HOCKEY MOM

Karen Poulin is the quintessential hockey mom - the chauffeur, the chef, the housekeeper, the team scheduler and the vice president of the Burlington Amateur Hockey Association in Vermont. One would think that being a hockey mom to three boys wouldn't allow for the kind of time to take up a new athletic endeavor.

But in the midst of navigating through carpools, folding laundry, creating schedules and organizing her own personal schedule, Poulin needed another outlet. She wanted to find a more active way to take part in hockey, the sport that all three of her sons have played growing up in Burlington, Vermont.

Each year, Burlington Area Youth Hockey organizes a parents-versus-players game at the end of the season, and Poulin, who grew up as a figure skater, eagerly jumped onto the ice. After that game, Poulin realized she could take matters into her own hands.

"I had so much fun playing," Poulin recalled, "that I said, 'I have to do this!' "

Poulin grew up training as a figure skater, but spearheaded an over-30 womens hockey league in Burlington. She found that other women had the same passion not only for athletics and for fitness, but also for wanting to challenge themselves and to learn about the sport.

"I would have never guessed that all these women are so committed to it," Poulin said. "The numbers just keep growing and growing, and we're always trying to get others to join us because we have so much fun doing it."

A long-distance runner and a former marathoner, Poulin found a new athletic challenge in playing hockey - how to properly sync every element together into one action. She likened learning how to play hockey to learning how to drive a stick-shift automobile.

"We love it so much because it's something you can improve on," Poulin said. "And for all of us women, it's given us a total appreciation for what our kids can do."

Poulin's three sons have all attended the Tim Thomas Hockey Camps, and they plan to attend the camp the week of July 11 in South Burlington, Vt. Poulin's son Colton, was featured on several local television stations in the Burlington area after he scored a goal on Thomas - one of the camp's crowning moments, when each skater gets a chance to shoot on Thomas, a Vezina Trophy winner and finalist and a 2010 United States Olympian.

"He was only seven, and I have to say, I was really proud of him," Karen Poulin said. "But Colton didn't say too much about it. He didn't brag about it. But when he talked about it, he smiled. He could have used it as an opportunity to brag and he knew that people were talking about it, but he didn't use it against people. But it definitely boosted his self-confidence as a player."

Still,  watching her sons take part in the camps motivated Poulin to approach Pavel Navrat, the managing director of Tim Thomas Hockey, about organizing a day camp for adult hockey players through the Tim Thomas Foundation.

"I told Pavel, I've got a group of women, and if you run a women's camp, we will fill it," Poulin said

It was full, and the adult camps have become a staple of Tim Thomas Hockey Camps. This year's adult camps will be held July 11-15 in South Burlington, Vt., and August 1-5 in Falmouth, Maine.

When her three boys are putting away their hockey equipment for the summer, they see their mom packing her hockey back and ask her the same question.

"My kids say to me, 'how come we don't get to play hockey all year and you do?' "

And when her season ends, Poulin always seems to get asked the same question by her teammates and fellow hockey moms:

"When's the next one?"

***
Rachel Lenzi covers hockey for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and is a contributor to Tim Thomas Hockey Camps.

My Favorite Time of the Year

Is this the best time of the year?

Did you wonder what to do in the two-day void between the final games of the NHL's regular season and the opening round of the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs? Did you watch NHL On The Fly on a continuous loop during those 48 hours?

Let me guess: You asked yourself the same thing I asked myself in that time - is it Wednesday yet? 

The time is almost here. 

The beauty of playoff hockey is this - we're predicting, prognosticating and even praying that maybe "this is the year" for your team. Or for my team. Or our team.

And there are storylines galore. 

If you've got any interest in the Tim Thomas Foundation and in the Tim Thomas Hockey Camps, it's easy to guess where your rooting interest rests - the Boston-Montreal series. It's one of the most storied NHL rivalries, and also one of its most dramatic, especially given the theatrics of this season - the melee during the Bruins' 8-6 win in February at TD Garden, or Zdeno Chara's hit on Max Pacioretty - and the NHL's response -  that ignited a firestorm of discussion, criticism, analysis and even a potential business boycott of the NHL. 

(Is this the NHL playoffs, or is this a soap opera? That's why we keep watching.) 

But the fact of the matter is that in at least four games and in at most seven, someone's going home. Someone moves on and someone else's hopes are dashed. 

Is there an intriguing matchup? 

Here are three:

In the West, Chicago vs. Vancouver in a 1-8 matchup. We'll see a completely revamped Blackhawks lineup against Vancouver, the heavy favorite to win the Stanley Cup ... though Vancouver is annually plagued by postseason inconsistency. (Performance anxiety?)

In the East, Pittsburgh vs. Tampa Bay in a 4-5 matchup. You wonder how even these matchups traditionally are, and the absence of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin has brought out a different identity in the Penguins. They'll face an upstart Tampa Bay team led by Martin St. Louis and Steve Stamkos, one of the NHL's best snipers, though this will be a big matchup of goaltenders in Tampa Bay's Dwayne Roloson and and Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury. 

