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Manscaped even threw in two free gifts to their Performance Package 5.0, the Manscaped Boxers and the Shed Travel Bag. I have both of those and they are both awesome. Get 20% off and free shipping with the code THPN at Manscaped.com. Ask 20% off plus free shipping with the code THPN at Manscaped.com. It's smooth summer boys. Get on board or get left behind. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome everybody to the Hockey Think Tank Podcast brought to you by the hockeythinktank.com website for all players and parents and coaches to go to get a little bit of education and a little bit of inspiration regarding the greatest game on the planet. What an episode we have for you guys here today. We are bringing on John Francisco, the owner of 4Check Hockey, and this was a phenomenal conversation, went in a couple of different ways. He's from the Duluth, Minnesota area in Hermitown, an unbelievable hockey hotbed. He played his college hockey at University of Minnesota Duluth before going on a seven year professional hockey career. After that, got into youth coaching with his kid. He actually has a son that's going to go play for the NTDP next year. This was an awesome conversation in all those different accounts. We get into all those things and before we do bring on John, though, let's bring on the talent of the podcast to one, Jeffrey, Jay who, Tat Man, lost tooth, large guy, bearded dude, guy himself, thanks, what's up today? What's your five year plan? Don't die. Guys, it was Tope's 39th birthday. This is coming. I don't know what day this is coming out, but a few days ago from when this episode is airing. Oh my God, did he get saggy and old real quick? We got a spring chicken on the mic right now, talking to old balls, loose skin, gross. Yeah, man, doing well, doing well, having a great week. All the organizations whose in season training I run are all about to start up here over the next couple of weeks. So I'm just programming my brains out here for the next couple of months out for all the different teams that I work with and my coaches work with for me here in St. Louis across three different gyms and ranks. So that's really exciting time is I'm expanding what I'm doing and getting ready to cats out of the bag, try and franchise GMT, give more training outside of St. Louis in two years. That is my goal. Get all the systems down, everything, get it all squared away so that I'm able to do this all across the country, GMBM worldwide, if you're watching the video. Right. Right. Yeah. So that's super fun. What are you up to? Oh man, I am kind of similar to you, man, like we're getting, we got a lot of fun stuff coming up with the hockey think tank and a lot of that groundwork is being laid right now, which, which is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work as you know. And so yeah, man, like we got some really cool stuff coming up the hopper for the hockey think tank community, we're going to blow that absolutely out of the water making that better. And we actually filled filled in our community members with that secret, just the other day that when they were on our we do a monthly call with them. And so that's pretty cool. We also have some incredible things on the hopper for our youth organization blueprint and your boy Michael wall is helping us to deliver on that. And so yeah, man, like I can't divulge some of the stuff right now, but like there's some, pretty, pretty, pretty cool stuff coming up here in the next couple months to say the very least, pretty big, pretty, pretty big. I'm really excited, man, pretty cool, pretty cool to see it all be a small part of it. I'm stuck for you. Yeah, there we go. So this conversation with John Francisco, guys, this was awesome. Not only did he have a great playing career, but also got into youth coaching. These company for check hockey is an incredible company they teach organizations, kids, teams, the value of body checking and body contact. And they have these body checking dummies that they use on the ice, not your typical ones that just stand there and do nothing, but they actually like it's unbelievable. You need to go to his website for check hockey at the number four number for check hockey dot com just and and we had so many like the conversation went in a lot of different ways. We had Minnesota hockey talk, which if you listen to our podcast, you understand the respect and how much we love the community model that they have there in Minnesota. We talked about being a hockey parent, you know, he has a kid that absolutely loves the game. So how do you foster that kind of thing? We talked a lot about body checking and body contact. That is a very relevant topic for so many families in youth hockey on how to keep your kids safe and how to become a better player by understanding body contact. And so man, it's just a really cool car. He's just a good dude, man. He's just a good dude, right? I'm really excited for people here this one also because like I vividly remember my mom asking Rick Zambo who had a great NHL career, played for the blues, played for the red wings. I can't remember if he played it for anybody else. He was a Lindenwood division one NCAA coach, their first one in program history. Also won a whole bunch of ACHA titles. My mom worked for him at the St. Louis thing, which was a junior organization. I was in fifth grade and I was playing up with eighth graders. So I was like really small and young and playing with guys that were three grades ahead of me. And she asked him to take me out to a stick and pop and teach me how to check. And I will never forget it vividly remember it. I was so nervous to go and do that. I had never hit anybody before, never taken a hit like for real. And it was just like a one time thing, it was a one-off thing. So like what John is doing is really, really, really cool and extremely, extremely valuable, especially for all the different reasons that we go over in this podcast. 100% men. So let's get over to John and we will do that, but before we do, we have some people that we want to thank. First, want to thank our title sponsor, isockysystems.com, the best website out there for all your coaching, education needs. And you talk about things in the hopper, isockysystems.com has got some pretty cool things in the hopper that they're coming out with pretty soon as well. So what do they have? They have thousands of drills on their site. They have whiteboard explanations on systems and structure and development from high-level hockey people. The ability to go in there and drop your drills online, digitally send them out to your team before practice, build a library for your entire organization. That's where we have partnered with them to do that. So if you can get on there, just imagine having like a library for all of your coaches or a practice plan library for all of your coaches, absolutely insane. And so go to isockysystems.com, look up that associations platform, get this for all your coaches in your organization, and your parents, because they have access to the hockey thing thank parents revival guide, guys, unbelievable value add, go to isockysystems.com today. Jeffrey, go. I want to say thank you to Train Heroic. As your seasons are rolling around, guys, Train Heroic is the amazing app that I've used since COVID 2020 to deliver training to, I haven't looked a minute, but I know it's over $20,000 now, but it might be $24,000, it's been a minute since I've looked how many athletes have used some form of my online training, but I work with tons of teams, tons of organizations from NCA Division One. I was a strength coach using this app for a D1 program, a D3 program, USHL, NOL, NCDCEHL, one multiple championships with junior teams, training them through this app, okay, super easy. If you're looking for in-season training for individuals or for teams, please reach out to me, using this app makes it so easy and way, way, way cheaper and easier to make sure all of your players are training in-season and getting better. It allows you to offer more to your clients, which are the customers, which are the players and their families, for a very, very low price videos of everything that's on PDF. So I cannot thank Train Heroic enough for allowing me to do this and this project where I'm able to train so many hockey players for such a cheap price. I also want to thank your nutrition, actually I took my rise pills from your nutrition right as we started this podcast, yeah, they're unbelievable, I love these things too, Lions Maine, a whole bunch of different, not magic mushrooms, just like mushrooms that help the brain and CBD, all right, I absolutely love them, they help my brain function. You guys don't know, if you don't follow me on the gram, I'm bouncing around doing eight billion things every single day, CBD has been a major part of my health and wellness journey, both from recovery for all the things I do physically, also my brain, I've had 14 concussions, so I've been taking CBD since the 2017-2018 season, my last year playing and I've been with Cured Nutrition for a couple of years now, you can go to their website, curednutrition.com, use my discount code GMBM, or actually during this podcast, I had somebody reach out and ask me how I use CBD and when I would use it if I was them, it was a 19-year-old college player, so please do not hesitate to reach out and ask any questions, who, when, where, why about CBD, hugely passionate about plants over pills, thank you. - I want to thank Crossbar. Crossbar Hockey is an unbelievable website, it's an end-to-end website solution for managing and running your youth hockey organization. Guys, this is amazing, absolutely amazing. The amount of feedback that I've gotten from hockey directors and like parents and youth hockey presidents that use Crossbar for their website and everything that they do, just streamlining their operations, it's absolutely insane how incredible, it's, and how easy it is, absolutely. So, Crossbar, again, like I said, end-to-end software solution for managing and running your youth hockey program, it's a modern website design, it's very easy, it's very sleek, it looks really, really good, you can set up your registration in minutes, whether it's for like the season or private lessons, drop-ins, anything for families, anything you want, registration is a part of this, there's a club scheduler that makes things really easy, five-star mobile communication