As the season openers for every league is near, some pay-to-play coaches are outright desperate for players to fill-out their rosters. That desperation includes the practice of trying to coax players from the other side of the sanctioned/non-sanctioned fence, not realizing how doing so is career suicide.
There are teams across the continent that dramatically overestimated the value of their pay-to-play experience and have come up a number of players short on roster as a result. Let’s face it, every team can sign a half-dozen goalies if they wanted to (and some do), but trying to get skaters to pay $10,000+ to play in September is simply dreaming.
As a result, the poaching game is on full display.
Considering how much jumping back-and-forth across that fence has been occurring during the off-season by coaches and staff, one would think that showing complete disrespect for other coaches might have a way of damaging opportunities down the road.
Let’s be completely transparent here, combine the complete lack of respect for one another with the utter disbelief there could ever be actual consequences for such behavior, and it’s easy to see why some coaches are afraid of seeing others at the off-season events.
The North American 3 Hockey League’s Minnesota Moose hired Todd Sanden to be the team’s first head coach last month. This is a coach that was one of the worst offenders last year while coaching in the United States Premier Hockey League. The former NAHL head coach contacted a number of different Victorious clients, in-season, trying to get them to jump ship from their USA Hockey team to his. Now Sanden gets to face some of those same coaches he was trying to screw over this year. Let’s just say the NA3HL showcase will be interesting.
New Austin Ice Bats Head Coach/GM Doctor Westin Michaud got a late start in Texas after the departure of Kirk Golden. I made it very clear that one of the Ice Bats’ players from last season, another Victorious client, had signed with a team in the USPHL. Instead of respecting my request to leave the player alone, the text messages continue.
Should someone tell the good doctor that players are not permitted to be in apartments without some type of supervision? That’s exactly what the coach is suggesting players do as a result of the lack of billets in the community. Personally, I find it a bit funny to see a doctor listed as a pay-to-play junior team’s head coach.
With the hockey community being such a compacted group, what goes through a coach’s brain to think that such behavior will not have a long-term impact on the level of cooperation from other coaches? What about future job opportunities?
Here’s an example. A General Manager and Head Coach (Ray Welsh & Terry Watt) from the USPHL are now working with two different expansion teams in the NAHL (Elmira Aviators & Minnesota Mallards). I can only imagine how difficult it’s going to be for both men this season after the attitudes both displayed towards the NAHL/NA3HL brand and actually tried to hinder their NCDC players opportunities in the NAHL.
So, here’s an interesting idea that a few other very popular advisors and I came up with. When we get hard evidence of clear tampering after a player signs with a team, or during the season, there’s absolutely ZERO chance we are going to recommend that coach or operator for the next two seasons, regardless of where they are coaching.
If coaches can’t respect the game enough to honor the decisions of any player and family, then it’s completely clear that coach is not the kind of man we want molding the character of our players.
Stephen Heisler 