BEHIND THE PLAY #77

Canadian hockey fans are gutted that we lost the Olympic gold medal game to the USA on the weekend. The bigger concern though should be that we almost lost to the Finland and Slovakia in the quarters and semis. There’s lesson in this for both hockey and soccer.

Consider these three things

According to Statistics Canada, the Median Total Income for families in 2023 was $105,370. If we take off 20% for taxes that’s $84,296.

The Canadian Sport School Hockey League (CSSHL) claims that close to 40% of all NHL draft picks come from programs in their league. Note though that “While roughly 60%–70% of first-round picks become regular NHLers, the odds drop significantly after the first two rounds, with over 50% of total drafted players never playing a single game.” This is from Dobber Prospects website.

Academy hockey programs range quite a bit in cost, especially if you need to pay for boarding at the school. Most fall between $15,000 to $30,000 per year without boarding. Add another $15,000 to $20,000 for that if its needed. This generally does not include tournament play that involves getting on planes.

So despite a clear correlation between participating in an Academy hockey program and getting drafted, the percentage of Canadian players getting drafted into the NHL has been on a steady decline since the 60’s. That decline has slowed considerably since the turn of the century.

So why are other countries with 10-20% of the number of registered hockey players pushing us to the brink in international competitions? Our quarter final game in the Olympics was against the Czech Republic. It went to overtime after Canadian goalkeeper Jordan Binnington saved a breakaway with just over a minute left. The semi final was against Finland. Canada came from behind in the 3rd period and won it in the last 35 seconds.

Very exciting but keep in mind the difference in players numbers across the twelve countries that competed at the Olympics in ice hockey

Denmark, Latvia and Italy have a combined total of under 19,000 players. Adding that to the totals above for all the other countries who competed in the men’s Olympic hockey tournament aside from Canada and the USA, the total is 212,169.

Canada and the USA have 956,494 registered ice hockey players. That’s 82% of the total. Worth noting here that the USA also needed overtime to reach the finals beating Sweden 2-1 in the semi-finals and have a similar model to Canada for developing young players.

Even at the World Junior hockey championship, Canada has been fading. From 2005-2009, Canada won gold all five years. In the 17 competitions held since then they have won just another five.

Coincidentally, the CSSHL was formed in 2009.

The European countries catching us up in international hockey have very different approaches to youth development in the sport. Here’s a paper that the Finnish and Swedish Ice Hockey Federations published that showed ways to keep more young players engaged in the game.

Bottom line:

Putting the best resources into any program creates an expense. In Canada and the USA that expense, in both hockey and soccer, is born by families almost all the time. If you believe that there is a correlation between those who happen to have the financial means to pay up to $40,000 for four to five consecutive years for your child’s development and the inherent and intrinsic abilities of that child’s in that sport… go have a word with Alphonso Davies’ and Jonathan David’s parents.

Bringing this round to soccer…

The BC Soccer Premier League (BCSPL) is deemed to be the only ‘elite’ level league in the province. In Ontario the Ontario Player Development League (OPDL) is the same.

Last year Ontario proudly posted a story on their website that there were 12 Ontario players on the men’s national team roster selected for CONCACAF Nations League play.

They listed the players and the clubs in Ontario where they played. Strangely, perhaps even uncomfortably, only two of the twelve listed an OPDL club as where they had played their youth soccer.

Meanwhile BCSPL claims five women (Julia Grosso, Jordyn Huitema, Jeneva Hernandez-Gray, Emma Regan, Holly Ward) and two men (Joel Waterman and Isaac Boehmer) who played on BCSPL teams since the league’s inception have made their respective national teams. BCSPL’s first season was 2011. These are not great numbers for the premier league in the third largest province in the country.

Costs for BCSPL range from approximately $3000 to $5000 including travel and kit. OPDL fees are hard to find on club websites but fees seem to start at $5000.

Going back to the affordability metric based on average household post-tax income, soccer players who want to play at the highest level aren’t priced out as much as hockey players are but there is no doubt that many promising players are not able to play in BCSPL or OPDL unless clubs reduce or eliminate fees for them.

This of course has a knock on effect as the MLS teams do not come into play with their, ostensibly, free Academy programming until two years after BCSPL and OPDL start. This is a considerable hurdle as those MLS programs are what the best OPDL and BCSPL players aspire to and become, in turn, stepping stones to youth and full national teams.

So if the discussion is around how do we ensure that we have all the players who could potentially play at professional and/or national team levels stay in the game, cost has definitely become a prohibitive factor in hockey for many families. For youth soccer, we are close to it being a concern and my concern as an Executive Director at a club with BCSPL teams (since 2020) is how do we keep and attract players to that program in an environment where parents are looking for and expecting excellent coaching, a competitive team, a history of placing players at higher levels of play and options to attend high profile international tournaments while still covering the costs of such programming at a price point that keeps it viable for as many families as possible. It’s not an easy riddle to solve.

Those of us who work in the game here repeatedly try to tell families that this is a sport for late-developers. Ten year old prodigies are really top of the heap when they hit 20 so it’s important that we engage and created player pathways that normalize ingress and egress points through those years. A German study confirmed that the players who ended up making professional and national football teams there were not the ones that were standouts when they were young. In fact the only correlation they could point to was players who had been playing at the higher and highest levels regionally when they were young who were then cut or released and then had to show the determination to get back to those higher levels. Resilience seemed to trump all but parental patience is becoming a rare commodity. Paying big bucks for many means they want a linear pathway to even higher levels of play.

We who have doing this a long time (25+ years for me now) know that to keep them playing you have to remove financial barriers, offer varying levels of play as the go through adolescent physical and mental phases and normalize the idea of moving both up and down these levels so they don’t quit. It’s a long term balancing act. Some buy into it, some don’t.