apps, so you don't need, you know, the team snaps and all that, it's run right through the website in Crossbar, there's financial tools for reporting and things like that, volunteer management, and it's also really helpful for facility and rink management too, so basically everything you need to run your youth hockey organization is under one roof, so go to crossbar.org and honestly, like, that you can schedule a demo, like this is a phenomenal, phenomenal product, and so, like I said, crossbar.org today, and also want to thank Helios Hockey, Helios Hockey is a product, it's a sensor that you put in your shoulder pad that gives you real-time fat feedback, real-time data on your play, particularly on things like your stride, and they have a thing called a hustle score, which when you get moving, it's a really cool thing that I don't want to say digitizes and data-tises your work ethic, but it does in a certain way which the kids absolutely love, there's also a leaderboard, so you can compare yourself to other kids at your age and at your level from around the world, we have developed a partnership with them where if you use the coupon code "think, take one word" at checkout, you can get 20% off your pro annual or your pro 24-month subscriptions, so very, very big value add, biggest value add for this is this sensor, it syncs up with whatever video you're using, and you get that data real-time feedback right away right after the game, boom, cuts up your shifts for you, and so no more rewind button, no more fast forward button, no more cutting things up, it does it for you, insane in the membrane, so go to helioshockey.com today and use that coupon code "think, take one word" and you will get that, guys, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who continue to listen to our podcast, we didn't say this in the intro, maybe we should have, but we'll say it right now, we were a top 10 hockey podcast in the US last week, a top 10 as far as downloaded numbers, that's insane, guys, that's absolutely insane, and so we have all of you guys to thank for that, thank you so much for sharing our show, thank you so much for putting it in your social media channels, and like every like, comment, download, rating, follow, anything like that, it goes such a long way for us, we appreciate that so much because it gets us out there, and we really want to make a positive impact on the hockey world, and if you guys think we're doing a solid for the hockey world, please continue to share us and continue to interact with our podcast, we appreciate you guys so much, so with that, you're gonna love this episode, so without further ado, here we go with four check hockey's, John Francisco. 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On behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort, 21 plus age varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario. Bonus BEX expire 168 hours after issuance. CDKNG.com/hockey for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources. NHL and the NHL Shield are registered trademarks of the National Hockey League. Copyright NHL 2023 All Rights Reserved. We are so excited to have on this episode in the podcast. He's up in Hermitown, Minnesota, right outside of Duluth. We got John Francisco. John, how are we doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me out, you guys. You bet. And just to start this thing off, I'm going to be an absolute tool and say your last name is very fun to say. And if you know that movie, you can be best friends with us. And I'm sure you've heard that way too many times, Johnny. It was actually played on the big screen when I played. I'd be sitting on the bench and they'd throw it on there and just say, Francisco. You're just trying to hide behind any teammate you can find right the whole time. So that is amazing. All right. Good, good, good. So you, Hermitown is the Francisco place to be. And, you know, when we have people that come on the podcast, we always ask them how they fell in love with the game, your family history, quite a bit of it in Duluth there. So if you can, how do you fall in love with the game? Had to be a grandfather, passed on to father, passed down to you kind of thing. Yeah, most definitely. It's been in the family, you know, it's had a grandfather that played for one of the first teams at UMB hit Minnesota Duluth here and then just kind of kept going on through the whole family. Had uncles that played, cousins that played. My dad played a little bit, but he was more of a baseball guy. So he played a couple of years of hockey and four years of baseball in college. But yeah, I know it's been in the family for a long time. And you grew up in a small town in Hermitown. And we were, we were a really small town kind of, you know, when I grew up here, it isn't what it is now. And kind of that blue collar skate outside type of mentality. And so we would just basically go to school, walk down from school and skate every day outside with with all the friends and all the, you know, it didn't matter what age you were, everybody was on the ice together. And we have, I think now there's six outdoor ranks here in Hermitown. So it's, it's definitely the culture around this area. But lucky enough to do that. And I was lucky enough to play a bunch of years after college, after, and, you know, meet a lot of great people and travel the country a little bit. And yeah, it's tough to tough enough fall in love with the sport. That's for sure. I just every time we have somebody from Minnesota on, I'm like, I kind of wish I grew up from Minnesota, eh? You are, you are definitely a huge fan of Minnesota. There's no doubt about it. Like, I don't know how people don't know you're going to feel that about, about, you know, like Chicago is very prideful in their hockey. And I think, but we both see what they do in Minnesota. We see like all the things that they can do, the outdoor ranks, the community model, the guy. Did you have a pretty damn good there? Absolutely. How have you seen things change, though, John? Like, you know, you've been through the system. You know, you were a player, your dad was a player, grandfather was playing. Now you have a son that has come through the Minnesota hockey model. Has it changed much since you were a kid or is it still pretty similar? Um, yeah, it's changed a lot. I mean, I think you guys are recognizing this just as much as anybody else to around the country, how much it's growing around the country. But, you know, it's, you know, you're not seen as many kids skate outside anymore. You know, there's that indoor rink mentality. You know, we lived in California for 10 years. So, you know, I got to coach my kid out there for, you know, since he was eight months to 10 years old out there. So he really actually started learning how to play hockey out in California, right? So then I got to really understand how the rest of the world works and how the other models work outside of Minnesota. So, honestly, it took me about a year or two to really wrap my head around it. But, uh, seeing the AAA model now and how that all works and, you know, how kids, you know, get access to ice and it's, it's tough, right? I find it, you know, really difficult for, you know, any kid that wants to just get better and learn and, you know, kind of grow up with that model that I had in Minnesota here. Um, you know, it's tough to duplicate anywhere else that doesn't have that kind of cold weather, you know, like we lived in California, you should tell everybody I said, get your kids some rollerblades and go meet up at the park somewhere with your friends and just go play, right? I mean, that's, that's really, you know, you want to have a passion for the game and create a passion, you know, when the kids that want to learn and want to get better, I think that was the biggest thing is, is just the game should be fun, right? So figure out a way to make it fun and do it that way. It shouldn't be private lessons all the time. It shouldn't be, you know, jumping in, in doing drills all the time. I mean, when I coached out there, we used to actually give the kids five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes sometimes at the end of practice just to go mess around. Um, because that's where the love of the game comes from, right? And at the beginning of the season, when I was coaching the coach or the parents would be like, well, we're paying for the ice here. Can you do something? I said, look, your kids worked hard. They're, I mean, this is young, right? But your kids worked hard. We're going to let them just have some fun for 15 minutes on the ice. And they loved it, right? It was worth it. So I think that's, like I said, the, the passion of the game is, is still what you want to see in every player that comes through and hopefully pass that on. Well, that you're a great person to talk to with that because, you know, the passion of hockey has been passed down through generations of your family. You talk about grandfather played at UMD, your, your father, yourself, you have a son that's going out to play at the NTDP next year. And to achieve that level of hockey, for the most part, you got to love it. You got to have a passion for it. So like, what were some of the things that you saw, you know, when you were growing up from your grandpa or your dad, some of the things that maybe you, you would have done with your son to just to foster that, that love and that passion for the game? In all honesty, it was just saying yes to the kids whenever they wanted to do something, right? Like, spending that time with your kids is just so valuable. And I was in a position where I was fortunate enough to do that and my family as well the same way. You know, it's not a way to make a ton of money, but it was enough to just say, Hey, you want to go play knee hockey or whatever it may be, right? And so, you know, we, I think our whole family has been just kind of athletic, right? So it wasn't just hockey, it was, you know, baseball and soccer and football. I mean, I played three sports all the way through my high school, through my senior year of high school, right? Because we were in a small town. And if you didn't have enough players, you didn't, you didn't have a team, right? So we, I played football all the way through my senior year, I played baseball all the way through my senior year and hockey all the way through my senior year, too. And I think that helps, right? I mean, you got to get away