In the East, Buffalo vs. Philadelphia in a 3-6 matchup. Like Vancouver, Philadelphia is another heavy favorite to win the Stanley Cup but slowly crumbled at the end of the regular season. Buffalo, meanwhile, rode a late surge to earn a playoff berth. 

The best part about the playoffs, obviously, is the Stanley Cup Finals, and you know you've done something right if you're still playing hockey at that point in June, so don't feel badly for anyone else polishing their golf clubs and booking their trips to Cabo San Lucas.

There are no more shootouts. Fourteen teams are already gone. Sometime in June, you'll look at the scoreboard and see only two teams left (trust me, it's a good place for those two teams to be). In the end, it's about balance. One team will walk away with their place in history. The other will be the answer to one of many trivia questions. 

But isn't that what makes this the best time of the year? 

***

Rachel Lenzi covers hockey for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram

Kyle Rancourt Story

April 12, 2011

Rachel Lenzi

When Joanne and Eric Rancourt took their son, Kyle, to his first hockey game, they noticed something unique about the two-year-old. While some toddlers would get fussy or hold more of a fascination with the team mascot, Kyle Rancourt was captivated by the players on the ice, and he paid full attention to the flow of the game. 

He began skating months later and began playing hockey when he was 5 years old. But only a few years into playing hockey, Kyle was at a crossroads – a place that people don’t reach for years. Hockey wasn’t fun. Skating up and down the ice was hard work. In his second year of playing mites, Kyle battled asthma and he and his family wondered if playing hockey was worth it, or if he should leave the sport. But a coach needed a volunteer to play in goal and Kyle was the first to volunteer.

“He tried it,” Joanne Rancourt said. “And he loved hockey again. He wanted to play, and that was it.”

He was only two, but the game hooked Kyle in. And in five years as a goalie, the game has sustained him through the difficult times that his family has endured. 

A 10-year-old from Gardiner, Mass., Kyle will attend the Tim Thomas Hockey Camps this summer – he will take part in the camp in August in Marlborough, Mass., his second camp in two years. But hockey has provided a family bond, not just for his immediate family but through his parents and grandparents. When Joanne was young, she and her father watched Bruins games, and Eric coached and played hockey, his love for the game encouraged by a youth hockey coach who took an interest in seeing him develop as a goalie. 

“There’s something about hockey, it brings everybody together,” Joanne said. “You don’t think about anything else in that time you’re watching a game. It’s very relaxing.”

Yet his family has struggled, and when Kyle needed something to hold onto, hockey became Kyle's salvation. His father is a Gulf War veteran who nearly died on the operating table during major surgery. His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer. As a result, Kyle has had to grow up quickly, but he also discovered the importance of having a release.

“It means a lot to me,” said Kyle, a fourth-grader who plays for Winchendon Youth Hockey in Massachusetts. “It clears my mind of all the stuff that’s gone on."

With her husband limited physically as a result of surgeries, including procedures to remove part of his spine and a rib and a surgery that nearly took his life, it was up to Joanne to keep Kyle active, even after her own diagnosis and treatment. She scheduled her own doctors appointments around her son's hockey games and practices, a decision that some would see as an alarming sacrifice. But to Joanne, it was to provide for her son.

“I was recovering from my last surgery right before camp and I thought, ‘I want to get him to camp,” Joanne said. “I argued with my doctors about treatment and I said, ‘No, we’re not doing this. I have to bring my son to hockey.’ I was more stressed about hockey and how the impact of my diagnosis would affect hockey.

“But Kyle had to grow up a lot.”

Yet like many youth players, Kyle created a vision for himself and his future in the sport. He talks about where he wants to play college hockey, and continuously talks about what he learned at his first Tim Thomas Hockey Camp last summer.

“I liked that they worked on a lot of things that me and other kids weren’t doing right, and they taught you how to do it right," Kyle said. "They really helped me out. It made me happy, really happy. Just to learn the stuff I wasn’t doing right and to correct it, and to do it a lot better.”

At the camps, Kyle not only met other goalies, but met college and professional hockey players who served as camp counselors – people he could relate to on a certain level.

“He saw it and thought, ‘I can be that kid,’ ” Joanne said. “It gave him more of a drive. He really started thinking about high schools and about colleges.”

And his experience has already helped fulfill one of his mother’s hopes for him - that his journey through hockey has impacted him in a good way. Likewise, Kyle believes that the involvement of his parents and grandparents, not just in the game but as a collective group - a team, if you will - have aided him in finding his lifelong passion for hockey. 

"It makes me happy," he said. "It makes me feel good to see my family doing that, being involved.”

***

Rachel Lenzi covers hockey for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram

Goalie Dad

By Barry Kurland

I’ve been a goalie dad for the last nine years.  I’ve also played in goal myself for the last five years.  The combination of these experiences has simultaneously provided me with an opportunity to walk a mile in my son’s shoes, and to achieve my childhood dream later in life while I’m watching my son achieve his.  Below is my “top ten” list of what I’ve learned along the way.

