Five Examples of Off-Ice Success
There have been many very highly successful hockey players over the years. There have been countless very successful people in arenas other than hockey arenas. But succeeding at both is exceedingly rare! At SkateGuard, we want to position players and their families to be winners in all aspects of their lives. So, today, we thought […]
NIL is not nothing
One of the great things about playing sports at a high level is that it gives you options. Career-wise, it could set you up for life as a professional, of course. But even short of that, it can open doors for you in marketing, business, coaching, sports management and other vocations. On a personal level, […]
Off-Ice Performance Sessions
So far at 3/8ths of a Thought, I have talked a lot about how I think about the world of hockey and what I have observed in 30-odd years around the game. I’d like to spend a little bit of time in this post talking about what we do at SkateGuard and how we think […]
Oh The Places You Will Go
There are lots of great things about growing up in Canada. If you’re reading this from the Great White North, then healthcare, education, and a strong and stable democracy are all things that we should be thankful for. And for the most part, we are. We should also be grateful for the resources that we […]
Moving Away From Home Part 2
In the previous blog post, I began a discussion of a challenge that nearly all elite hockey players face but very few people in the industry talk about enough: moving away from home. A new town, a new team, a new coach, a new living situation – these can all be hugely disorienting realities for […]
Moving Away From Home Part 1
One of the topics with the widest discrepancy between the impact on a young player and the amount of dialogue it gets is the process of moving away from home. If a player is going to advance past youth hockey, he or she is almost always going to have to move away from home in […]
Major Junior or the NCAA? – The NCAA Case
In Part 1 of this series, we made the case for why some 15-to-17-year-old hockey players might benefit from heading down the path of playing Canadian major junior hockey. But we also understand that every kid and every situation is different. So, today, we will take a look at the other main path North American […]
Major Junior or NCAA? Part 1: The Case for Major Junior
If you grow up playing hockey in North America, there are essentially two paths to the NHL once you reach the age of 16: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the U.S. or Canadian major junior hockey, comprising the Ontario, Quebec Major Junior and Western hockey leagues (OHL, QMJHL and WHL, respectively). Sure, a […]
Women’s Pro Hockey, Part 2: Where We’re Going
I sit here writing this on the day after the inaugural PWHL draft. Ninety young women heard their names called yesterday. It’s the kind of moment that many of these women deserved years ago. Take second overall pick Jocelyne Larocque. She is a three-time Olympic medallist (two gold medals) and a long-time member of the […]
Women’s Pro Hockey, Part 1: How We Got Here
SkateGuard co-founder Mike Jaczko and I work in financial markets. There are times in markets when you have a thesis about what SHOULD happen. And then it doesn’t. You watch the screen, and while the market doesn’t necessarily move against you, it just refuses to move in the direction you think it should. It simply marks […]