Played in NAHL and USHL...Had multiple D1 offers. Last year junior I NEEDED my self medication routine pills/booze/etc. Injuries needed to be numbed, was not gonna miss a game. Heck I saw a ton of PEDs in my time playing as well. Time played late 90's. It was the Culture back then. Still had two years of eligibility left in Juniors and had a nice offer from D1 MN State. Walked away from it all in the offseason...got clean and got injuries properly taken care of.
There are some pretty bad coaches throughout junior hockey. One team went as far as voting out their head coach because he constantly took things too far and the players had enough and were threatening to boycott the team if the owner didn't make some changes.
I'm glad the players had the strength to stand up for themselves, sometimes these things get out of hand and no one says anything out of fear for punishment.
Not to mention terrible owners. We had one who used the games as a drinking party and would use the intermissions to go in and lambast the players in the locker room. His wife got plastered the next year and fired the coach. They also reckon nobody knows about this. Know that this particular team didn't get good until they were purchased by another person. Don't think this does not get around and the team becomes radioactive. It was their biggest impediment to recruitment. Kids talk. Have also seen the owner of a defunct USHL team give fans the finger in the stands after their team was eliminated. Pure class.
I made it as high as the nahl In America. I think there was a ton of abuse I didn’t recognize as abusive behavior. But I dealt with a lot of racism and harassment as a black player. Loads of n words being thrown out. Seen women sexually harassed. Junior was a disgusting display of humanity and soured me on the game. I was pretty decent and good enough to make the ushl central scouting stuff and make an nahl roster after some ushl camps but, going through abusive behavior really hurt my confidence. I was a bubble Guy for division one and I’m willing to accept my failures as a player but 40% of it is down to hockeys awful Culture. Hope it’s better now this was 2011-12
And I had good friends who benefited from this and became great players in NCAA. I also had friends who were traded because they did not play along with this system.
I went to the ushl combine in 2010 and the lancers main camp and every single coach was awful, needlessly mean, aggressive etc. It wasn’t the reason I didn’t make the team but really shows you how much they’re in it for their next gig.
