Development Philosophy

This is an excellent question and we will defer to our owner, for his perspective.

"My son started hockey quite late around 8 and it wasn't until he was 10 or 11 when he really wanted to work on his game. Up until then he was always on the Town "C" or "B" team with dad coaches (including myself) who were doing the best they could. I met a Russian father and son duo over in Somerville who had a program that would accelerate my son's development. The program was called "Ten Steps" and within 2-3 years at age 14, my son shot up to the "A" level of town and was playing on a good club team. He worked on his skills over and over and while his club team was not Tier 1 going all over the country, he was getting games and getting experience so he would make his HS team. He was able to make his HS team as a freshman and while he didn't always play a lot, made Varsity by sophomore, but still playing games at JV until he was a junior, but by his Senior year ended up having an enjoyable career and is now playing for fun at school at UMass-Amherst and on track to get his business degree in 2023. I remember that time and how much I enjoyed seeing him just play even though I was stressed about whether he was on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th lines. I worried less as he got older. In hindsight, it was all the memories of going to those rinks in the car with him, watching him work his tail off to even be able to play and I can see how that work ethic play out in his school work and the new business he just founded. I am so proud of him!"

"I have another story about my daughter. She started young and was a good skater at a very young age and in the learn to skate and intermediate skating class with mostly boys. She wanted to play hockey but the coaches would never pick her to go over to the Learn to Play even though she wanted to. She started seeing the boys being pulled out ahead of her to go to Learn to Play and she was a much better skater than them. I remember her after skating crying one day that she wasn't being given an opportunity and she immediately stopped wanting to play hockey after that and it's something she's angry about to this day.

I learned that I don't ever want a child not to be given and opportunity which is why we focus on helping ALL players get better. No-one should be left behind. Many competitive clubs take the best kids. You go to a tryout, pay the money and what you don't know is the roster is already filled so they cut you or put you in something, like my daughter experienced that doesn't make sense for what they need. At the Imperials we make room for everybody because we are inclusive and it doesn't matter what club you play for in any league, because at the end of the day, all roads end at the beer league and we want kids not to be excluded because they are "cut" or told they are not good enough when they are at such a young age. We place kids on our teams at their level where they belong and we discuss it with each family, but everyone can have a home here. Once an Imperial, always an Imperials. We have some players who have been with us since 2019 and finished played in our club their entire Midget career. That makes us so proud."

As I noted above with my son, 95% of all hockey players will follow a similar journey as he did, so our philosophy is to help a player develop to the highest level they seek to play. As you can see from our Advancements and Alumni page, some of our 5% have done very well but we are truly proud of our 95% who go to school every day, work hard, get good grades and have an enjoyable HS playing experience so at the end, they are able to make a choice whether to keep on playing or say, 'I really enjoyed playing hockey as a kid and I can't wait to teach mine.' We want parents to say the Boston Imperials treated us with fairness and respect and took care of our child when everyone else said he wasn't good enough.

That is our philosophy. We focus on preparing your player for the big picture. There are many other clubs out there who are very good and have been around alot longer, but we know who we are, what we stand for and we are proud of it. We hope you try us out."