For The Hockey Moms

With today being Mother’s Day, I thought this would be a good time to focus on some people that, by giving their time, energy, and love, make the great game of hockey even better. This post is for the hockey moms out there.

Whether you’re a hockey mom to a mite house leaguer or an NHLer, whether you are on the ice running practices or in the stands trying to figure out what offsides is – thank you.

For Early Mornings… Very Early Mornings

Chances are that if you’re a hockey mom, you think that the morning routine on weekdays is a breeze. That’s because during hockey season, you wake up earlier on the weekends to go to the rink than you do during the week to get ready for work and get the kids off to school.

When kids need to be on the ice at 7:00 am, hockey moms are up at 5:30, putting the bags and sticks by the door and making breakfast before waking the kids up the first time, then acting as their human snooze button, going back to wake them up a second time after they begged for a few extra minutes of sleep.

Hockey moms are scraping the ice off the car, loading the bags in back, and warming up the car while the kids get dressed and (hopefully) brush their teeth.

For Your Juggling Skills

The pace doesn’t slow down after getting to the rink. Hockey moms tear tape and tie skates (and untie and re-tie them when their little one says, “My sock is all bunched up under my foot, I need to take my skate off.”).

Hockey moms go to fill water bottles while the kids put on their pads. When the water fountain doesn’t work, or dispenses warm water, they run to the other one on the other side of the building.

Hockey moms speed walk through the lobby in an effort to see the maximum number of shifts for each kid when they have two kids playing in games at the same time on different sheets of ice.

For Being A Good Sport

When the team wants that big-time feeling and ask if they could have music playing during warmups and at breaks in play, a hockey mom inevitably steps up, learning how to run the sound system from the timekeeper’s booth and downloading songs to her phone for the perfect pump-up playlist even though she’d never choose to listen to many of them. No, kids, Mom isn’t really into ACDC…

It’s the hockey mom that listens to endless recitations of statistics read from the backs of hockey cards, magazines, or quoted from memory.

And in the summer, when practice shots in the driveway with a street hockey ball miss the net and thud against the garage door, reverberating through the house, a hockey mom doesn’t sit inside, tight-faced and tense. She goes outside and offers a glass of ice water, then sits on the front steps, watching and complimenting her kid’s improved shot.

For The Support

All hockey players, regardless of age or skill level, will have a mix of success and failure on the ice. Hockey moms help their kids take something positive from each experience so they can learn and grow from it in the future.

When a kid misses a wide-open net or was on the ice for all of the other team’s goals, a hockey mom somehow finds the right words to make them feel better about a bad game. When the kid doesn’t make the top team in tryouts, the hockey mom reminds them that the most important thing isn’t what team they’re on, but the effort they give and what kind of teammate they are.

Likewise, when a kid scores a hat trick or an overtime winner, the hockey mom is always there with a congratulatory hug. And if the kid is playing with and against lesser competition, a hockey mom will make sure they remember to be unselfish and make their teammates better.

Happy Mother’s Day

Thank you, hockey moms, for everything you do for your hockey players. I know it might not seem like it’s appreciated on a Saturday morning in December when your kid is whining about not getting Skittles from the rink vending machine, but trust me, it is. Enjoy your special day.