the bottom, where he was just scrapped, you know, clinging to life by a thread, to being a Stanley Cup champion with the Chicago Blackhawks, and that is a mind-blowing journey, not just for goalies but for any athlete or any human being to go through. And so for me it was okay. I'm not a mental health practitioner, I'm not. I'm not a licensed therapist, but I do have a good skill set of connecting people, and so lift the mask. Really, what it's all about Is, yes, we provide some funding so that there is no financial barrier for a goalie or a goalie family to go get professional help. But I just want to connect goalies and goalie families with professionals, because when a goalie is struggling, he or she may not want to talk about it, and here she may not know where to turn to find someone that will listen and resonate with them and help them. And so this program is literally Just acting as a bridge between the individual and the professional that can give the licensed guidance or Help the goaltender Start that path to, you know, improving their mental health and improving their lives, and that's really all. That's all it's about. It's a very simple mission and there's a lot of different ways that we try to advocate and promote this, and you mentioned one like the monthly Photo contest. Diving into that real quick, because I think that, yeah, yeah, the photo contest is great, and so like lift the mask.
Speaker 1:The name behind it is very very simple to understand.
Speaker 2:It's like goalies wear a mask to protect themselves, but that mask also hides their emotions. That hides who they truly are, hides their personality. And While it's important to wear a mask because it protects you from the puck and from getting hurt, it can also be done by a professional. From the puck and from getting hurt, um, it can also be detrimental because no one really sees who you actually are. You don't get to express your emotions. And again, this is something I experienced my whole life growing up is that, you know, I became conditioned, because of the nature of the position, to bottle everything up and not really show my true self to a lot of people. I was just Naturally conditioned to be this very even, keeled, stoic, like, almost like bland person on the surface and, um, we know that's not reality, right like you have to be able to Express yourself and at least we get to do that with paints on the mask and stuff like that in our gear. But anyways, this, this idea of, like you know, being able to lift your mask and share your story and help Um resonate with other goalies and with other individuals that haven't been through certain things, is really, really powerful because it normalizes mental health. It normalizes the struggle and the challenges that we're all on and we're all going through and, um, what's funny about this? You know, journey for myself is like I built lift the mask. But I had never really me personally had never really gone through any type of traumatic experience or I was never diagnosed with OCD or Depression or anything else. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago, when my mom passed away, that I actually faced it head on and that was, um, the most difficult stretch of my life. I was, um, shattered into a million pieces because my mom she passed away very unexpectedly and and I was just struggling to survive for a while, and because I had built this program when, you know, goalies can connect and share their stories and not be afraid to open up. It really helped me go through the same process, like I was able to talk to my friends about what I was feeling. I was able to connect with some of my mentors, like the guy that I wrote the book with, mike valley, like he was the first guy to reach out to me and be like, hey, man, I don't know what you're going through, but I'm here for you. And so, just being able to normalize being there for someone, I think, is already a huge step in the goalie community, because it's so easy to, you know, especially as a coach look at your goalies and be like I don't want to mess with them, I just kind of want to leave them alone, I don't want to mess with their juju or what they're doing to prepare, so I'm just not going to do anything. And sometimes that's that's even worse. You should be able to go up to your goalie and have a conversation with them and just be like, hey, man, how are you feeling, you know? Or like, hey, what can I do to help you get through whatever you're going through? I know the last game was a tough loss, I know it may not be easy right now, but like I'm here for you, man, or I'm here for you, you know. And so, just again, being able to normalize conversations that maybe aren't like super comfortable, right, can be so empowering for a goalie that is Probably conditioned to just bottle it all up. And so, yeah, that's um, that's really you know a little bit more about the, the backstory, as to why it has become like the most important part of the goalie guild foundation.
