08/22/2026
ARE WE DEVELOPING PLAYERS… OR RETAINING THEM? 🏒
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
We’re seeing it more and more at the U18 and junior levels.
A player earns an opportunity to attend a junior camp, and during the tryout, his U18 coach is calling to find out if he’s coming back.
Let him earn his spot. Let him find out if he’s ready.
We see the same thing at the junior level. A player gets an opportunity to explore the next level, and sometimes the message coming back is, “You’re not ready yet.”
But that raises a bigger question:
Is retention starting to get in the way of development?
Recently, we had a player move from a CSSHL program to junior hockey. The program wanted to keep him and felt he wasn’t ready to make that jump.
He earned the opportunity and moved on.
The response? Total silence.
No congratulations. No recognition that one of their players had earned an opportunity at the next level.
To me, that’s where we need to remember what development hockey is supposed to be about.
If a player earns an opportunity to take the next step, we should encourage him to find out if he’s ready.
That doesn’t mean every player needs to move up.
For one player, another year of U18 might be exactly what he needs. For another, it’s time for junior hockey. Another player might benefit from an extra year of junior before pursuing college.
Every player’s path is different.
And sometimes we won’t know if a player is ready for the next challenge until we actually give him the opportunity to try.