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Around the League 2019-2024 Edition

Preston said:
I know you're talking about pro hockey and that's fine but the culture runs deep into all levels of hockey. As an 8-10 year old I took nonstop verbal abuse/berating from coaches because I didn't throw enough body checks. I was tall and more into the skill part of the game and didn't really care about throwing my body around. They were really mad because I was a particular height and didn't try to murder people enough.

But being emasculated and verbally tortured in front of my teammates for 4-5 days a week back then was way worse and harder on me than the physical abuse they put me through. That wasn't very fun either (and it happened for the same reasons) but the other stuff hit harder. I just wanted to play hockey and I wanted it to be fun. It wasn't really. But I did it anyway because I felt like I had to.
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Agreed, and the problem is with these minor hockey coaches who think they're the next Pat Quinn or Mike Keenan. I never experienced that kind of coach when I was in minor hockey and never saw it. But as an adult I can recall going to minor hockey games involving my friends' kids and I was appalled by some of the behaviors I witnessed, both from the parents in the stands and the coaches.

In one game I watched, the coach got ejected from the game because he was constantly berating the teenaged referee from behind the bench. My friend told me that this was not an uncommon occurrence for this particular coach. In another game I saw another teenager who was refereeing a game between teams made up of 8 year olds get verbally abused by parents in the stands when they thought he should have called a penalty. And my friend told me that he had witnessed fist fights among parents in the arena parking lot after games more than once.

That's why I always laugh when I see Don Cherry get all misty eyed about hockey parents. Sure most of them are great but an increasing number of them are just assholes with no filter on their behavior. And some of these parents end up as coaches.

Hockey for kids that young needs to be fun and the focus needs to be on the fun, not the scoreboard. I played on teams that hardly ever won. Our coach never yelled at us or made us feel like we were failures. But once you get to a level where the game is becoming a serious thing, when the players and coaches are pursuing advancement in the sport as a possible career, the kid gloves come off and you have to preach accountability. But a good coach knows when to pat a player on the back and when to put a boot up their ass (metaphorically, of course) and even at higher, more competitive levels of the sport they have to keep in mind that from a legal standpoint they are dealing with children, not adults, and that the standards of behavior are therefore different.
 
No idea why, after everything we saw with the Blackhawks and Aldrich, anyone would assume Bob Murray's under investigation simply for yelling at players about their on-ice performance. Guaranteed there's a mountain of shit on him, especially with how fast his fellow GMs are like "oh man ya, not surprised lol".
 
worm said:
ya - i quit hockey in pee wee because of coaches

and i was in fucking house league



note: same verbal abuse stuff - then i finally told him off and he tried to rat me out for it to my parents- that did not go as well as he thought it would haha
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Yeah, if you talked back to a coach, no matter how shitty, unreasonable or abusive they were, you had an attitude problem. Thats why nobody that has ever played sports is surprised by the Kyle Beach situation.
 
MindzEye said:
Why is coaching or professional sports different than any other profession or workplace regarding verbal abuse?
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It isn’t. Crazy behaviour has been tolerated for too long in all professional environments.

I’ve seen it first hand… berating EAs and students, a 50 year old who had a temper tantrum at 3am, tore up the deal documents and then sat in a corner of a board room and cried it out. I once got yelled at for using letters instead of Roman numerals to sequence section titles. A colleague once got yelled at for not challenging the (incorrect) instructions she was given.

just mental stuff that has been tolerated for reasons I don’t understand.
 


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mbow30 said:
It isn’t. Crazy behaviour has been tolerated for too long in all professional environments.

I’ve seen it first hand… berating EAs and students, a 50 year old who had a temper tantrum at 3am, tore up the deal documents and then sat in a corner of a board room and cried it out. I once got yelled at for using letters instead of Roman numerals to sequence section titles. A colleague once got yelled at for not challenging the (incorrect) instructions she was given.

just mental stuff that has been tolerated for reasons I don’t understand.
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Fair, but I think we can agree that hockey culture is all of that multiplied by many times. All of that crazy shit you just mentioned having personally experienced is one bad practice around the rink.
 
it's nothing compared to the Navy Seals

Nobody is forcing anyone to play hockey. IMO, the cross checking on the ice is a lot worse than yelling in the locker room.
 
And hey, it's possible for both Navy Seals + hockey culture to be bad even if they're at varying degrees. Two things can be true! Needless to say, yeah... this isn't about the volume in which they speak. I don't think anyone has outlawed volume levels. Thought that was obvious but maybe I'm wrong!
 
Killer93 said:
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- Baranov is on SJS 2nd line getting PP time. Good for him and all, but he was never getting that opportunity here. 42% xgf btw...so he's getting caved.
- Where was this when Johnsson scored 5 in 50 last year? Oh yeah, also shooting 38% on the season. Might be an okay player though, don't hate him at all.
- Kappy is a nice player, but it's not like we didn't get good value for him or anything.
- Marchment has a 15% oiSH%. Cool story.
- Hyman is also a really nice player.
- Why is 3 goals, 0 assists in 11 games a good start for Vesey? One of the worst xGF's on Jersey. .27ppg in Jersey, .23 ppg in Toronto...fuck off.
 
CH1 said:
it's nothing compared to the Navy Seals
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Slightly different contexts though. It doesn't require the same mental conditioning to prepare to play hockey at a high level as it does to literally kill people.

That's kind of my point though, that the closest cultural analogues to hockey culture are things like military/seal culture where the programming is literally designed to break down your natural human reaction to murder and death says exactly what I was intending to say.
 
Preston said:
And hey, it's possible for both Navy Seals + hockey culture to be bad even if they're at varying degrees. Two things can be true! Needless to say, yeah... this isn't about the volume in which they speak. I don't think anyone has outlawed volume levels. Thought that was obvious but maybe I'm wrong!
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Ultimately, I've always found sports to be unprogressive, unfair and unethical. Players cheat constantly -- on and off the ice.

That's why the refs are incredibly busy and when they miss a call, no player ever says "hey ref, you missed the high stick I gave that guy...so please give me a 2min penalty"
 
MindzEye said:
Slightly different contexts though. It doesn't require the same mental conditioning to prepare to play hockey at a high level as it does to literally kill people.

That's kind of my point though, that the closest cultural analogues to hockey culture are things like military/seal culture where the programming is literally designed to break down your natural human reaction to murder and death says exactly what I was intending to say.
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I'm sure football and basketball practices aren't that much fun
 
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