[Northendzone]

it is very frustrating during evaluations to watch the "rico fata" types move up and sometimes the kids who have more general hockey IQ move down because they don't look flashy when skating.

I recall evaluating players one year when our association played half ice games and at the 10 minute mark fi the first game I got chatting with one of the other evaluators and we quickly compared notes and the guy he had at the bottom of his list was a guy I had closer to the top of my list - but otherwise we were pretty similar for the remaining guys we were watching. I defended my postion by noting I thought the guy in question was going tot eh right spot, just nobody was getting him the puck so it might appear eh was doing mothering. After the last 10 minutes he told me he changed his mind of the guy as he saw what I was seeing.

I should note that there are likely many times where I had the worst guy at the top of my chart - but this story is more an example of how different folks see the game differently and if enough of them see a guy as a D player rather than a C player then unfortunately he gets moved down.

I sometime wish I could go into the evaluation/tryout process knowing that my son was one of the top or bottom players so I would not stress as much about where he ultimately lands because he is clearly at one extreme