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The second season of the Breakaway Podcast has officially wrapped up. Host Dan Pollard spoke to some of the leaders and innovators in minor hockey over the 30 episodes about skill building, community, coaching, tryouts and many other important topics.

From retired NHLer Rob Pearson to TSN and Sportsnets personalities to OHL coaches Stan Butler and Brendan Taylor, every week held new discussions on Breakaway. One of the first podcasts solely related to minor hockey, Breakaway continues to be a game-changer in the hockey world.

Here are some of our favourites from the past season.

Playing Every Position – Wayne Parro (Coaching Association of Canada)

“If you’re stuck in one position through you’re whole minor hockey career, you don’t get to see the ice from different perspectives. You learn to anticipate partly based on your experience. Being put in different positions as a hockey player at young ages gives you a sense of what the ice looks like from different angles.”

Shrinking the Playing Surface to Match the Age Group – Kevin Hamilton (OMHA)

“We’re going to scale down everything in the game for the young players. It’s not unlike other sports that we see. Players in tennis have a smaller net and a smaller, lighter racket. In baseball the base paths are shorter. Virtually every sport that we know has a modified, scaled version for young people. That’s the intent of it, to create an environment that’s more appropriate to a player’s size and age.”

Hockey Card Stories – Ken Reid (Sportsnet)

“They are little pieces of cardboard history for me. We grew up without the internet and if we wanted to know what a guy looked like, chances are we could only know through the hockey card and we only knew the stats from the back of the hockey card.”

Shortening the Bench – Richard Monette (Active for Life)

“Most kids don’t play just to win. Most kids try to win but it’s not really what matters the most to them. When you look at surveys and all kinds of studies and you ask kids why do they play, they always say the same thing: they play to have fun and get better. Some studies actually conclude that most kids would rather play on a losing team than sit on a winning team.”

Evolving Role of Defencemen – Bob Caldwell (Hockey Manitoba)

“With a young defenceman, the important thing to me is just getting to the puck quick, making a decision of what you’re going to do before you touch the puck and then executing quickly.”

When Dad is Coach – Rob Pearson (Whitby Wildcats)

Coaching a team can be difficult. When your own kids are playing on the squad this tough task becomes even more challenging. While all parents get involved with coaching their kid’s team for all the right reasons, there are times when their hearts may get in the way of doing what’s best for the team as a whole, or even doing what’s best for their child.