Canada: boys dropped from junior hockey team, parents sue

By reader acclaim: “Two sets of parents are suing the Greater Toronto Hockey League, one of its clubs and four coaches for $25,000 each because their sons were cut by the Avalanche Minor Sports Club midget junior A team during tryouts in April.” One father claims the defendants’ conduct “destroyed the dignity” of his son and caused him to suffer “irreparable psychological damage.” [Toronto Star]

11 Comments

  • If being cut from a hockey team “destroyed their dignity,” the real world is going to be a real kick in the pants for these two guys.

  • This is more of the same – parents teaching children to blame others and to not accept disappointments and consequences that life brings. Parents whom bring lawsuits of this type are helping to raise a generation of entitlement.

  • It’s another symptom of this stupid “Competition is bad. Everybody’s a winner. Everybody deserves recognition” bullcrap that’s been pushed on us since the late seventies.

    I’m sorry…if you don’t make the cut, you don’t play. There’s a selective process and these precious snowflakes need to learn it. Sometimes the best you can give isn’t enough, and that’s ok.

    I find it sad, these are the kids who come to an interview with me for a junior office position and demand 50K-70K a year starting salary with zero experience. They tend to be arrogant and very entitled.

    Even sadder, these are the same kind of parents who call me to irately ask why I didn’t hire their spawn when I interviewed them.

    I weep because these people are quickly climbing from the odd case to a significant portion of the interviews I deal with when I want to fill a position.

  • Well, if being cut from the team didn’t actually ‘destroy their dignity’ I should think this suit will go a long way toward that end.

    I’m sure young Christopher Valela, now reported as the boy who cries ‘No Mommy, I’ll never play again.’, will have fun in senior high.

  • I played several sports growing up and played at a high level in three of them. I was cut a couple of times from teams but never dreamed of running to mommy and daddy crying about how unfair it was; my reaction was I needed to get better. Not everyone can be Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi. Maybe these dumbass parents need to understand their kids were not good enough to make the team. GET OUT YOUR HELICOPTER, LET YOUR KIDS GROW UP AND GET OVER IT!

  • As Americans, maybe we just don’t understand the significance of Hockey to a Canadian kid?

  • BTW: MY dignity was completely destroyed after years of being picked last for basketball, and being put out in right field during baseball, and moved to left field when a lefty got to bat.

    But I managed anyway.

    (At my 30th high school reunion, after sharing some beers with one of our class jocks, I asked him “Are you sorry that you would never pick me to be on your side for basketball?”

    “NO, Robert”, he replied. “The only thing you’re good at dribbling is that beer out of your mouth.”)

  • The direct actions have caused irreparable psychological damage to Daniel Longo’s self esteem as an impressionable teenager and demoralized Daniel was probably from discovering their parents are a$$hats.

  • Worse, those same coaches have purportedly taught many of their forwards how to shoot the puck more accurately, thereby demoralizing and causing irreparable harm to the self-esteem of opposing goaltenders.

    “How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?”
    — NHL Hall Of Fame Goaltender, Jacques Plante

  • Hockey is more important here in Canada than in the US, but everybody knows that players are cut or don’t make it through tryouts. Either these parents are crazy or the new article doesn’t describe the suit accurately and they are actually complaining about perceived unfairness in the selection process. (The article mentions technical claims, but not any evidence of personal animus or discrimination.) Anyone seen the complaint?

  • This should also serve as a warning to all the girls in the future who decide to turn down romantic propositions from either of these two entitled boys.

    You will be sued for irreparable psychological damage and destroying their dignity.