Former University of Minnesota Football Coach Tim Brewster had a saying, "are you hungry or are you starving?" In just about every hockey rink you will find parents talking. They talk about their kids, they talk about other kids, the coaches and yes, they talk about other parents.  The line we hear most often is, "that guy is Crazy." Recently, we received this letter from a hockey dad who summed up the question, are you Crazy or are you Psycho? Beyond the headline, this writer's content is pretty good, quite the opposite of Coach Brew's tenure in Dinkytown.

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We hear this all the time…Hockey parents are crazy right?  Rather than deny it, we need to simply say, “absolutely we are…and I’m damn proud of it!”  But are we Psycho? Great question. Well in order to decide who is crazy and who is psycho let's break down the definition of both words.

Webster defines Crazy as “being out of the ordinary” or “full of cracks or flaws.” Now that doesn’t sound too bad does it?

Yet Webster defines Psycho as “a person who is mentally ill, violent or dangerous.” 

Personally I think all of us hockey parents are a little crazy. After all we spend 4,5,6 nights in a cold arena. We shout instructions to our kids out on the ice…as if they can hear us. We eat concession stand hot dogs and pretend they are just as good as a steak at Manny’s.  But generally speaking crazy is not a bad thing. 

So where is that fine line when crazy becomes psycho? Is it when you start hoping the others kids on the team don’t do well so your kid can get more ice time?  Maybe it’s when you decide it’s okay to spend 20-30% of your disposable income on hockey thinking it will “someday” pay off.  Or maybe it’s when you check YHH more than 30 times a day hoping they finally mention your kid by name. Editor's Note: We think this is okay.

The more you are around hockey, the more crazy behavior you start to see. Some border on psycho. We all get a good laugh when a dad gets booted out of a hockey game. We all whisper to the other dads about how much this parent spends per year on hockey. All at the same time we keep quiet on what camps and private lessons our kid is doing, just so the other parents don’t find out and try to copy us. So crazy? Or psycho? In general, it’s all probably harmless if it ends there but so often it doesn’t.  

There was a Minnesota businessman who a few years back was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme and was sentenced to years in prison. My guess is when he first went into business he started out with good intentions. Maybe he wanted to be rich…maybe he liked what he did, maybe he just wanted to provide a good life for his family. But somewhere along the way, things went sideways. Was it to keep up with the Joneses? Or was it simply the pressure to succeed? Was he too proud to admit failure?  Whatever the reasons were, as time went on, things spiraled out of control until there was no easy fix.

I’m pretty sure there are many people out there that would say in this case, crazy became psycho. Hockey can do the same thing to some very good people. They start out with good intentions, but the more time they invest, the more money they invest, the more some parents creep up to that line between being crazy about the sport to being psycho about their kid being the best. So they invest more time and more money thinking it will solve everything. Sadly, it rarely ever works out.

So is there a fix? Aside from weekly visits to a local therapist, there is no pill that can fix this problem and last I checked, shock therapy was still not covered by Obamacare. One parent said it best, “I’d rather my son become a great man and an okay hockey player than a great hockey player that is an okay man.” I think that is some great advice and should be part of the daily prayer at all hockey schools, camps and pre-game meals. So remember this. It’s okay to be a little crazy and it’s really okay if you check YHH website 29 times a day. But when you go to the site for that 30th time, all bets our off my friend. All bets are off.