from the sport a little bit and you got to just, like I said, if it'll, it'll become serious at some point, right? But if you just don't enjoy what you're doing, you got to make, you got to make it fun for them. Really is what it comes down to. Crazy, another multi sport athlete, a Vax that we've had on it. It sounds pretty cool things in the sport. Hey, speaking of hold on one second, let me pull up this text, Pranger texted me yesterday. And he said it was about the NFL. But, you know, we talk a lot about development, obviously, on this podcast, that's something Chris and I always talk about. He said, from the 2018 Super Bowl, 88.7 of the players on the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons played multiple sports in high school. It's not hockey, but, you know, different sport. But, you know, it's the same thing. Chris came on the podcast. Obviously, Hall of Famer, we talked about that. Tof and I talk about that. Here's just another guy who played multiple sports. Like, it will help you be a better hockey player in the end. There's no doubt about it. You have a bigger toolbox. You have way more movements and thinking. And then also, Tof and I talk about it, but it's been a minute. The other thing, too, is like every sport, you know, I started training NFL players last summer. This summer was the second year. Kyron Williams, Tony Adams. What's up? Not a big deal. And the culture in their sport is way different than the culture in hockey. The way that those guys interact in the gym, in practices, it is nothing like hockey. I would assume that basketball is very different and soccer is very different. So you're also exposing your kids to a whole bunch of different ways of thinking and interaction and people, which is just going to make them a more well-rounded adult individual, whatever, when they're, you know, in the working world or wherever it may be later in life, they're going to have more skills as a human and as an athlete. Like, there's no doubt in my mind. It's a win-win to have kids play multiple sports as long as they can, whatever that means for each individual. Yeah, I 100% agree with you. You know, that's it's tough to do nowadays, right? And that's, you know, with having a son that grew up playing sports and I have a daughter that played sports as well, too, up until a certain age. And, you know, it's tough because the seasons run over each other. And, you know, when we were in California, you know, he was playing baseball. He was hard into baseball. I loved baseball. And, you know, he'd tell him like, hey, you know, it's hockey season, so we're going to do hockey. But once it's baseball season, we're going to do baseball. If there's hockey and you'd have a night off, then we'll do it, right? But other than that, like, this is what season it is. And a lot of coaches and people didn't really understand that either, right? And so it was tough to really kind of change that culture, but we stuck to it. And, you know, he played baseball up until last year. And so my son did. And so, you know, he even says he misses it still, right? But I mean, when you make that commitment to go with the development program, some things have to have to get shaved off, right? And so, but I think I agree with you guys 100%. If you can play multiple sports, it's not only good for the kid, but it's good for the parents too, right? Like, you see the same parents all year, every year, right? And it's okay to have a break from each other a little bit too, and see a different group of parents too, you know, not even okay, probably need it. Let me ask you this, because this is something that I ran into. It wasn't on my team, but I saw it on the team below me that I was coaching when I first retired. There's a kid and he's one of my guys who I've trained him since he was like nine years old. He plays in the USHL now. Really good player, really good player because he was a really good soccer player too. He's just an all-around athlete. But I remember watching his coach get super upset when he would show up to practice, like right on time, so he'd be on the ice a little bit late because he'd come from soccer. At the time, he was 14 years old, and I'm looking at it from a developmental standpoint. And I'm like, we know he's not showing up late because he's an idiot, he doesn't understand time, he's being a bad kid, he's literally coming from another AAA soccer program. He's able to do both, and he was one of the best players on the team, and you know, now he's in the USHL. Like, I know his coach used to be super upset about him being late and stuff. How did you deal with that as a coach? And how did you look at that from a parent perspective? Well, I was a coach a lot of the times until a certain age, right? But you know, as long as the communication's there from the get-go, right? And then that's easily explainable to, I mean, because what happens is the kid comes late and a lot of times, you know, the kids get cured less what time they show up, like their teammates show up, right? They're there, they're on the ice or practicing, right? But if a parent sees them come in later, right? And then it's like, oh, you got here at this time, and now he's playing and, you know, it's, it's, you know, it goes back to communication as far as the coach and with the families and stuff. And you don't need to over explain yourself a little bit, but just say, look, these are the rules. This is, this is a kid that's very fortunate to be able to play both AAA sports, like, and you got to have a little grace for those, probably those parents too. I mean, they're running all over the place. I can't imagine what that's like as a parent with a kid in two AAA sports, right? But and trying to look at that calendar and if they even have other kids in the family, right? So they do. I give them a lot of credit. Yeah. And you know, like, I was talking to Trent Frederick about this, this past week, a place for the Bruins, you know, I've trained. How many names you want to drop here this episode? Well, watch your feet, bro. You know, it's tough, when you're stronger, two NFL guys, deep Freddie, you know, get out my coattails, bro. Let's go. But but I have a, I have a, he's probably a sophomore in high school, and he wants to play football for his high school. And he's playing AAA hockey. And he's like, I really want to do both. The high school team is telling me, like, they can get me, they'll help me get a scholarship because I'm such a good athlete, blah, blah, blah. How did Trent do both? Because I told him, Hey, Trent was a quarterback and actually a really, really good one. And so I asked Trent, and Trent was saying that his coach, when he was, he played at the program. So he was probably 15 as a freshman before he left for, for NTDP. If he had a football game Friday night, if he played in it, he would get sat for the game on Saturday morning. I personally completely disagree with that. I don't think that's okay. You know, I think that's like old school thinking and all this stuff. You know, what are your thoughts on that? Like I just, we want to like make hockey, you know, available for everybody. We want everybody to play. We talk about multi sport athletes. I think that people say in practice, yes, I want guys to play multiple sports. But then when they're coaching, and they've got a guy who has to miss a practice every now and then, which guys, it isn't the end of the world, if it's for this type of reason, right? Like, you know, do you have any advice for coaches out there, mainly coaches to navigate these situations? Yeah, just for the coaches. Yeah, I would say it's, you would want, I mean, to me, I would want athletes on my team, right? And so, and if they're good kids, right, like it's, that's what you're ultimately looking for. And I think that as far as a coach goes, if they're communicating with you and letting them know that they're going to be there, they're going to be later, they're going to be gone or whatever it is, as long as it's not like, hey, I'm gone. And then you find out on an Instagram post or something like that, they're at the beach or something, right? Like that's a little bit different than missing practice, but, you know, as a coach, we want as many athletes as we can on our team, right? Because it's only going to build not only the strength of the team, but the strength of each individual player, right? So in my, in my theory or my philosophy is, if you have good players and they bring up those people around them, it's only going to make everybody else around them better, right? And so, you know, you don't want your star player to go take the puck and go skate all the way down the ice, right? You want them to move the puck. And then hopefully they'll learn to move it back at some point, right? And so it's just part of that development model. But I think if you've got multiple athletes or multiple multi sport athletes, find a way to work it out and get as many of them on your team as you can, you'll, you'll probably be better off for it too. Yeah, and it's crazy. Like, one thing I talk about a lot is like, idealism versus reality, you know, like idealism is, hey, you know, if there's three sports, there's, there's fall, there's winter and there's spring and summer you get off and you're going to play one in the fall, one in the summer and one in the, or one in the winter and one in the spring. And it's funny, like we literally, I had my family over for dinner last night and my sister has an eight-year-old who made travel baseball. Same thing, loves baseball, loves hockey, same thing. Travel baseball starts in January. Yeah, indoor travel baseball for eight-year-olds. And so we literally had this conversation at the dinner table yesterday and the reality of the situation is every sport thinks their sport is the most important sport. Every coach thinks their team is the most important team, even for the kid, if it's number three on their list, it doesn't matter because, and it's not even necessarily just the coach, but sometimes coach feels pressure like you talked about earlier from the parents. And it's like, hey, like I'm, especially with the, the costs that go with playing club hockey nowadays, hey, I'm paying all this money here. And we're doing all your clinics. We're doing this and that and the other thing. And then here's this multi-sport athlete that they'll say shows up when they want to. And then so like the coach is trying to appease everybody. And when you try to