Be A Better Team Player

Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. And as I mentioned on the last show, I'm going to share a story with something that I witnessed with my own eyes. And number one, I'm not going to tell you where I saw this. It definitely was not Charlotte, North Carolina. So I don't want you to think it was here. It's bothered me. It just completely set me back for, for a little bit to actually watch this. But I was, let's say out of town and I was playing in a charity hockey tournament. Let's just, let's go with that. And I was sitting in my car doing a little bit of some business work. I was sitting in a car and I was watching these young, this junior hockey team kick a soccer ball around. So they were kicking it in the air. They were having fun kicking it. And one of the players kicked the ball in the air and smashed another player in the face. Now I believe kids will be kids. It was wrong. It's what happened after that really bothered me. So I'm watching this, I'm just sitting here, just, I'm seeing that. And I said, oh boy. Then I see the kid bleeding. He must have maybe broke his nose. I'm not sure what happened. And I said, oh, you know, and I, for a minute, like somebody asked me, well, why didn't you get out of the car and help? Well, the kid didn't go down. He, it wasn't pretty. He's definitely could have broke his nose or his nose was bleeding and they were playing that game. So just to be clear, it's that where you get in a circle. I'm not much of a soccer player. I have two left feet, not the best runner. So these kids were ball handling, kicking the ball, keeping it in the air. So it's a little team building exercise that loosens the players up for sports. I see that happen a lot in hockey. Now if I'm down, if I, if I'm at the Madison Square Garden and the players are down below the visiting team, I'm watching and there it's amazing. Even these Europeans keeping the ball in the air. It's like pepper and baseball. They're all keeping the, they're Playing pepper with the ball and keeping it in the air, but great foot skills. But anyways, not to get away from what we're talking about. I witnessed this kid just boot the ball in the face. Now, listen, have I done things as a young kid that I'm not proud of? 16 years old? I'm sure we have it. We've all done it. But what happened after is the kid that got hit in the face was going into the facility to get looked at, and all of the teammates were just laughing and sitting around and just hysterically laughing at this kid like it was funny. Now, if I'm guessing, was the kid one of the better players on the team? I would bet not. Is he a captain? I would bet not because I don't think the players would have done that. I know they say sometimes kids are different today than they were back in the day, but this was. It was awful to me. I'm, like, lost for words. And nobody went over to actually. The kid that hit him, he was laughing too, but he put his hand on his shoulder and said, are you okay? And it was just, everyone's on the ground laughing, every player. Nobody escorts this young athlete into the facility to have their trainer or somebody look at it. And they were still the little team building exercise. Things stopped. Everything just stopped. It stopped in its tracks. And now I don't know how you win championships like that. Maybe I'm used to something different again. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls, and immaturity is out there. But I would love to see somebody step up because they're still not. I mean, when you're 17. These kids, I believe, were 17 to 20 years old. I found that out after I happen to ask somebody and dive into it a little bit. You know, usually not nosy, but this time I was very curious to see what happened. But it just put a damper into the little event that I was doing, the little charity thing and everything else. The whole day. I was upset. I even went home and I was talking to my girlfriend. I said, boy, I'm really disturbed. She goes, did you do anything about it? I said, there's really nothing for me to do. It wasn't my place. But I'm just used to something different. I'm used to having teammates come up and be there and love you as a teammate. I'm used to being around people that care and does it matter? As team that was in the sport, without even mentioning the sport, they might even win a championship. I don't know. It's not, it's not the point, but I'm just wondering, maybe I'm off base. I want to see how other people feel about this. You could reach out to me, you know, shoot me a line, you know, message me and hartman academy, no.com and just say, hey, I listen to your podcast. I don't believe a word in what you're saying. Okay, I respect that. Kids will be kids, boys will be boys. But there has to be some sort of leadership. We have to teach our young athletes that everything's just a game. I know in hockey this because it's the sport I was involved when I also used to work with the top 14 year olds in the country. Personally, I never wanted to be a coach at a high level. I wanted to raise my kids. I had some offers to work at a very high level. It didn't excite me and then could have moved up maybe. But the point is, I would rather have raised my kids. And my dream was to be an athlete and not to coach the sport. And I worked with the US 14 select programs. And the first thing that we would do is we would teach our players to. I want to know what kind of people they are. I would tell them the first thing when we get there. We sat down and I said, well, a lot of you have aspirations. You're some of the top hockey players in the country. You're the top 14 players that were here in Rochester, New York, back now I think it's in Buffalo. And we had the Yale coaches and Michigan coaches and Brian Trachier, former NHL Stanley cup champ. We had six of us and Mo Mantha, who, who I played with at Winnipeg. And we were there to help these players. And the first thing I told everybody, everyone's gonna play equally. It's great. It is a tournament and if we win, great. But I expect everybody to work hard. And it's really on you. I mean, you have one of the Olympic coaches up in the stands watching you. So if that doesn't motivate you, nothing will. But I want to know who you are as people, young people. And the first thing that I brought up was one of the first things I said to the kids that, you know, in college, the first thing they're going to ask is what? And I had them raise their hand, how many goals I scored? I'm going to say no. The first thing they ask is, what kind of a kid is he? What kind of a kid is he going to bring to the, to the institution, the college where he's going at the time. What kind of a kid? What kind of a kid is he? Is he a good kid? Is he going to cause problems? Is he going to steal? Has he had any trouble? The next thing is, what kind of grades does he have? Because you have to have good grades. Especially nowadays, the old days, you got a 2.0 and you can get into Michigan State and play hockey. Things have changed. But things have changed a lot. So the next thing is you have to have good grades. And the third thing is, can he play or she? So that's what they do. And I remember we had a team building exercise and I liked. This was my thing that I love to do. I took my team to Applebee's and I hear, oh, I could see people's faces now. Applebee's, really? But that's, you know, they're 14 years old. We're in Rochester, New York. We didn't have a lot of choices that could seat all of us. And we went to Applebee's and I brought my friend Joe Turso with me. And Joe is a very smart individual. I brought him with me every year. I was allowed to BRINGGING One coach, two coaches. I brought Colin Muldoon, some of you may know him, played minor league hockey and has been a USA development coach. Colin lives in Raleigh, brought him. He was amazing as well. Unbelievable. We had so much fun together working with these kids. We would be love coaching young players together. We had such a good time. And Joe Turso, who went to Harvard and Wharton, I told him, listen, Joe, I really want you to look after these kids. Some of them may sneak out, might have one or two at night. We just have to really keep an eye on them. And Joe took a good eye, had a good eye on them, and it was a lot of fun. So we went for this dinner and the first thing I would ask the players is everybody to stand up. And I asked one kid to stand up. And you're supposed to stand up. And I wanted to know a little bit about you. So one player stands up and says, my name is this fictitious name. My name is Steve Smith. I play for Compuare aaa. I go, nope, that's not what I want. I want to know who you are.

