Breakaway, The Minor Hockey Podcast · Ontario Minor Hockey Association

Episode 163 | How Coaches Can Create Connections With Players (Dr. Jody Carrington)

·1 hr 12 min·3 clips

Aaron and Ian start with the familiar feel of a season winding down. They swap a rink story from the weekend and land on a U7 gala day where kids were running around with a giveaway that quickly became a symbol for how minor hockey lives in everyday life. The point is not the item itself. It is how a small gesture can stay with a kid because it feels like part of the game. From there, the conversation opens up into what rinks mean for families. Jody describes them as places where communities gather, not just places where games happen. Parents build relationships there. Kids learn inclusion and exclusion, and how to handle it when a ref makes a bad call. The episode treats those moments as central rather than incidental. That is part of what gives the discussion its weight. Jody keeps coming back to the adults around the game. Coaches are not background figures. They are the people carrying a huge share of the emotional load. One of the episode's clearest ideas is that if coaches are struggling, the kids are likely to feel it too. Aaron and Ian connect that idea to the way they used to talk about coaching on the show. Earlier conversations were more about skills, tactics, and moving the puck. COVID changed that. Once the social side of hockey was taken away, the importance of mental well-being, dressing room connection, and the basic feeling of being part of a group became hard to ignore. The episode does not treat that shift as temporary. It uses it as a reason to rethink what good coaching means now. Jody's perspective is practical, but it is also compassionate. She keeps pointing back to the human side of the sport. Near the end, the conversation lands on repair. In a very small town or close-knit association, success is not just about winning the season. It is about whether people can still face each other afterward and stay together. That idea gives the whole episode its shape. The final note is appreciation for the kind of coaching that keeps the game connected to the people in it.

As heard by us

Minor hockey, treated as a community job before it is a hockey job.

Jody Carrington steers Breakaway away from drills and back toward the people around minor hockey: coaches, parents, and kids. The episode treats the rink as a place where belonging can either grow or fall apart, and it keeps landing on the same plain truth: adults matter most…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a minor-hockey conversation about the adults who keep the rink together.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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