Speaker 1:You know, just to echo you and to to share some perspective with, with everybody listening, right, you know, all three of us up here today have I've lost a parent and I. What's amazing is, until it happens I mean, it's trauma, like, whether you're expecting it or not, and I'm not judging any situation there's trauma involved with it, right? Um, and as adults, we're somewhat, somewhat equipped to handle that, right, some of us do it better than others, but it's extremely hard. And I remember when my mom passed again incredible perspective from my brother, actually With our children, all of our children, and he made this great point. He said the younger kids don't understand this feeling is going to go away or it's going to to settle, right, doesn't ever go away, um, when you equate that to hockey, it's like, you know, does a nine-year-old know when the puck goes in the net? Or a seven-year-old that that feeling Will not last forever, right? So, again, I'm using an extremely powerful example here in terms of losing a parent. But even as adults, to take that trauma and understand it, analyze it, it's hard and, yeah, you know, I think our first inclination as people right now is just to hide it and push it down. It's probably the last thing you should do. Right, you really should speak with someone and again just bringing this back to lift the mask because it's getting a little deep. What's funny to me, mike, I want you to comment on this too. If we told youth athletes and parents, hey, we're going to make a connection with you and a professional athlete to work on your snapshot or your skating, and it's, there's scholarships, and you get, everyone would jump at that like, oh, yeah, yeah, I want that. But we say, hey, we're going to make a connection with you and a professional for your mental fitness, and you go, eh, you know, maybe we'll get to that. It boggles my mind. That's still part of the stigma and again, you said it perfectly, justin, the stigma is breaking. Like we are more open about this now than ever before. I think everyone really does realize, I mean, that mental health, mental fitness, is essential. But I think that the conversation kind of stops there and like, well, I don't know what to do about it. You've created something to do about it and it's right there. And I would love to see more resources for people of, hey, we're going to connect you with a professional and that not be a bad thing. Right, that's the part of the stigma that needs to break. You are doing that with lift the mask. You are breaking that stigma. You are providing you having conversations about it. It is so darn important that things like this exist, so I just want to tell you how much I appreciate it, number one, and applaud John doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I appreciate it and yeah, I think at the end of the day it's just having like normalizing it by having conversations Like again, it doesn't always even have to be a licensed therapist or a sports psychologist Like you gain so much clarity and you learn how to manage these challenges when you realize other people have been through it as well. And it's amazing, when you experience something that really challenges you or may result in some trauma, you realize like there will be people that will come to you naturally and say you know what? I dealt with this as well and I, so many of my goalie friends reach out and say man, I never told you this before, but I lost a parent when I was 14 or I, you know I went through this or I went through that. And like you just realize you're not alone. And when you realize you're not alone especially again for a goalie who is the last line of defense you're in the blue paint all by yourself. You don't get reinforcement from your coach. When you skate to the bench after every shift like you know, skaters do that feeling of normalcy and that feeling of belonging because someone else experienced something that you experienced in their own way is so important. You feel connected, you feel grounded, you feel like there is a solution and there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that saves lives and that changes lives. And, more important and this is a phrase you'll get to in the books that I use a lot as every drop counts is like that adds up over time and what ends up happening. And you see this with a lot of goalies, like you see a lot of goalies in the broadcast booth right, like Darren paying and Brian. When you get to that point in your life, you realize like you want to give back those same lessons to the next generation.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I think that's why the goalie community is such a tight knit group is because it's such a unique, challenging position. When you come of age, you just want to turn around and make sure that the next generation has support, and that's what it was for me, even though I didn't play, you know, professionally or whatever, it was just like. I've been through so much on this journey of being a goalie. It's so unique, it's so challenging, it's so beautiful. I just want to make sure that the next generation has, you know, some level of support but you're not defined by your elite prospects profile and that's.
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't even have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually asked them if they would make one for me, because I was a ebug for five years and they're like we can't find you anywhere.
Speaker 1:It's not happening, but yeah they're going to find you on this show. We'll make that happen for you. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:But that, honestly, I think is is what it is. It's like it's normalizing the experience of being a goalie and normalizing the challenges and normalizing that. You know, excessive compulsive disorders or anxiety or pregame jitters or all of these struggles that we inherently have as being a goalie because that's just the nature of the position is very normal and everyone's experiencing it, and you can still leave us. You can still lead a very fulfilling and happy life, even if you struggle with these things, because there are ways to work on it, there's ways to manage it, and that's where the professionals come in. And hey, if you just want to talk to an ambassador or someone like myself that's not licensed, great, I'm always here to have a conversation and just try to resonate, try to find that, like I said earlier, that alignment between our different experiences. If you feel like this is something that's really detrimental to your daily life and you can't live, you can't have normal thoughts or you can't feel normal when you're performing, okay, maybe it's something a little bit more serious. Maybe this is something that you should talk to a professional about. Hey, you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. Look at Conor Ingram, look at all these other goalies that have come out with their stories about how they went and saw a professional, they entered the NHL abuse program or whatever the case may be, and look, they're back on the ice and they're playing great and they're continuing that nonlinear journey of development. And those are the stories that are so powerful, like what Robin Leonard did. Coming out about his situation for those years was so empowering. Conor Ingram I mentioned his story is unbelievable. What he went through, and maybe the most recent one is Spencer Knight. You know this was a first round draft pick like highly touted answer to all of Florida's problems. And look at what he had to go through. He went into the substance abuse program. When he got out of it he explained like the anxiety was why he leaned on the substance. Whatever it was, it was the pressure that he felt being the answer to all Florida's problems. It was just too much to manage. And that's okay, it's going to happen. A human can only handle so much before they eventually break down and something happens. But you're never defined by your mistakes. You're defined by how you overcome your challenges. And I think even though everyone was like oh, what's wrong with Spencer Knight, like why isn't he playing? He makes all this money, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff that you hear, it's like, wow, now you really understand what he was going through, because he opened up about it. And by opening up about it, think of all those other goalies that are hearing this and maybe struggling with some type of substance or struggling with, you know, the OCD or the anxiety or whatever it is, depression. Wow, they actually can solve it. There are ways to get better and it's a journey, but, man, you come out of that so strong and again it's like now you can take that experience and give back to the community and help others and that's that self fulfilling cycle. I think of care and nurturing and wanting to help others is super powerful and I just try to build on that by sharing those stories.