You.

I don't care about the hockey. I don't care where you play or where you played or how many goals you have or, you know, what kind of a goalie are you? I want to know what kind of a person you are. Stand up and tell me who you are. And we finally did. We had a Lot of fun with it. We went around the table and everybody said, you know who we are and the one thing we look for is character. So I'm sure maybe, maybe not. If you were on this team and you actually switching topics here, if you're on this team, I'm talking about what I witnessed and you're listening to this and you know what I'm talking about. I guess the thing to do is right now there's nothing, you can't take it back, but do something about it. Be a good team player, be a good person. Boy, that's one thing I learned as a young athlete. Not really in junior hockey, I'm gonna say, but God, when I got to the NHL, it was family. And no one even whether it was any team I played on, I could rattle six, I could, I don't know, a hundred guys names off. I just called Dean Kennedy actually. And Dean was a player who I admired. I played in Buffalo with him, ended up going to Winnipeg in a trade with him. And he was this like farmer, like six foot, six foot three, strong, lean player. He had a cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans on off days and cowboy boots and a pickup truck and was making really good money at the time and was a high draft pick, I think to the God, he played between New York and la and then he played in Buffalo back to then we went to Winnipeg and he played in Edmonton. But he told me, I said one thing he does is he shared this with me. So if you don't want to hear it from me, you young athletes, you could hear it from a guy like Dean. We just talked on the phone the other day and his whole thing was he says, you know, Mike, I'm going to play 10 years in the NHL and then I'm going back to Alberta and I'm going to farm like. Okay, Dino, I said. And I brought that up to him the other day. We talked for a while on the phone and we didn't even really talk about hockey. We talked about life. And all he cared about was how am I doing, how's the family? And that's what it takes to be a good team person, not just a fake team person. And you're on the bench. Hey, let's go guys. And good shift, good hit. I want to know what kind of person you are in life. And maybe I was fortunate enough to be around the Dean Kennedys and the Mike Folignos and the Larry Playfairs and the Mark Napiers and the Messi's. I mean, I could mention a hundred names of true leaders. Adam Graves. I can't forget him. I spend a lot of time with him now in New York and just good people that have your back that look out for you. So if you really want to be that athlete or even into your corporate America life and really want to care for somebody and be a champion, I've listed and mentioned a bunch of champions just recently. All of these players, they're just not champions because they want a championship, but they're a champion in life. So be a champion of life. Any of you young kids, if you were that player that kicked that ball in the kid's face, okay, it's a mistake. Do something to make it up. It's never too late to. Maybe you did, maybe you apologize, maybe you felt terrible about it. I don't know. But again, this is not a written out podcast. This is just me talking from my heart because I was bothered and then I told somebody about it. They said, why don't you instead of one of Your Q&As, why don't you Share with share the story because that's what your podcast is about. So I hope that you have followed me on this show and I really wanted to get this out. Love to help you in any way. Everybody have a fantastic week and looking forward. We have a bunch more questions going into next week and if I could help you in any way, please reach out to Hartman Academy. Love to help you and wish you all the best.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mike Hartman Show. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate that effort. We'll catch you in the next episode of the Mike Hartman Show. Sam.