Hello everyone, as is mentioned in my about page, my name is Cooper Godin, I’m a 22 year old from Barrie, Ontario with a passion for hockey.
Since the age of 7 I’ve been an avid hockey fan. I’ve had the privilege of growing up going to many local junior hockey games, as well as NHL games and International hockey events. There have been many times in my life where I have felt pretty lucky and thankful for the game of hockey. It has brought many highs and many lows. From being in the Bell Centre seeing my favorite team clinch a playoff spot, to watching my hometown Barrie Colts lose an opportunity to win the 2013 OHL Finals on home ice. I have also had the chance to meet some of the games biggest and brightest stars both past and present including Connor Mcdavid, Wayne Gretzky, Alexander Ovechkin and many more. Okay, that enough bragging from me, here’s why I want to do a blog/website talking about hockey, my opinions, etc.
Growing up, I wasn’t the biggest fan of writing essays until I got to college. In 2016, I decided to enroll in the Sport Administration program at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario. I got to meet some incredible people, and had some great professors. in November 2016, just a couple months into our first semester of our first year, my program got the opportunity of a lifetime, we attended the Primetime Sports and Entertainment conference in Toronto, Ontario. One of the most prestigious sports conferences in North America. We sat through 2 days of lectures on different topics in the sporting world, and at the end of each day we were able to attend networking workshops, in which were an awesome opportunity to meet some of the leading people in the sports industry. Being my first time at that big of an event, with big names, I was pretty shy and didn’t talk to a whole lot of people, I talked with a scout from the QMJHL (not sure from which team), as well as Mike Oke, the general manager of the Peterborough Petes. Both conversations were relatively short as we only had maybe 30 minutes to network in a conference with maybe 300/400 people. I remember the second night on the bus ride back home I had some regrets on who I wanted to talk to, but didn’t get the chance to, but then I thought to myself how great the conference was and that I had chosen the right profession to enter into, with ambitions to return to that conference one day.
Fast forward to now, 2020, I currently don’t have a job in my field, or in general, and I thought now was the perfect time to start getting serious about wanting to work in an industry that I have so much passion for. I’m not too sure what I would attribute to me not having a job in my field, I have sent out emails/resumes to teams and organizations, and even had an interview with an OHL team which I thought went well, but I guess it didn’t. I started wondering if maybe I didn’t choose the right field for myself, or maybe that i chose the wrong school and wasn’t prepared enough to enter the sports industry, but at the end of the day, I know what I want to do, and that is to be working within the sports industry, I want to be a hockey scout, and I’m not planning on stopping until I am a hockey scout.
On here I plan on talking about a wide range of topics, I’ll have a mix of opinion pieces, scouting reports, top 10’s and more! I hope that if you’ve stuck around this long you’re interested in reading what I have to say on many things going on in the hockey world. Until my next post, thanks for reading, and thanks for the support!
-Cooper