appease everybody, you appease nobody. And so it's the reality of the situation where just like the whole youth sports machine, forget about just youth hockey, but like literally, I don't know. And I've talked to other people in other sports about this stuff. And it's the same issues. Everybody has the same issues. It's a year-long sport for everybody. It's off. There's no off season anymore. It's my sport is the number one sport. It's, Hey, we got to treat them like pros at nine years old. It's wild. And so that what I think about, and that's why Vax, like I love Minnesota so much is because you get that purity of what sports is supposed to be about when you're younger, a little bit more. A little bit more. Yeah. It's a little bit easier in Minnesota, but yeah. But it's funny. Like I was even talking to somebody the other day, like the whole community model and how impactful and important that could be like, I look at like tier two clubs here in Chicago and I'm not throwing darts at the tier two clubs here in Chicago, but like nobody has the town name in their name anymore. It's so and so hockey club, so and so hockey club. There's a few that do, but like, what happened? Like, where did we go so wrong that like it became this machine that like, we can't have the town name because we want kids from other towns to play for our club kind of thing. And that's just not what youth sports is supposed to be about, you know? And so that's kind of why the Minnesota thing started forgetting on my soapbox, but like, it's crazy, but it's everywhere. It's funny you say that too, right? And so, you know, why do we put our kids in use in sports anyways, right? It's to learn good habits, right? Be healthy, make friendships, right? Have some experiences and learn to be a good teammate, all that kind of stuff, right? And then it almost seems like everywhere somewhere along the way, we get lost on this like, return on investment, right? Like sports is like your worst ROI ever, if you're looking for like, a payday out of it, right? So like, I tell everybody, I said, look, we spent money on sports and stuff, and that's fine, but we looked at it as is, you know, we're paying for friendships and experiences, right? So if like, we did a tournament or we didn't do a tournament or whatever it was, like if we were going somewhere, if it was worth the money to go play so-and-so place, like, you know, if you're going somewhere, go to a baseball game where you're there, or go see a museum while you're there, or go see some history stuff, or whatever, go to the beach while you're there, right? And at least you're getting the experiences out of it too, like the life and the family experiences out of it. If you're not getting all that, it's not worth like, I mean, I heard people paying upwards of $60,000 over COVID for hockey season one year, right? And it's like, holy cow, you know, but I mean, you look at the, you know, the prep schools and all that, and then they do cost money, right? But at those younger ages, you know, there's no reason to spend that kind of money, you know? So, yeah, I don't know where it's gone, or how it's going that way, or, you know, to if I think we've had this talk before, too, just of how expensive it's gotten, right? And there's got to be a way to make this cheaper somehow, somewhere. And like I said, I started trying to do it in California and just saying, hey, go grab some rollerblades, you know, go in the yard, go in the backyard, like there's concrete everywhere, right? You can go skate somewhere, right? If you got a pair of rollerblades. So, yeah, yeah, you go. I love it. Well, crazy how we talk about passion for the game. And here you get three guys really passionate about how we need to get passion back in the frickin game. At the end of the day, it has become so much of a business. And it is like I worry for the health of our sport just in terms of the amount of people playing, I think, particularly here in the States, you know, we got a pretty big boom when the NHL moves south and we got a lot more people into it. And I feel like there's there's going to be a plateau and then eventually a dip. And you're already kind of seeing that where like it just has become a little two nuts for everybody. And we're going to choose like maybe another sport because we can't afford to make that investment anymore. Like you said, but I really do like what you said there about investing, not just necessarily in like the scholarship or playing pro hockey or whatever, but like investing in the experience. That's the way that my family always looked at it too. Like our hockey tournaments were our family vacations. And so finding things for my sister and my little brothers to do, you know, in between games, going to different places and having some fun. And that's, that's where like also the craziness of hockey can also be a good thing in a sense, where you got to be a little nuts to put your kid and you're in a certain respect. And so we're all in this together. And so you kind of formed bonds from that too. And so I would imagine just in your, your son's journey throughout the sport, you probably made a ton of unbelievable friends and relationships, whether you were in California or now here in Minnesota, that have, you know, been probably lifelong. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we still had just talked to somebody yesterday that he used to play, you know, my son used to play with their kids and, you know, one of them was their coaches was their coach. And you know, just kind of stay in touch, right? It's funny how small the hockey world really is when everybody finally connects. And I mean, you know, you and I connected through this whole thing somehow, some way through hockey people and, you know, Vex, I'm sure we probably know the same people some way somehow as well too. So it's a cool community when you're part of it, right? And, you know, the good people tend to stick around, not to say that the not good people aren't around either, right? But you know, it's all, it's a, it's a really cool community. And like I said, it's, it's a small one, but it's, it's large as well. It's really kind of odd to explain. But yeah, I mean, anybody that's in it knows it. It's the travel you guys spend time on the road, right? Sometimes you're, you know, couple hotel rooms or car rides or whatever it may be to help keep costs down. And so it's, you know, you can't make it some weekend, you send your kid with another family or whatever it may be, it's it's funny how everybody kind of steps up to help that whole situation. Yeah, it is a community that can be pretty. That's, that's like the crazy part about it too is like the culture is pretty damn toxic in youth hockey in a lot of different places, but it's also amazing at the same time. It's like so weird. And maybe that's similar in other sports too. But like there's so, and that's what we always talk about, Vex, we say it all the time, like it's so weird how the culture could be so toxic yet like 95% of the people in our sport are amazing. I think it's just, it's such an expensive sport now that, that clouds a lot of people's judgment that they're like, I'm spending this much, I have to get something like he said, like I have to get an ROI. That's like, well, there's so many ROIs, they're just not monetary for most people. Like you've got to see like, what's that saying? I never understood that. So you got to see the forest through the trees. I don't even know what that means. But you guys know what I'm saying? You got to understand like why you're doing, you're doing this stuff. Keep, keep going on that. See the forest for you. What is that? Isn't that a saying is I've never understood that, but I'm sure you used it at Cornell and Ivy Leagues. It's kind of like a zoom out zoom in thing. Gotcha. Well, we'll leave it at that. Well, let me ask you this, John. So, you know, you have a son that plays and you know, you played seven years pro hockey after you're done with your time at Duluth. And a question that I wanted to ask you, because I kind of fell into this and I know Vex did too, is like, it's just a different world in youth hockey. And you could play at a high level, you could coach at a high level, and then you get into youth hockey. And it's just a learning experience. You think you're going into it that you're going to be this great coach or whatever. And you know everything. And then you figure out pretty quickly that you're a rookie, just like everybody else. Because it's just a different experience. So how was that like, you know, because I would imagine, I think you probably would have been coaching your son while he while you were still playing even, or maybe right after, I don't know, right after, yeah. So like, what was that transition for you? Like kind of playing high level hockey and then getting into coaching your kid? Oh, man, it was pretty, pretty crazy. I mean, he was, he was still two, three years old when I was playing. So it was cool that I have him, my wife would drop him off at the rink after our practices, right? Leave the gear on and we'd all go out and skate with him and he'd get out on the ice and have, you know, be able to wheel around with whatever boys were still left out. If there was a goal, he was even a bigger bonus, right? But then, you know, after I got done playing and coaching him and, you know, we didn't have him at the biggest program that was around. It wasn't like the top notch program in California when we were out there and it was just, it was one of those closest to us. So I said, you know what, I'm a coach and, you know, anybody that wants to come with me can come with me and, you know, we got a couple of dads that were, ended up becoming assistant coaches and, you know, they, they knew a little bit of hockey, but they were good with the kids really. I mean, that was kind of the biggest thing, right? And it's keeping them upbeat and not beating them down. And, I mean, I was just, had this conversation with my son the other day when we were in the car. I was like, do you remember when you're, when you were that little? And he's like, no, not really. He's like, I remember like the obstacle courses and, you know, we used to always kind of make it fun and competitive, right? As long as it's always competitive and fun. I think that was kind of the biggest thing coaching him. But yeah, you, you become, I don't know, I got out of hockey for a little bit when I was done playing just