400-500 Pucks...Mental Toughness...et al

I just got back home yesterday from the Minnesota Hockey Officials Association Referee Development Camp in St. Cloud, MN. For those of you aren't familiar with this camp, it is held in conjunction with the Minnesota Advanced 15 Hockey Festival. 102 of the best 15 years olds in the state practice and play during this festival for the opportunity to be one of the final 22 to participate in the USA Hockey National Advanced 15 Festival in Rochester, NY.

The hockey action was OUTSTANDING this year, and our 12 officials worked hard all week, learned a lot, and set a strong foundation for the future. I am proud of all of them.

During this festival, the teams, coaches, referees, and all staff get together to eat and there is always a guest speaker. The guest speakers this week were: Zach Parise, NJ Devils player (former Advanced 15 member from MN), Cary Eades (Associate Coach, Univ. of North Dakota), Scott Sandelin (Head Coach, Univ. of MN-Duluth), Chris Howe (Head Coach, Concordia College), Tom Serratorre (Head Coach, Bemidji State University) and Mike Hastings (Asst. Coach, Univ. of Minnesota).

THE THING THAT WAS TRUE FOR ALL OF THE SPEAKERS WAS...THEY WORE THEIR HEARTS ON THEIR SLEEVE.

Other things were also common in all of them, but what I saw and heard was their passion for what they do. Their passion for the game. Their passion to be the best.

Here are a few tidbits I took away from each of them...

Zach Parise:

Q: "What was the number one thing you did to prepare for the NHL?"

A: "Shoot pucks. I shot 400-500 per day."

Q: "What was something you did to prepare yourself and get ready for the NHL?"

A: "I surrounded myself with the right people. My two best friends at Shattuck were very important -- Drew Stafford and Brady Murray. We pushed each other to be the best."



Tom Serratorre:

"We have one rule at Bemidji State -- do what's the right thing. That's it."

"How you react to adversity is the most important thing."

Overall, he was my favorite because I could feel his passion more than anything else. He never talked strategy, X's and O's, nor did he talk about shooting pucks, plyos, weight training, or practice. He talked about the skills and mindset it takes to be the best -- the best at anything (husband, father, employee, boss, whatever).


Chris Howe:

Chris talked a lot about character. He talked that there are "characters" and there is character. He was referencing Ted Brill, and I like that a lot, because Ted Brill was a visionary. One of my all time favorite things to do when I was an instructor at the MHOA camp in my "early years" as an instructor was to sit and listen to guys like Ted Brill talk. In fact, just about every morning, after we had our breakfast, we always have a short break to relax, take a nap, clean up, whatever. Well, it was at this time that Bill Leslie would always sit outside the dorms on the "porch" of wherever we were staying at on St. Cloud State University and talk hockey with Ted Brill. In the earlier years a gentleman by the name of Ted Fenske was there, too. The "Legend" Dave Hendrickson was there, too. I just loved listening to all of these guys because they were visionaries. I miss those men a lot.

Cary Eades:

"In a battery of tests on all type of hockey skills, I would have probably tested out at at 5 on a scale from 1-10. However, when it came to desire to win, I would have tested out at a 10. I loved doing things to help the others on my teams be better, guys like Doug Smail, Mark Taylor (both NHL players). I would take pride in digging out the puck and giving it to those guys"

This is a video clip of a very famous fight between University of North Dakota and University of Wisconsin. Someone on the Badger bench squirted Eades with a water bottle and Eades went nuts. So did the rest of the Sioux bench. ( I remember watching that game on TV. My parents had a party with a small group of friends over to watch the game on TV. This was a big deal, because back then, the Sioux weren't on TV -- this was back when we only had 5 channels on TV...no ESPN...no hockey packages...just the big three networks, PBS, and CBC out of Canada, which had Hockey Night in Canada -- Twin Cities- you have no idea what you're missing. This was also a big deal because my Mom and Dad actually put the TV in the living room. We never had the TV in there -- at least it seemed like a big deal to a 2nd grader!). Old time hockey!: