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My opening line to my players and their parents at the first practice is, “who wants to play in the NHL?” a few hands go up. Then I tell them the reality. “It takes 3 hours a day, 360 days a year for 15 years. That’s the minimum it will take for you to even think about whether you can make the NHL. “

I have been coaching ice hockey for 20 years. You know if a kid is good enough. Problem is the parents will never listen. They will pay the 7-10 grand a season for the kid to wear a AAA team jacket even though he may see little game time. I tell the parent to invest that money for the kids college and let him play Tier 2 and have a good time. Maybe they will play junior and get another 4 years after that in college. Parents don’t care.

In addition, like most sports, you get the camps that promise kids that they will get on the radar of college coaches. I have had parents yell at me because I wouldn’t write the recommendation letter for their introduction. I would tell the parent, your kid is playing house rec hockey and cannot skate backwards. They don’t care. The one time I wrote the letter for a parent, it was because I was forced to by the association. I wrote the letter , the parents paid the fee, took their kid to Vegas for the camp and the kid lasted all of one drill before they thanked him and sent him packing.

For the ones who are good enough, the coaches know they exist and will help where they could. That’s why there are scholarships. The cost of hockey in the long term is the same as going to college. It costs a lot of money. The cream always rises to the top.

Problem is the parents will never listen.

Parents have their own self-image, self-worth, and ego projected onto their children (although some also have delusions of NHL wealth in there, too). Telling them to demote their child is like telling them to have smaller dreams... and these are dreams they get to make someone else do the work for, and they still get to sanctimoniously believe that they're doing it for their beloved child's best interests.

No amount of reason will wake them up, because the entire motivation is emotional.

The sport doesn't matter. The difference between a really good amateur and the mediocre pro is stark.

I learned that when I took up bowling. During summers in college, I had the time to practice 150+ games a week, and I got pretty good at it. Had I not had an academic scholarship that put me in the army for 4 years, I likely would've kept pursuing it. The Bay Area had monthly semipro tournaments that I would have eventually had a modicum of success. But I never really dwelt on it.

As the years progressed, I would say that, for several years, I was in the top 2% of bowlers in El Paso, and had won city and state singles championships.

The absolute best of local bowlers (former pros themselves) would compete against the pro bowlers when they came to town, and would be lucky to cash.

I learned to be happy with bowling 1-2 nights per week, averaging over 200 every year.

I understand your problem. I used to coach grade school basketball and had friends who had kids who played. Their were many parents who vastly overestimated the ability of their kids. (In fact, I was surprised when talking to a parent whose kid did have tremendous ability, his kid eventually made first team all-state and got a major college scholarship, when he pooh-poohed his son's ability.)

Reading comments from coaches who ran summer camps featuring the nation's best players was similar. Many parents from small towns or non-competitive areas couldn't understand why their big fish in a small pond son was having trouble playing against kids from the super competitive schools. And worst of all I could not bring myself to tell one of my best friends that he was full of s... concerning the ability of his only boy. He thought his average ability son was a superstar. He wasn't. Fortunately, I never had to coach his kid. It would probably have ended our friendship.