1.       Be accountable to your teammates, coaches and yourself.  While you may think at times that your defensemen and forwards can play better defense, there is always something you can do differently to prevent a goal from scoring.  Learn from and be accountable to your teammates, coaches and yourself for every goal scored – in games and practices.

2.       Practice makes perfect.  Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” highlights a study by Anders Ericsson that concludes it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a certain discipline.  Daniel Coyle’s book “The Talent Code” cites brain research, behavioral research and real-life training examples to highlight that talent and greatness result from motivation, coaching and “deep practice.” It’s clear - getting better requires motivation, persistence, hard work and many hours of the right type of practice (and coaching….more on this later).

3.       What you do off the ice affects how you play on the ice.  The right amount of sleep and proper nutrition contribute to your ability to play to your potential at practice and in games.  In addition, work you do off the ice to increase your strength, conditioning, quickness, agility and flexibility can contribute exponentially to improving your performance on the ice.

4.       Things aren’t always what they appear to be.  You can be in the right position to make a save but the shooter makes a great shot and scores and you’ve failed.  You can be in the wrong position and the shooter hits the puck right at you and it looks like you’ve made a great save.  In addition, what looks like a “soft goal” may be the result of a screen and/or deflection that can be invisible to fans, coaches and even your teammates.  However, it doesn’t matter why or how a goal scores, you’re responsible and will be judged on it (see #1 above).  As a result, you need to figure out how to keep any goals from scoring….and the time and effort you spend on #2 and #3 above will improve your chances of keeping the puck out of the net.

5.       It doesn’t have to look pretty.  Continued practice and work on your game will improve your technique.  However, to be a great goalie, you need to play with a consistently high level of focus, intensity and “compete level,” and with the type of urgency and desperation that makes it clear you’ll do anything to keep a goal from scoring – throughout every game and every practice.   For example, even if you’ve already made a first save and are out of position to make a second save, you need to do anything and everything possible to prevent a goal from scoring.  You’ll be surprised at how many ugly, desperate saves you actually make.  More importantly, your ugliest saves have the potential to change the momentum of the game given the effect they can have on the opposing team you steal a goal from, and the motivation they give your team when they see how hard you’re working to keep the puck out of the net. 

6.       Every goal counts. “Put the last goal behind you” is standard advice all goalies receive.  Although it sounds like motherhood and apple pie, I can’t tell you how many games I’ve played and watched where it has proved to be true, even when one team has a significant lead over another.  Momentum changes quickly in a hockey game and allowing that next goal to score because you lost composure, weren’t concentrating, weren’t trying, weren’t playing at your maximum intensity level, etc. could be the difference between a win and a loss or a tie. 

7.       Do unto others before they do unto you.  Great goalies influence what shooters do in addition to consistently being in the right position to react to and stop pucks.  For example, when a goalie makes a quick, aggressive move out of the net to square to a shooter in the slot he reduces the amount of net shooter sees, causes the shooter to rush his shot, takes down trajectory of shot – all of which reduce the probability the shooter will score.  A goalie that “challenges and battles” around the net may be able to poke check a puck away from a shooter on a breakaway or when they have a quality shot near the net.  Goalies that play with a “do unto others before they do unto you” philosophy play aggressively and confidently, and increase their chances to influence shooters into making mistakes rather than letting shooters dictate play.

8.       Learn geometry and statistics and make them work for you.  Goalies should always be “square to the puck” at all times – this means that your shoulders, gloves, knees, and toes should all face the puck when the shot is taken.  In addition, goalies that play “up and out” (of the net) cut off the angle on the shooter, make the net appear smaller, take away the upper part of the net, and will not need to move as far to stop a puck that is shot to either corner of the net.  Finally, most goals are scored 2 feet off the ice or below, and “top shelf” shots are the toughest to hit for shooters.  Therefore, moving out from the goal, limiting low shots from scoring via a tight butterfly and keeping your hands low will reduce the probability of goals from scoring.

9.       Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maintain your composure after a goal scores.  You don’t want to signal to the other team and coaches, or your team and coaches that you’re rattled and less likely to stop the next goal from scoring.  Also, have a thick skin.  Ask your coaches on a regular basis for feedback on your play and what you can do to improve, and work on those areas at practice.  Tell your parents to have a thick skin too.

10.   There is no substitute for good coaching.  You should make sure to ask your head coach what he needs from you since he knows how his goalie needs to fit into the type of system he is coaching, and the skills of the players on his team.  In particular, one style of goaltending doesn’t fit all teams.  For example, the team may not be deep enough in defense and the coach may need you to tie up the puck and swallow rebounds to give your defense time to take a breather during face-offs, rather than play the puck and keep it in play.  In addition, since most teams don’t have goalies coaches you should of course take advantage of opportunities to get goalie-specific coaching whenever you can during clinics offered during the season, and camps during the summer.  The good news for you is that summer camps like the Tim Thomas Hockey Camp will teach you all of top ten items in the list above…and a lot more!

Barry Kurland is a goaltender and plays in adult hockey leagues.  His son Sam attended the Tim Thomas Hockey Camp and currently plays a goalie at Williams College.