How to Prepare Your Kid for Hockey Tryouts: A BC Parent's Guide

Tryout season is the most stressful stretch of the hockey calendar — for parents. The kids are usually fine. Whether it's rep tryouts in September, HPL or spring team tryouts, or a summer prep camp, the questions are the same: What are evaluators actually looking for? How do we prepare without burning our kid out? And what do we say in the car afterward?

Here's an honest guide, from a hockey parent who's been through the cycle more than once.

What evaluators actually look for

Parents tend to assume tryouts are about goals. They're mostly not. At a typical evaluation, coaches are watching for:

Skating, first and always. Speed matters, but so do edges, stops in both directions, backward crossovers, and how a player recovers after losing balance. Skating is the single most weighted skill at almost every tryout, at every age. A kid who skates well but misses the net gets picked over a kid who scores in warmup but can't pivot.

Compete level. Do they battle for loose pucks? Do they backcheck without being told? Evaluators can teach systems; they can't easily teach a motor. A visible second effort gets noticed more than a highlight-reel deke.

Hockey sense. Where do they go without the puck? Do they support their teammates, find open ice, make the simple pass under pressure? This is harder to see in one skate, which is why many programs run multiple tryout sessions — and why kids who "play the right way" often surprise parents by making teams over flashier players.

Coachability. Do they listen during instructions? Line up quickly? Try the drill the way it was explained? Coaches are choosing who they'll spend a whole season with.

What they're mostly NOT counting: goals in scrimmage, wins in drills, or who has the newest gear.

The weeks before: how to actually prepare

Get on the ice, but keep it fun. Stick-and-pucks, spring skates, or a few skills sessions in the weeks leading up beat one exhausting bootcamp the weekend before. You're aiming for sharp, not tired.

Prioritize skating touch-ups. If you do any focused prep, make it skating — edges, stops, tight turns. It's the most evaluated skill and the one that fades fastest during time off.

Small-area games and battle drills mirror what tryouts actually run. Most evaluations are heavy on 1-on-1s, 2-on-2s, and small-area scrimmage, because those reveal compete and sense quickly.

Do a light hockey IQ tune-up. Talking through situations — "where do you go when your D has the puck behind the net?" — costs nothing and sharpens the decision-making evaluators notice. Even 5 minutes of scenario questions in the car builds the habit of thinking the game.

Sleep and food the day before matter more than one extra skate. A rested kid skates like themselves. A tired kid doesn't, and tryouts are usually early.

What to say in the car (before and after)

This is the part parents get wrong most, me included.

Before: keep it boring. "Have fun, work hard, battle for pucks." That's it. A kid carrying their parent's anxiety onto the ice skates tight.

After: ask one question — "did you have fun?" — and then let them lead. Resist the play-by-play breakdown. If they made mistakes, they know. If they played great, they know that too.

If they get cut: it stings, and it's allowed to sting. But the honest truth of youth hockey is that tryout results at young ages predict very little. Late developers pass early stars constantly — evaluators themselves will tell you this. The kids who make it long-term are almost never the ones who made every team at 9; they're the ones who kept developing and kept loving it. One tryout is a snapshot, not a verdict.

The longer game: development beats tryout prep

Here's the thing seasoned hockey parents eventually learn: you can't cram for a tryout. Two weeks of prep polishes what's there; it doesn't build it. The players who walk into tryouts confident are the ones who developed steadily all year — skating work, skills sessions, game film, and reps.

That's also the honest answer to tryout anxiety: if your player has been developing consistently, the tryout takes care of itself. If the tryout feels like a make-or-break event, the fix isn't a harder tryout camp — it's a better development plan for the year after.

Track the development, not the tryout results. Is your kid a better skater than six months ago? Reading the game better? More confident with the puck? Those trends are what actually predict where a player ends up — and they're visible long before any evaluator sees them.

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