Long time listener, first time caller here. There have certainly been a few posts regarding Coach Shand on this site, so I would like to add my 2 cents. My son is a Bantam this year, so I can't comment on what may or may not have happened on the PW AA team this year. My son has done individual lessons with Coach Shand for several years, and Coach Shand is fantastic in this capacity. He genuinely cares about the player's development and goes out of his way to suggest everything that can be done on the ice and off the ice to assist in that development. My son also played for Shand's Ontario Eagles in Pee Wee A last year, and it was the best experience he has had in 6+ years playing travel hockey. Coach Shand is a demanding coach, but he is fair and holds players accountable. If a player isn't putting in the effort or is playing selfishly, they won't get the same amount of ice time as those that are working hard and playing a team game. We had a team that was projected to finish somewhere around 10th-12th (perhaps optimistically as high as 8th) that wound up finishing 4th and losing the SCAHA final in OT. At season's end, we had a group of kids who had bonded into a fantastic team. They worked hard together on the ice and never gave up. It was a fantastic journey, and Coach Shand deserves a ton of credit as do the players who bought into his system and worked so hard week in and week out. My son developed more during that year than in any other year. Obviously, no coach is perfect, and your mileage may vary as you traverse the travel hockey landscape. What is a great fit for my son may not be for your son, and vice versa.
Good perspective but incomplete. First, Coach Shand has developed over time some very good players on his PWAA team. Second, most coaches do a good to great job at sticktimes, which involve a narrow set of skills compared to coaching a team or teaching a team. For example, we have found Coach Bickley to be the best of many sticktime coaches out there but not an appropriate team coach for our son. Coach Shand may be similar but charged twice the rate as other options. Third, preseason projections are largely meaningless outside a few dominant clubs. Shand's PWAA team was not simply projected to be good; it demonstrated it in the pre and early season and declined steadily over the season. There are probably many reasons for that including the better development on other teams. Fourth, your point on "putting in effort" and "playing selfish" is just plain wrong. Some of the lower effort and more selfish players were favorites. "Fairness" is in the eyes of the beholder.
Happy that you and your son had a great experience with Coach Shand. We began the season very keen on him as a coach and still see some virtue on his coaching. Our son learned discipline and attentiveness to peripheral details and commitment to total effort in order to get ice time. He also learned how to deal with bounded rationale authority figures without buying into their emotion. That is an important life skill. As for his development as a hockey player, time will tell. At this point, the negative stuff outweighs the positive because it affected his confidence on the ice. When learning is about making mistakes and learning from them, he has learned only that making mistakes is bad and cause to be blamed for team losses.
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Actually Sophist, with all due respect, my perspective is accurate and complete from my perspective. That's the great thing about perspectives...we each have our own unique perspective. I offered it as another perspective on a different team coached by the same person who you criticized in an earlier post. You will note that I did not label any of your assertions as "wrong" or "incorrect" because my son didn't play on your son's team this season. Similarly, as your son did not play on my son's team last season, I don't see how you can weigh in on "projections" or whether or not kids "put in effort" by comparing your son's experience to my son's experience. It's apples and oranges. Obviously, you are dissatisfied with your son's experience this past season, and I'm sorry your son didn't have a great experience. I hope your son has a better experience next season.