because I had, you know, those sour, sour apples a little bit and had a bunch of injuries as well too. So it was good to get away from the game. But when you come back and you realize how much fun it can be, it's almost like you become a kid all over again, especially when you have a little kid in it, right? And so you become that kid all over and you're playing, you know, you're putting your shin pads on for practice just because you want to play knee hockey, you know, and play on your knees and whatever. So it's, it's, the game has changed a lot though. It's a lot more skill. It's not, I mean, if I'm not even six foot, I'd like to say I was six foot. I always said I was six foot in the program, but I wasn't. So yeah, it must be nice to be able to be close to six foot. Sorry. Sorry about that. Yeah, that might have hit on a little bit. But no, it's, it's more of a skill game now too, right? But I mean, it still has that competitive. And again, it goes back to if you can't skate, you can't play. So I taught a lot of skating. I made sure that was a big part of all of our practices growing up. And yeah, I just had that competitive fun atmosphere. Oh, I want to go be a player again so badly. So badly. So badly. Yeah, somebody was asking me the other day, you know, what do you like better being a player, coach and why kind of thing? And for me, it was like player. And they were like, well, why do you say that? And my answer is when I dream about hockey, I don't dream myself being a coach. Like every dream I have about hockey, I'm a hockey player. They're not wearing the air Bombay loafer and dreams. Of course I am. But seriously, like, yeah, anyways, so going, going along with this. So, you know, you've been a coach for a long time here, John, you've seen, you've seen the evolution of the game. And I want to dive in now to what you're doing with forecheck hockey because it's a huge value add for for any organization out there. And so if you can, talk about why you started it first, talk about a little bit of what it is. And then talk about why you started forecheck hockey in your path as a coach and learning about the development of kids in the sport. Sure. Yeah. So my company is called forecheck hockey. I started it. I just renamed it actually just this past year. It was previously under a previous name of Francisco hockey, pretty generic, right? But I'm the same. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's good. It's good. But we teach contact checking concussion prevention with the use of custom dummies that slide on the ice. And so, these dummies we've had for about five years and we just keep kind of developing them as they go. But really, what the whole reason it started was, is I got out of the game, you know, after a while, it had a little tough time, right? And so I didn't know if it was concussions. And it really got me thinking like, how many concussions did I really have, right? I mean, I played football, I played hockey, Vax, I know you obviously have the history of it as well, too. And so, you know, just getting into that and diving in and then having a kid that was starting to get up towards that age of contact and checking, I started looking into ways that you could teach it, right? And so, what I found was there really wasn't much out there at all. And so, playing football was like, hey, football's had dummies for 40 years, right? Like, there's got to be something for hockey. And there really wasn't out there. And so, we ended up getting our hands on a couple dummies that I bought off a guy and just started teaching my kid how to do it and started doing it in game-like scenarios. You know, taking my background from coaching and trying to make, you know, make it fun, make a game-like scenario and how it translates. And then turning that into, you know, it ended up being him. And then it was his buddies. And then it turned into me just doing camps. And before you know it, I contract with organizations now, all in Minnesota, and actually around the country now, but starting in Minnesota and over five years now, we have over a third of the state of Minnesota that we train their associations. So, we've got roughly 45-50 associations that we train every single year with these dummies. We go in, we teach them, we give them a video on how to, what concussions really are, right? And simply on a kid's term, right? Like, that's so they understand it. Because when you ask kids what a concussion is, they're like, you hit your head hard. And it's like, no, it's not that, right? And so, we get a little video. We show them what they add. And then we show them, you know, where they commonly happen on the ice and positions that you should not be putting yourself in. And then we jump on the ice for two hours with these dummies. And we actually train the coaches in the organization as well too. And so, the coaches will push the dummies. But then it works well having the organization's coaches push the dummies because they know the kids, right? They say, look, I can stop the kid, talk to the kid. And so it's really been a great relationship. And we've had a 92% retention rate over the last five years. And we just keep continuing to grow. It's been awesome. And the kids have a blast. We turn the music up in the rink, if we can, right? And put them into four groups and keep the group small. It's a roughly an eight to one coach to player ratio. So the kids are constantly moving. Every drill is a, is an angle with a hit and grab a puck, make a pass, make another pass, shoot on a goalie. So we have goalies in there too, right? So tell the goalies during the camps, like, hey, if you guys want to jump in line, you hit these things, go for it, right? And so, some of them love it. Some of them don't want to do it. And it's fine, right? We found a large growth in the girls side. We've tripled over the last three years in the girls side of this as well too. And it's been awesome. And girls have a lot of fun with the two, right? They'll just go blast these things. And when, when the biggest thing about the dummies is, is it allows kids to make mistakes, right? So, you know, we tell people instantly it lowers you, you know, the opportunity of injury and concussions by 50% because they're not even hitting anybody while they're learning how to do all this. But then, you know, we progress from the dummies to each other. So then they're learning how to handle, how to give a hit, how to take a hit, just a body contact and, you know, body positioning, right? Those are the other things. I love that. First of all, what most people don't know, and this is for like the people very interested in girls hockey, but like there's more concussions in women's hockey than there is in men's hockey. And I've heard a couple different theories on why that is maybe you know, but like what I've heard is that the neck muscles aren't necessarily as strong, but also because there's no checking, but there is contact. Like girls are kind of like a little bit more, maybe reckless isn't the right word, but like they'll go into situations just kind of like not protecting themselves and not putting themselves in good situations. Those are just the things that I've heard. But is that something that you've heard too, John or Vex, as far as like concussions, there's more in girls hockey than boys hockey? Well, I've just seen like from training, I trained three or four AAA girls teams on both Saturdays and Sundays in the offseason for the last couple of years here. And they're, you know, women aren't as strong as men, especially when they're younger, you know, like they're they don't have the same strength. So like their ability to change direction and decelerate and stuff a lot of times at looking at AAA girls that I train, and this is just the ones that I train versus AAA boys at the exact same age, their physical abilities are not anywhere near the same on a whole on average. And so like their ability to control their body is way, way less. So even though they dilutely was what thinking about this last week, because we did a whole bunch of change of direction last Saturday. And I was just thinking, like, I really, really need to keep focusing on change of direction, controlling their body, deceleration, and things like that, because in the eyes, if you aren't able to do those things, you're going to go ass over T kettle, you're going to be out of control, going into the boards, you know, you're going to run into somebody and balance off or and things like that. So just from just like a strength perspective, body awareness perspective, at least with the AAA girls that I train that are, you know, I train the same age AAA boys, they do not have the same strengths, which would lead to way more injuries. Interesting. John, have you had any knowledge or basis on that or? Just from like from what people, I mean, I don't have a female that plays hockey, right? I got a daughter who's who's going to college next year, but she didn't play, she didn't play hockey. But, you know, from what I have heard and what I've seen, it just, a lot of times it's not, not really thought of, I guess, they don't really think of that physical aspect. And then, you know, when you don't think about it, or you don't train on it, or you don't practice on it, you're not ready for it, right? And so I just think, I don't know, there's some people that are really aggressive, right? And some are really timid. And that's the same in boys, same in girls. And, you know, it's our goal is to really just make it more aware for people, give people more opportunities to do it. You know, we actually felt like it's so, it's such a value ad for the boys, but I think it's such a value ad for the girls too, just from the things that you're talking about, right? I think it's, it's huge. And I have three daughters now. And so it's something that I think about and try to speak to some people on. And yeah, I think like, it's such a huge value ad for the women's program. So you said that it's growing, and I think that's great on the side. Yeah, it's been fantastic. And like I said, the way we set it up is we try to get the coaches involved in the organizations too, right? Like we want them to learn and give them the tools and the resources to learn. And now we're able to sell the dummies with the program to these organizations. And so instead of us just going and showing up for a day or, you know, a couple hours or whatever it may be, now they have the dummies and they can go