Youth hockey is one of the most rewarding experiences I had as a child. It teaches resilience, teamwork, and discipline. It creates lifelong friendships. But it’s also a system that, from a very early age, decides who gets the keys to long-term development and who gets left behind.
At just six years old, kids are split into “elite” tracks and “town” programs. The difference is staggering. Elite programs get the best ice time, access to high level coaches, and a culture built on competition and improvement. Town programs often rely on volunteer parents, some great, some not so great, but without the structure or resources that kids at the same age on elite teams enjoy.
What happens is predictable. The kids who already had a small edge at age six snowball their advantage. They get better coaching, better development, and more opportunities. Meanwhile, other kids who might have had the same or even greater long-term potential are left playing catch-up. Sometimes they do catch up… but more often, they never do.
The Problem With Video Analysis Today
Video analysis is one of the clearest examples of this divide. At the elite level, teams use video constantly. Players watch their shifts, review mistakes, and learn from good habits. Coaches use video as a tool for teaching concepts like forechecking systems or defensive positioning. It’s one of the most powerful ways to accelerate development.
But video analysis is expensive. It takes hours to rewatch games, clip shifts, and create review sessions. The tools that do exist are built for pros and colleges. They’re priced accordingly and assume you have staff dedicated to breaking down games. Most youth programs, especially at the town level, simply can’t afford it.
The result? Once again, only the elite kids get this advantage.
Parents Want to Help, But Can’t
There’s another layer to this problem. Parents want to support their kids, but often they don’t know how. On the ride home, they give advice, sometimes even the right advice, but it can be counterproductive.
Why? Because coaching is about timing and focus. If the team is working on being an aggressive F1 forechecker, and a parent tells their child to hang back high to be more defensive, they’re not wrong in a vacuum, but they may be undermining what the coach is actually trying to teach in that moment.
Parents need visibility into what their kids are working on and why. They need to see the clips, hear the context, and learn alongside their kids. That’s how they can actually help, instead of unintentionally holding their child back.
The Scout Elite Solution
This is why I built Scout Elite. To democratize video analysis and give every player, parent, and coach the tools that have historically only been available to the privileged few.
Here’s how it works:
- Mobile Game Tracking – During games, coaches or parents can log events in real-time such as shots, goals, faceoffs, penalties, turnovers in just a few taps. You get instant statistics that tell the story of the game as it unfolds.
- Automatic Video Clipping – Those live events link directly to your uploaded game video. Instead of spending hours rewatching, the app auto-clips every relevant moment. Coaches and analysts save time, parents get highlights, and players see exactly what they did.
- Shared Learning – Coaches can run live video sessions with parents and players together or curate sets of clips for players and families to review asynchronously. That means everyone is on the same page, reinforcing the right lessons at the right time.
- Affordable Access – For $12.99/month per analyst and $4.99/month per athlete, families can access the same level of video-powered learning that elite programs have, at a fraction of the cost. No hidden fees, no expensive team packages.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just about hockey. It’s about fairness. It’s about giving every kid, regardless of the patch on their jersey, the chance to learn from their mistakes, celebrate their progress, and grow as players and people.
It’s about parents being able to actually see what’s happening, understand it, and support their child’s development in a healthy, informed way.
And it’s about saving coaches and analysts time, so they can focus on teaching instead of cutting film for hours after the rink lights go out.
The Mission
At Scout Elite, we believe in leveling the playing field. Every kid deserves the chance to be coached with the same tools, the same insights, and the same opportunities, not just the ones who made the “right” team at six years old.
We’re not here to replace great coaching. We’re here to amplify it, make it accessible, and bridge the gap between the resources of the elite and the potential of every player.
Because talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn’t. That’s what we’re here to fix.