Speaker 1:I was lucky enough to be at the NHL Awards when, when Leonard won the Vezna and you know what? I'll never forget what he said. He said I may be mentally ill, but that doesn't mean I'm mentally weak. And that was a groundbreaking statement in mental health history, not just sports, but I remember he said that it was so powerful I never forgot it Right. So with that said I want to. I actually I have to end this, unfortunately on a fluff question because of some of the things he said. But you were involved with the Lanch for many years. You're not not officially now, you're tired, but you said you're really in the medieval night. So the Vegas Golden Knights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that the?
Speaker 1:coolest thing ever for you, or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. Yeah, I'm actually a big Knights fan. I love watching the home games because they just put on this production. And the night comes out at center ice like puts the sword on the ice or whatever, and I actually know him.
Speaker 1:His name is Lee Orchard. He's from Peterborough in the United Kingdom and he loves that job. I can tell you that right now I'm sure he's super.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so cool and yeah, I think just naturally that was just something I was really into as a kid and I think if the Knights were around in the mid 90s, that would have been your team, probably would have been my team Plus I like I love gold, like gold's one of my favorite colors. So, yeah, the Knights are great.
Speaker 1:It's in your name, brother, I mean yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's in my last name too. So yeah, that was. I have a very like I'm really passionate about archetypes, right, and you know, goaltending brings to the surface some really important archetypes as hockey players, like, we're really tough, we're warriors, and I just think seeing goalies in all of their gear, it's like I just can't make that. I can't not make that correlation. And there's a lot of nobility in that. Like you know, there's a famous quote about, you know, goaltending is the most noble position in all of sports and I truly believe that. And I truly believe that, you know, I'm very fortunate that I have the opportunity to kind of live out that archetype and just try and uphold certain standards of what goaltenders should be, and one of them is just to truly, you know, not only have the passion for the position but giving back, and that's that's really like my purpose, I think, is I've always been really passionate about giving back because I've been so fortunate to play this game for a number of years and have some really crazy experiences and because my path has been very nonlinear. Like, I really lean into that. So, yeah, yeah, I just I think, I think that archetype of, like the goalie as the night and the last line of defense is like really empowering and really helps goalies like embrace the challenges that come with it. And it also makes it easier to know that like there's going to be times when you're down on one knee and you've just been, you know, slugging it out with another team and you're completely drained and it's hard, it's really hard. But building that inner resilience and all these skills on the inside, I mean that's where you truly find the answers and you truly find that purpose, and it's all contained within that blue paint just being a goalie.
Speaker 1:Well, just I'm going to say that you are doing it, you will continue to do it. I think that you're right at the forefront of this from a goaltending perspective, but really a sports perspective, with what you've done with mental health, mental fitness and just creating a community where people can learn. I think that it sets a really tremendous example for all of us and again, it's not limited to just the internet, right, the books you've written, the speaking that you do. It's fantastic. I think we're going to end it there, man. There's a great episode just in Goldman with us today. Thank you so much for giving us some time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries, thank you guys for having me on and I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing because, again, making this kind of information accessible is extremely important and your podcast obviously does that to a T. So thank you guys very much.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, buddy, and again, make sure for those of you listening, share this episode with all of your goaltending friends, non-goaltending friends, people that need to hear it. Make sure you go pick up Justin's book, the Power Within. As he said, it's a trilogy of books very, very good reading, regardless of your age. And make sure you check out the Goalie Guild if you haven't already, and really just to check it out. It's pretty amazing. But that's going to do it for this edition of our Kids Play Goalie for Mike Vannelli. I'm Lee Elias. We'll see you next time. Everybody, skate on and have a great week. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. Make sure to like and subscribe right now if you found value, wherever you're listening, whether it's a podcast network, a social media network or our website, ourkidsplayhockeycom. Also, make sure to check out our children's book when Hockey Stops at whenhockeystopscom. It's a book that helps children deal with adversity in the game and in life. We're very proud of it. But thanks so much for listening to this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey and we'll see you on the next episode.
