EPISODE 35 | Coach Jeremy — How to Hockey

beerleaguelive
Jun 4
5 min read

Three men with microphones in a hockey rink backdrop, with large text #35 HOW TO HOCKEY and COACH JEREMY.

🎧 Listen to Episode 35 or watch: https://www.beerleaguelive.com/LatestEpisodes

There's a reason Jeremy Rupke still talks about shoveling the pond for an hour before he could skate.

Not because it was romantic. Because it was his.

No coach. No drill. No schedule. Just a kid from Beaverton, Ontario who wanted to play badly enough to earn the ice himself. That's the thing about Coach Jeremy — the founder of How to Hockey, one of the most-watched hockey education brands in the world — he didn't come up through the system. He figured it out the hard way. And that's exactly why his content works.

He stopped by the Wish Cup on Day 2, still sweating from a roller hockey game that may or may not have involved Philip Forsberg on his line, and gave us one of the most honest conversations about the state of youth hockey we've had on this show.

👋 Meet the Guest

How Coach Jeremy and How to Hockey Changed Youth Hockey Development:

Jeremy Rupke is the founder and head coach behind How to Hockey — a hockey education platform with hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube and over 460,000 Instagram followers.

He grew up in Beaverton, Ontario — a small town, a few thousand people, and a frozen pond he had to shovel himself every winter. He never made the OHL. He wasn't fast-tracked to anything. What he did was keep learning, keep skating, and eventually turn that passion into a full-time mission: making hockey teachable for anyone, anywhere.

He is also, by his own admission, a beer league try-hard.

Follow him @CoachJeremyHTH and find everything at howtohockey.com

🏒 The Pond That Built the Platform

Jeremy grew up splitting time between his parents after they separated — which meant years where consistent hockey wasn't possible. By the time things settled down around grades 6 and 7, he was behind.

He didn't quit. He got to work.

Every day after school he'd hop off the bus, head to the pond, and shovel for an hour and a half. Then it'd be dark. So he'd shoot pucks, miss the net, can't find the puck. He'd do it all over again the next day.

"I never quit. Even in college I was like — I'm still going to play. I'm still going to get better. And that's what got me to understand how to teach it."

That self-directed grind is the entire philosophy behind How to Hockey. He built the content he wished had existed when he was that kid standing on a dark pond in Ontario.

🔢 The Number That Matters

There are 300,000+ hockey players subscribed to the How to Hockey YouTube channel.

That's just YouTube. The reach across Instagram, blog content, and video tutorials has made Jeremy one of the most influential hockey educators alive — and he never played a day of professional hockey.

That's the story. And that's the point.

🎯 Ice Time Is a Business. Free Play Is the Antidote.

The conversation that opened up at the Wish Cup hit close to home for Seth, Greg, and anyone who's watched youth hockey in Nashville.

Ice time is expensive. Practice time is regimented. Every drill has a predetermined outcome. The creativity — the moment a kid tries something weird and figures out it works — is getting squeezed out by structure, cost, and parental anxiety.

Jeremy sees the same thing in Canada.

"You can run a flow drill and the kids get good at the flow drill. But hockey is chaotic. You have to present problems and let them figure it out. Allow creativity. Allow mistakes."

His answer: pick-up hockey. Stick and puck. Roller hockey. Street hockey. Put a net in a parking lot and let kids play. It's not a full replacement for ice time, but it restores something that regimented practice strips away — organic problem-solving.

Nashville has one decent roller rink (Hendersonville — shoutout). We need more. More deck hockey surfaces. More unstructured opportunities to just play. Seth's been saying it. Jeremy's been saying it. The pond is gone — we have to build it back.

💡 What He Actually Teaches

Jeremy coaches simplicity. Not because the game is simple, but because the habits that make great players are simple — and the kids who do the simple things consistently are the ones who close the gap on kids who've been playing longer.

Wall ball. Every day. Fifteen minutes. Three times a week.

"A kid in 6th grade who comes in with some athletic ability, picks up the stick, loves it, and has it in his hands — he's going to pass half the kids who've been on the team for four years who don't do that."

What he watches for beyond stick skills: anticipation. The ability to read where the game is going, not where it is. That's game IQ, and it gets taught — but only if the kid is in situations where they have to use it. That means less scripted drill work, more small-area games with real pressure.

🧒 The Kids Who Make It (And What Their Parents Did)

Jeremy has talked to some of the best players in the world. He's had personal conversations with Nathan McKinnon, Connor McDavid's mom, and Connor Bedard's family. The common thread isn't elite coaching or the right program. It's obsession that came from the inside.

McKinnon dragged his dad to the rink — not the other way around. McDavid was once told by his own mom to take a day off. Twenty minutes later, he'd talked himself back into shooting pucks because he couldn't live with himself if he didn't.

Bedard told his parents he'd only go to Hawaii if he could bring his rollerblades.

"If you have a kid like that, you can't stop them. They're going to find a way. You can tame a lion — but you can't make one."

The parents who are laying into their kids on the car ride home, calling out every bad play in a house league game? They're not helping the process. According to Jeremy — and an NHL player he spoke to personally who had his own breaking point moment watching his son's eyes fill up — they're usually hurting it.

Let the kid tell you what they want. They will, without words, if you pay attention.

🏆 The Wish Cup, The Community & Alec George

Day 2 of the Wish Cup. The outdoor rink in Hendersonville. Roller hockey in the heat. Former NHLers skating around like it's 1998 and still somehow making you feel like you've got no business being on the same surface.

But the moment that hit hardest wasn't the hockey.

Brad George joined us to give an update on his son Alec — a Nashville youth hockey kid who suffered a catastrophic brain injury in a car accident in December 2024, was touch-and-go at Vanderbilt for six weeks, transferred to Shirley Ryan rehab in Chicago, and has been fighting back ever since.

He's walking now. He's tracking with his eyes. He has a come-home date: June 30th.

"He's met every goal they set for him — and beat them."

Brad talked about the flood of support from the Centennial hockey family. The teammates who came to the hospital. The parents who showed up. The Chicago Blackhawks who visited his room, sent the whole team to sign a jersey, and gave the family suite tickets. He talked about sitting in a Milwaukee airport, unable to fly home, rocking back and forth, trying not to lose it.

He talked about being a fixer — a dad who solves problems — and having nothing to fix.

This is what the hockey community is. Small town in the best possible way. Whatever Alec's family needs, they shouldn't have to ask twice. Keep them in your corner.