19 minutes ago, hockeyisgreat said:

Ultimately no wone really cares how bad you got beat in a summer tournament.

Gotta love the acceptance and rationalization of mediocrity or less.

2 hours ago, sadday4hockey said:

Gotta love the acceptance and rationalization of mediocrity or less.

Nice job of taking that last sentence out of context!  If you would have read the whole thing you would see that I was trying to make the point that spring summer hockey is more about trying to improve!  And where is the acceptance of mediocrity in that?

Touche

My point with the education piece is that it doesn't need to be something that is a "money grab" or anything along those lines.  What it needs to be is people/coaches being honest with parents and kids and telling them what lies ahead of them and what the actual path looks like.  I've run across too many parents who think their kid is the next Gretzky or Crosby because he's lighting it up at PAHL A Minor, and when they see even what people on this board would call a "faux AAA" team play in that same age group it's like a lightbulb going on.  People need to understand that there are levels and at every level there are other rungs to the ladder.  I agree, hockey really isn't all that complicated as long as you have some points of reference and know what you are looking at.  The issue, at least in my opinion, are parents who come in because their kid wants to do it, but doesn't really have any background to what "it" is.  These are also the parents that are probably most likely to get sucked in by coaches charging money or teams charging money because they don't know what the process looks like.

9 hours ago, Corsi said:

 These are also the parents that are probably most likely to get sucked in by coaches charging money or teams charging money because they don't know what the process looks like.

I would say the first rule of hockey is to stay away from skills coaches that are team coaches and team coaches that are skills coaches. Keep those separate.