Last night our team had practice. Before practice I asked to have a conversation with the players about their perspective on what’s going on right now. I was genuinely interested in a 17 year olds point of view of it all. Thread/1

In no way was it a political conversation. I just wanted to listen. Let them lead it. As a coach I wanted to get a pulse so I could better understand them moving forward. What started as a few questions turned into half the practice. My three biggest takeaways from listening: /2

1. Young hockey players live in a bubble. And they acknowledge that. Mostly from white, upper/middle class neighborhoods they talked about not having many experiences with minorities or police and their worldview is limited a lot to what they see on social media and the news./3

I feel like that’s pretty standard for the hockey world. What is happening right now is eye-opening for many because it’s not in the experience of a vast majority of hockey players lives growing up. With that, we lack perspective./4

2. They are terrified to talk about sensitive issues for fear of judgement from others. The kids had really well thought out opinions and thoughts which was great but one thing that is obvious is how nervous they all are about saying the wrong thing and upsetting people./5

They see the toxicity on social media for people that express their thoughts and just don’t want to engage for fear of what will be coming back. I feel that way a lot too, as I’m sure many people do. One kid had a great analogy.../6

He said that people were given two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we should talk.

But that’s not what they see. They see everyone trying to shout over one another so they feel like it’s pointless to engage because they won’t be heard./7

3. We talked about how important it is to see multiple sides of issues and that at times there’s no right or wrong. But we live in a tribal environment where lines get drawn and you have to pick a side/8

It was yet another reason they don’t feel comfortable sharing their thoughts./9

These kids are smart, open, and genuine. They want what’s best and are good people. Let’s make sure we allow them the environment and opportunity to express themselves because we can learn a lot from the people who will be our leaders of the future./10

I got better as a coach yesterday. I think our players got better too. Without even hitting the ice we got better because we listened, gained perspective, and I think we got a little tighter as a group because we built understanding./11

I’m sure there will be people that will tell me it’s not my place to have these types of discussions with my players. That’s ok. But if we can’t have honest dialogue how can we ever gain empathy and perspective? It’s what we need most right now./End