Reader Note: The initial introduction above the line is Drew (the guest post begins below the divider line)
Yesterday I put out a letter to Level 1 Coaches.
Sometimes I’ll get the random one-line email that reads, “Nice post today” or something in that ballpark. I’m grateful when anyone reaches out, but at around 9 pm last night, I got a surprise email from a coach in this community.
I’m not a writer… was the title of the email.
“Publish this for me” was the first line.
He, like me, has also been on the outside looking in for a while. He’s also struggled with feeling out of place. His career wouldn’t lend itself to Level 1, but by choice or by choices, he is a Level 1 Coach. This is his letter, his response to a question from a pro hockey GM, and most importantly, his story…
“Why does this job mean so much to you?”
This was the question I was asked after sending two of the most absurd emails of my life to the Owner and President of a professional hockey team.
My answer surprised me almost as much as it surprised him.
“It means more to me than it does any other guy out there!”
It’s true.
Fifteen years ago, I was let go from my division one college team. Off-ice conduct. Figure out who I am, and Google me. If you follow the discord, it shouldn’t be that hard to track me down. At the time, the only teams answering the phone were in the AAHL, predecessor to the FHL and the FPHL as we know it today. So I played there. Got my cup of coffee in the ECHL, and then was injured. The following summer, only teams in the SPHL were calling, and my ego would not allow me to play at that level. I even sent an email titled “Geaux Away” to the coach of one team in the league.
So I “retired” and my tailspin started. I couldn’t show myself around an ice arena for the longest time. At least, not in the circles I grew up in. I hid in tier three hockey where I could be “the man” and have a monumental impact on players that would go on to play at schools I had never heard of. My off-ice struggles continued, but at this point I’m not convinced they even had anything to do with hockey, but this is where I ABSOLUTELY fell in love with teaching the game of hockey. I took very average junior hockey players, and made them pretty good. Most of them had never really been taught the skills I took for granted, and when they implemented them at that level, 30-point guys were dropping 50, and 50-point guys were flirting with triple digits. A lot of fun.
I did that for another 4 years. I started a hockey school, and met more players. Learned their stories, told them mine, and continued to support them as they went on to play college and professional hockey. After the birth of my daughter, my life went a different way for a year or so, but eventually, I dipped my toes back into coaching, started up a junior team, re-launched my hockey school, and dove back into hockey. More players, more stories. More life lessons to share. More boys turned into men inside of an ice rink. The success story I never lived.
The human side of coaching became my secret sauce. A walking billboard for the “They don’t care how much you know, if they don’t know how much you care” cliche. Through discipline, repetition and injecting confidence into their pursuit of the impossible, I got pretty good at coaching. I started to pride myself on my ability to get a dollar fifty out of people labeled a quarter at best. Then, I spent four months alongside an SPHL franchise, and five months with a current FPHL team. More players. More storylines. More boys becoming men tiptoeing the line between living the dream, or succumbing to the nightmare.
I felt so called upon to help these guys reach whatever finish line they saw fit. At times, I was spending personal money on ice time, so professional hockey players could get in extra work, AFTER their team practices. It was as electric as it was insanity, but we had fun, got better and all came out of it better than we entered. It felt right. Not a job, just what I was supposed to be doing.
Entitlement is a crazy thing. I know I don’t deserve anything. And, as I write this at 9:00 pm in the office of my current non-hockey job, the reality of not getting anything this season is starting to creep in. I’m currently begging for an SPHL HC, SPHL AC and FPHL HC roles that are slipping away from me by the day. So like, back to the answer to my question… Why does it mean more?
Because a childhood prodigy that won everything, an NTDP Player, turned USHL All-Star, turned full-ride D1 player that thought he did it by himself, would love the opportunity to pay back all of the friends, family, coaches, and supporters that carried him along to way, by passing the knowledge, lessons and skills that they sacrificed to give him. The lessons I learned, through the opportunities I wasted, would be passed on to young players before they had to learn the hard way. And finally, my daughter would get the opportunity to see her father, whom she has witnessed at rock bottom, not give up on a dream that was instilled into me by my dad, when I was her age. The hockey side is, and will always be, just hockey. But, the human side of coaching needs to come first. And, the 30 years in this game that make up my human side turn twenty-five cents into a dollar fifty in a hurry.
So if you’re reading this, and you’re hiring; I’m your guy.
The author of this guest post is Todd McIlrath
Thanks brother!