train on them themselves. And the new dummies we have have sticks on them as well too. So we're trying to actually kind of transitioning to kind of an all-in-one training tool at this point. So you can stick handle around and shoot through it, use it for goalie screening, you know, d screening, whatever it may be. And so, you know, use them for hitting, use them for checking all that kind of stuff too. So it's, it's really a lot of fun. Can you explain for the listeners kind of like what the dummies look like if they've never been to your Instagram or been to your website or anything? Like what do they look like? How heavy are they? Yeah. So the basis of them is like those punching big things, right? And so that's kind of the base model of it all. But we've done a bunch of modifications to them and added to them. And, you know, in order to get sticks on there, so the sticks go on, the sticks come off. We've got pads on them as well too. And so, you know, we throw a jersey and helmet on it just to make it look like a player a little bit more too. And tell you what kids, even even the little kids that are just starting like the, you know, the six, seven, eight, nine, ten-year-olds, they love these things on the ice as well too. Because it, it actually helps them keep their heads up now, right? So, you know, they may not be using these to hit, but they use to actually keep their heads up now. And so it's just, it's a ton of fun. Like I said, it's to have a blast out there. Like I said, it's made for them to be okay making mistakes, right? Because they're not going to, they really understand what their bodies are capable on the ice and makes kids stronger on their skates, makes them understand body position, makes them understand, you know, how to get their hips down and their heads up. And so it's been, it's been a fun progression over the last five years and we look to kind of keep continuing that. That's cool. So you mentioned a little bit earlier, you know, when you're on the ice and you're training the coaches or you're on the ice with the kids during your camps, that two of the things that you talk about a lot are teaching kids how to hit and then teaching kids how to take a hit too. And both are equally important. And so, you know, for our listeners, for our coaches out there and for our kids out there that are getting to that age or maybe are that age, what are some, what are some tips that you would give to kids on both of those and how to give a check and then how to, how to take a hit too. Well, what we teach is the game is all angles now, right? You got to take a proper angle at anything to even pinch somebody off now or, you know, I think if you're going to give a hit, that's the biggest thing is you have to take a good angle, right? And you're going to, you're going to try 10 times and you're going to miss eight of them. It's okay, right? And that's kind of part of it until you learn how to, how to take that proper angle. And then taking hits, you just don't turn your back. That's kind of, kind of the biggest thing, right? You know, they call them pre hits or whatever like that to instead of actually just taking the hit, why not give a little bit back while you're getting one, right? Instead of just taking it and absorbing it, some people teach along the boards. I know just kind of get yourself, let yourself get squeezed off. You know, there's different ways to do it. It's tough to, tough to really explain. Just don't put yourself in a bad position where you're not, not aware of what's going on around you, right? I think that's the biggest thing because before you know it, somebody comes out of nowhere and that's really where the injuries happen. I mean, there's, gosh, I think the stats now where there's 500,000 hockey injuries a year right now, right? And 60,000 of them are serious enough for hospitalization. One out of four hockey players will receive a concussion over their career or a head-related injury over their career. So it's 25% of players, right? Like, that's a lot. And so, you know, I think, you know, you can put the best helmets on in the world and Jeff, you can probably agree with me on this. Even if you have the best helmet on in the world, it's not going to stop your brain from hitting the inside of your skull, right? Like your only protection for your brain is that fluid inside of your head, right? And so if you have the best helmet on in the world, it's still not going to stop that brain from sloshing around in your head and hitting the inside of your skull. So how do we fix that? We fix that by putting yourself in better situations, being aware of what's going on around you, you know, and I mean, tell people it's not bad all the time to have to back out of something, right? Like, it's okay until you learn how to, how to take a give a give a hit or take a hit. Like if you, we always used in the old days, like get in there and go, right? And so now it's, you know, trying to rub somebody off a little bit. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a big booming hit anymore. Contact is contact. It's body, that's what we call our camp's body contact, not checking clinics, right? So because of the boys in the girls side as well, too. So that's interesting. As you see in the NHL, now I see more and more guys getting dummy because like they don't expect to be hit. Like it's kind of like, it's kind of weird. Like what? I would never have cut across middle like that. Obviously these guys are better than me, but like, if I'm coming across the middle, like I'm preparing to get absolutely murdered. And now there's so many guys you watch that just cut across the middle just like, Oh, this is cool. And then they get murdered. And it's like, dude, what you put yourself in the worst spot possible to be alive. So, you know, I love that that you're using it also for like teaching the game, teaching head up, teaching awareness, spatial awareness, like all those types of things where over the last, I don't know, since PEP became just massive, it's probably been the last like six, seven, eight years now, all of a sudden everybody is straight head looking at their skates at all times. And we got to get back to teaching these kids to play with their freaking head up else. He also said something there that something I've thought a lot about in youth hockey. When I was younger, if you, you know, alligator arms, something when you saw a guy who's stepping up on you and was going to murder you, like, no, you, you take the hit to make the play at the younger ages, like now, I, if I was still coaching, and I, you know, you're skating up the middle and you think somebody's stepping up in you and they're going to try and kill you and you've been playing in the game against his team and they're trying to take your heads off. I rather you protect yourself. I'd rather you not take the hit to make this play, especially if they're below like 16 years old. And especially if it's below the triple A level. I mean, it really doesn't matter from a human zoomed out forest through the trees, if you will, perspective, bringing that back full circle for you guys, Mr. Michigan University. I'd rather you, I'd rather you alligator arms it and tell the kids not to put themselves in that dangerous precarious position without scaring them that they're doing that all the time, type of thing, which is obviously really hard to coach. But, you know, it's like, just make me think about like when you're younger, it's like, Oh, you're catching a pass across the middle, you know, you're going to get murdered. Well, you still got to do it. And now I'd be like, let the puck go and throw your shoulder into the guy. Like, don't worry what happens to the puck. Like, yeah, I don't care. I want you to be alive. I don't need you getting a concussion. Right. I definitely agree with you. It's funny too, because when we do these camps, when we do the video sessions, we ask every player that's in there, like, who knows what a suicide pass is, right? And these kids are 13, 14, 15 years old, and maybe half the kids in the room. Oh, really? Yeah. And that's on average, right? And so I kind of dove into it a little bit. And here in Minnesota, like, the rules kind of protect you, right? So they move checking up from Piwis, right? And the numbers of concussions all went down. And that's great. But what I'm worried about is the severity of concussions. I think that are happening are going up, because now you've introduced this contact at an age where we've got puberty happening in some kids, and not in others, right? And so, you know, there's some kids that are 6, 1, 6, 2 years old at 13, 14 years old, and they're coming across the middle on a kid that's still, you know, 5 feet, right? And that's when they're supposed to learn how to how to do it. And the rules in Minnesota protect you, and I don't know how it is around the rest of the country, but you can't open ice hit in banums. So you can't actually just blow somebody up across the middle, because it's a penalty, right? But once you get to, like, high school, all those rules kind of go out the window, right? So now you can blow somebody up across the middle, and you can hit somebody as long as it's not straight head contact type stuff, right? But, you know, you can angle somebody off at in open ice, but you can't just, like, just go step up and run somebody over at the phantom level here. And so, the problem is, like I said, we're going from no hitting, no contact to somewhat that and protected open ice stuff to then absolutely nothing, right? And right, normal, open hockey, right? And so, I think those, that awareness, like you said, it's not there of a suicide pass, or a putting yourself in the wrong position, or, you know, somebody stepping up on the boards even, right? So we even teach, you know, kids how to position themselves to take a hit from behind, right? Like, you're on the wing, and the defenseman comes down to hit you, how to squat down, how to be strong on your skates, get in a strong hockey position, and even use your stick to lean on if you're start falling over a little bit too, right? So, yeah, it's kind of crazy, I don't know. Do you see more players when they get to the high school level after I'm assuming they had way less fear cutting through the middle in eighth grade? And then now you see guys just instinctively cutting the middle and then, oh my god, I forgot I can get murdered now, is that happening? Yeah, it's kind of where they're getting in doctrine, right? Like, that's kind of where they're getting their education at that point, right? And so, like I said, they're so protected under the rules, and, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love, you know, the game of hockey, and I think the physical aspect is always going to be part of it. It's not what it used to be either, right? Like when you and I play, when we all played, right? But I still think that there's no way that you're going to get fully rid of body contact, and even more proof is the women's game right now, that's actually picking up in body contact right now, too, right? So, you know, the game's just too fast, and people are going to run into each other. There's just, you know, if guys are headhunting, then, you know, that's obviously not what we want in the game. But, you know, that people learning or players learning how to properly protect themselves, being in the right positions, and, you know, mistakes are going to happen. Nothing's, nothing's foolproof this whole thing, too, right? So, but. Yeah, it's such an interesting debate. Like, you have some people that are like, start checking it mites, start checking as young as possible, because, like you said, the numbers, like, the numbers of concussions might be a little bit higher, but the severity as they get older might be a little bit lower if you teach it to a little bit younger of an age based on all the factors that you just talked about. And I know USA hockey, you know, they took a lot of flack when they changed from from Pee Wee to Banum. But, like, they're, they're really trying to, like, teach checking without saying they're teaching checking, you know, at the younger ages, like what you said, you call it body contact, not body checking. And I think the more that we can introduce those kinds of things, and the more that we can do to help kids understand that they have to play with their heads up, and there's a consequence to not doing that, you know, by doing that at the younger ages, and I'm not talking about having mites, you know, stepping up. You're the gauntlet? Thank you. It's a gauntlet. Yeah, that's something that they don't do any more back to. But, like, introducing that stuff at the youngest of ages, and doing what you do, and teaching people how to give and receive body contact, like, that's going to significantly decrease the amount of head injuries at a later age. And so, it's just such a good thing. And even look at the numbers, like the drop off of kids leaving hockey after Pee Wee's into Banum's when checking starts, it's a lot. It's a lot. The stats are seeing, you know, stats are 70% of players quit by the time they're 13 years old. Is that what it is? 70%? Yeah, geez, Louise. Is that, do you think it's mostly from checking, or do you think it's kind of? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know exactly where those stats come from, right? I mean, it could be they quit at 10 years old, right? And so, they say most of the players quit by, you know, 70% quit by the time they're 13. I have no idea what age that actually is. But, I think, to be honest with you, I think USA Hockey and Hockey Canada has done a great job at the whole concussion research and stuff, though, too, right? Like, they've put out some great stuff. And I think, you know, they're smarter than I am, though, too, right? And they're putting those things in place for a reason, right? You know, Canada is also thinking about moving it even more so now, too, right? And so, like I said, I don't think the contact part is going to fully leave the game in any way, shape, or form. If it does, then maybe I'll be out of business. But, but, you know, I think, I think the game is just too fast to still not be able to teach people how to be cognizant of their own body, what they're capable of, and what they can do with it. That's awesome. So, I want to shift gears here. And I'm going to try to be funny a little bit, but not funny all at the same time, because I'm not a comedian by any means, like my talented cousin, co-host, over there. But I think one of the interesting things, you know, we have a lot of parents that listen to our podcast that want to do its best for their kids. And a lot of parents have kids that have dreams of playing high-level hockey one day. You have a son that's going to be going to the national program next year to play for the NTDP. And so, the funny part of my question is like, how do you create, you know, how do you create an NTDP player? You know, what were you doing at home? What were some of the things you focused on? What did you do with them? But, like, in all honesty, though, like, you know, we do have a lot of parents that have kids that have dreams that your son is going to realize this year, playing for Team USA. And so, I'd love to ask you just like, what were some things that you emphasized with him? What were some things that you did with him when you were coaching? What were some things that were really important to you for your father's son relationship and your family relationship, you know, as you were guiding him on his journey to get to where he is today? Well, like any father or son, you know, or child relationship that you're coaching, we had the conversation at a young age and continued to have that conversation like, this is dad coach, and this is coach, and this is dad, right? Like, when I was, when he was, when I was coaching him, he had to call me coach, right? And then once we walked out of that rink, I was dad again, right? And so, there was kind of that, we made sure that we just had those fine lines, right? And, and made it apparent like, hey, I'm not treating you any different than I'm going to treat your teammates, right? And I don't want, I'm not going to call you, you know, I'll call you out if I need to call you out. I mean, I've, I've benched him a couple times because he didn't work hard, right? And, you know, that's tough as a dad, right? But I know for his development and for him personally, and for me to be accountable to the whole team I had to, right? He wasn't working hard, so I had to bench him, right? And so got in trouble in the car on the ride home, but it was, you know, it was a good lesson though, too. But I think the biggest thing was, again, instill that passion in them. You know, I've, like I said, if you can't skate, you can't play. That's kind of the biggest thing for me. That's always been kind of our, our motto from the get go. You know, you look at everybody that's really good skaters. They at least make it to a certain level, right? You can, you can pick up, you know, you can pick up the skills of hands and IQ and you can teach all that stuff. But if you can't skate, that's one of the biggest things for us. You know, and the competitive nature of it all too. I think you have to have a certain level of compete if you want something, right? And, you know, he had that level of compete and he enjoyed it and he had fun with it. And so once he got to that age, we started, I'd sit down with him and he'd tell me his goals for the year, right? We would goal set a little bit too, right? And sit down and he'd write it out so then he could go back to it and look at it. And, you know, I think visually for guys, especially seeing that stuff is more of a visual person as well too. And so I think he's, you know, every year, he's kind of sat down and figured out kind of his goals and whether he's hit him or he hasn't hit him. And, you know, you just take everything as a learning experience too. And I've told him over and over, like you have to enjoy the ride and the, you have to enjoy the, the process more than the outcome. Right? So, you know, if he's, if he's, enjoy, he's got to enjoy working out and he's got to enjoy, you know, going to the rink every day and he's got to enjoy eating healthy and he's got to enjoy making a green shake or whatever, whatever's in that shake, right? Like, and eating at a certain time and getting to bed and making those sacrifices. Like, you know, I think what I tell people about our son, I mean, both of our kids is most people don't understand or see them on work that they put in away from everything, right? I mean, just a discipline of things too, right? And so, the toughest part for us as parents though is, is he's got to want it or she's got to want like, they've got to want it themselves. We can't want it for them, right? We can remind them here and there, but, you know, that'll just turn into a big fight after a while too, right? So, it's like, so that's, that's a really interesting point. I want to dive a little bit deeper into that because like, there are a lot of parents who want it more than their kids do, particularly a lot of parents that maybe didn't get to the level that they wanted to, or just parents that want their kids to achieve and, and push their kit, whatever it may be, it doesn't have to be in nefarious or bad circumstance with that. But like, how do you foster an environment where your kid can fall in love of something? How do you kind of navigate those waters? How do you, because that's something even for me and my kids, like my oldest daughter is seven now. And so, she's starting to figure out life a little bit and things that she likes and things that she doesn't like. And I want to help her to, you know, figure out what that is that she likes, figure out what it is that she doesn't like. And then when she starts to like something, you know, what do I do as a parent to help foster that? And so, maybe this is just Toph on the therapy couch asking you as a new dad. But like, you know, how do you create that environment where they can fall in love with it? And like, how do you kind of foster that with them? I guess the, let them kind of lead the way a little bit, right? We can introduce stuff to them, and they should be trying everything, right? You know, we put our daughter in everything from sports to guitar to, you know, anything and just to try and help her find her passion and what she likes and what she does did the same thing with her son, right? And his thing was sports and athletics, and so we put him in everything. He played soccer, he played baseball, he plays golf a lot right now, obviously. But he played football for a couple of years as well, too. Gosh, and water polo, you know, I mean, it's just, you just try to help them figure out what it is that they enjoy doing, and they'll tell you, right? If they enjoy it, they'll want to get up and they'll