Devin Swain

If you are a hockey parent and your son or your daughter has a hope or a dream of playing high level hockey, I'm going to give you one piece of advice: Do not be overly critical, loud, and negative in the stands because we as recruiters and scouts are watching. One of the worst things that happens for us is going to a game and watching a kid that we really, really like… But there's this parent in the stands that's yelling at the ref or yelling at the coaches, or God forbid they're yelling at another kid. We're going to go down and talk to that coach after the game and pray that the parent we saw wasn’t the one of the kid that we really liked on the ice. Because if you're a problem parent in youth hockey, there's a good chance that you're going to be a problem parent at high level hockey as well. And maybe not overtly communicating to us, but certainly filling your kid with negativity and excuses if things don't go their way. So be positive and encouraging in the stands. If you're negative and you're loud, then there's a really good chance we're not going to recruit your kid.