want to go to wherever they want to go, right? And if they don't want to go there, then you just kind of got to navigate that a little bit, right? Like, why is it that they don't want to do that? Or, you know, was it the coach? Is it the practice is boring? Is it the, you know, the teammates? Is it maybe there's a reason for it, right? You know, I think just having those open lines of communication with your kids, instead of just assuming, I've had to learn to start listening more than talking as the kids get older, right? Because when they're little, you want to teach them everything you can, and you don't want to miss a thing. And as parents, we screw up, we make mistakes. And, you know, just like kids, too. So we're all human in that respect. But I think, you know, just following them and trying to encourage whatever passion that they have, right? I mean, our daughter was in, I use our daughter all the time. She had this love of guitar. She's like, I want to play the guitar, and I want to do this. And I'm like, okay, so we bought a guitar, got her a guitar, and I bought a guitar, right? I was like, hey, we'll go do lessons together, right? Something that we can spend time doing. Well, we went to two or three lessons. And, you know, the instructor was like, you know, learn this, come back. And, you know, we'd get to the end of the week. And I'm like, hey, did you practice this at all? She said, no. She's like, like, when you told me you wanted to get better at this, right? She's like, yeah, I don't really love it that much. It's like, okay, well, at least you know, right? So, I think that's the biggest thing is, as parents, we just want to see our kids have passion for something, right? And so, I think if the more opportunities you put them in front of different scenarios, even uncomfortable scenarios for them, right? But teach them to be uncomfortable, teach them to be comfortable in uncomfortable scenarios or situations. So, yeah, I think something else, too, that I've noticed, I'm not a parent yet. We'll be in like a month and a half here, but I have literally worked with, you know, thousands of kids over the last 16 years, teaching them, and I gave a speech to my guys about this on 4th of July, because almost all of my guys, 65 out of 100 guys that I work with at the higher levels all came in on 4th of July. And then a bunch of them did workouts wherever they were. They're at the lake. They asked me for workouts to do, right? And I said, like, these are the days that when you're doing something that nobody else is doing, like you were talking about, you know, drinking the green smoothie, going to bed early, all those things, really, as a parent, want to teach your kid that that is separating yourself from what everyone else is willing to do. And I think it's really important to teach them to pat themselves on the back when they do those things and to realize, like, I'm doing this to separate myself and like remind themselves. So, it's not just like, they become a robot and they're just doing things to do things. Well, you know, a big part of this, too, is asking them, what are your goals? Little Johnny, what are your goals? Okay, so those are your goals. How many players play hockey every year? How many make it to X level, whatever their, you know, juniors, college, pro, whatever it is. So, if everybody is taking Saturday and Sunday off, and you want to do something that nobody else is making that level, what do you think you should be doing? Oh, maybe I could shoot 50 pucks. All right, if you want to do that, let's start doing that. And then after they do that, I'm so proud of you for doing that. I didn't tell you to do that, but I want you to realize that everybody else was at the pool all morning. You shot 50 pucks, and then you went to the pool. You need to be like, wow, like that. Good job. You recognize that. And that's, because that was something that I was always telling myself. Like, I'm going to the gym before the party. I'm waking up the next morning. I'm usually going to the gym for me. I'm sitting in the sauna to sweat it out the day after a party in college. Well, everybody else is asleep until 2 p.m. All right, I've already like got got the crap out of me. I feel better. Like, and I would always be like, I'm doing more than everybody else. And that builds confidence. And we all know one of the biggest keys to playing at your maximum abilities is playing with confidence. So, for me, like that, it's a little thing. They're already doing it, but just kind of like showing them like, hey, you know, be proud of yourself, like give yourself that pat on the back. And then they want to keep doing more than it keeps building confidence. And now it's a positive feedback loop of that. One of the things that I'm talking about all the time when I go and I speak to kids or teams or whatever is the, the height of your work ethic better match the height of your dreams. You know, like, if you have a dream of playing in the NHL, like for anybody that's listening, like your work ethic better match that because it is nearly impossible to play in the NHL. So, you're going to have to work at a nearly impossible rate that nobody else is going to want want to work at. Are there people who are talented enough that skate by not with that? Yeah, but that's a very, very minuscule amount. And the other thing that I do a lot when I go and I speak to teams is all I think I've mentioned this to you that's before, but like, I'll ask the questions, like, raise your hand in here if you work hard. Everybody raises their hand, right? And then I'm like, okay, if I were to walk into every team that you're going to play against this year and I was going to ask that exact same question, how many, what's the percentage of hands that are going to get raised? Probably 100%. So, like, working hard is like, okay, fine, that's like the bare minimum. Like, if you want to be great at anything that you do, again, your work ethic better match the height of the greatness that you want to be. And it's no secret sauce, man. Like, you just got to put in the work. You got to put in the work consistently every day. And yeah, I love about both of you guys are saying because it's, and you guys have been around enough people at the highest of echelons of our sport, man, like, it's not an accident for 99% of the people. It's not an accident for 99% of the people. And you look at the intention with which they do things, the intensity with which they do things, the consistency of which they do things on the ice and off the ice. And that simple would not easy, man, simple, but not easy at the end of the day, right? Yeah, yeah, I think that and the keeping things in perspective as well, too, right? I mean, I know you guys have talked about perspective probably quite a bit on here. I don't I don't know. Okay. I've heard it a couple times, but yeah, I don't listen to every episode. I'm sorry. So, but yeah, no, it's, you know, keeping that perspective of understanding really what it is, where the situation that you're in, right? I mean, you guys are business owners for a reason, right? It's that consistency and working hard. And, you know, it's, it's not easy, but you just keep putting in the work and starting. And I think that's a big that's the toughest thing for any anybody, right? Just start just get going with things, right? 100% and to kind of tie the bow on this too. Like Vex and I would not be successful in what we do had we not learned the lessons while we were hockey players that are going to make us better husbands, fathers, businessmen, whatever it is, like that's that's what hockey is for. But at the end of the day is what hockey is for us to teach you the things that can help you be better and more fulfilled. Once the game has passed you along by and I'm forever grateful for all the good times and bad times and everything in between because without those we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation today. We wouldn't have the companies all three of us that we have and providing positive value for for the greater, greater hockey community. And yeah, I just think tying a bow on it, that's what it's all about, man. You got to learn those things and go back to your wife kind of like how we started, like it's it's to learn these kinds of things in the day. So John, we have had you on here for over an hour now. Appreciate your insight and your perspective on everything that we talked about here today. And if you can, stay with us here for a couple more minutes, do a 10 questions with you. And so the 10 questions is going to be a little rapid fire that we have on our Facebook community. And so, but John, just thank you so much for your time here today. This was awesome. And where can, where can the people find you here? And that too. They can find find us at four check hockey. It's a number four C-H-E-C-K-H-O-C-K-E-Y.com. So we're on all the social media stuff. We're not great social media poster guys, but you know, we throw it on there every now and then. But yeah, you can find us on there. Awesome. Thanks. You're gonna have to get some social media tips from Vex. Yeah. Anytime, baby. We gotta definitely connect on that. Hell yeah. I love helping people in the hockey world, like with their social media. That means change my life. So, definitely. Okay. Deal. Yes. All right. Thanks, John. Thanks, guys. [BLANK_AUDIO]
This week Topher and Jeff welcome former UMD captain and eight year pro player, Jon Francisco to the podcast! Following his hockey career, he served as a firefighter for 10 years in California and Wisconsin before leaving the fire service to build Francisco Hockey & 4Check Hockey which make major impacts in hockey, training, skills and safety.
In this episode we talk about:
— Fostering passion as a parent
— Encouraging multi sport athletes and how parents can help navigate the overlap during the season
— Teaching players how to give and receive hits in today’s game
— His experience parenting a player on their journey to the NTDP
AND SO MUCH MORE!
Thank you to our title sponsor IceHockeySystems.com, as well as Train-Heroic, CuredNutrition, Helios Hockey, and, our newest sponsor, Crossbar!
And thank you to our AMAZING LISTENERS; We appreciate every listen, download, comment, rating and share on your social sites!
If you’d like to join our Hockey Think Tank Community, head over to Community.TheHockeyThinkTank.com and check it out!
This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.
