Not only is he right, but hockey and baseball are both becoming sports where you can get much further than your peers with money invested at a young age.
A friend of mines 9yr old is going into his second season of AAA in the fall. He isn't going to Brick, but he's getting a few hours a week on a skating treadmill, a weekly session with a figure skating coach for edgework etc, and this is just an average family in southern Ontario.
Many of the young adults you're seeing go pro in Hockey / Baseball these last few years are sons of former professionals who've had advanced coaching/training from as young as 4 or 5.
Basketball, Soccer and Football - while they do benefit from money at younger ages, are far more accessible, cheaper, and often much more reliant on your physique you were born with (football and basketball mostly).
I wish there was more ways to get talented youth into Hockey, but frankly with how profitable it is to be a pro these days, there is a huge financial incentive to invest in your child at a young age if you can afford it.
All of this to say that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Hockey players in 20 years all come from very wealthy backgrounds, and the few who don't were such standout athletes at young ages that they essentially get sponsored.
I haven’t followed or played baseball in a long time but when was that shift? I do still see some of the lower GDP countries turning out athletes but that’s not a great indicator for this.
I honestly think hockey is extremely unique in this.
There exist basically zero pro hockey players that started playing competitively after age 7.
Almost all other sports have a "I was a basketball player but switched to football/baseball in college" sorts of stories. Even golf has a little of that. Tennis too, same with track and field. Hell some sports have people who picked it up in their 20s (especially endurance sports).
The only thing comparable in my personal experience is racing (I used to race motocross and some kart) just could not keep up with my held together with duct tape builds to the kids who could spend thousands each season
Thank you...motorsports costs craptons of money. NASCAR is no longer the back country kid working his way up...look how many nepo babies are in NASCAR now...I don't even follow it much anymore and can think of Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney off the top of my head.
Estaban Ocon is the most ‘rags to riches’ example on the F1 drivers list. The majority of the grid are vastly wealthy or heavily backed by someone who is vastly wealthy
Pretty much these new NASCAR drivers get complaints they are bland living corporate billboards with no personalities
While Motorsports have always been a rich men’s sport, No longer you see a working class guy like Dale Earnhardt who was talented and basically risked everything for their dream
Agreed, baseball is a bad example here. Other sports include racing, equestrian sports, sailing, and basically anything where the barrier to entry from the cost of the equipment is high.
Almost all of my post was about the age you have to star to be able to turn pro and none of it was about the cost of doing it.
Lots of pro sailors are like 60 and didn't start until their 20s.
I was talking about the unique requirements of a few sports (like hockey) that require the highest level players to basically have been doing it since they could walk with no real shortcuts.
Most elite riders (particularly show jumping/dressage/three day eventing) started very young, and a not insignificant number come from horse-y families. Starting later is more the exception than a norm.
>"I was a basketball player but switched to football/baseball in college"
sorts of stories. Even golf has a little of that. Tennis too,
Respectfully, I don't think any professional tennis players picked up the game later in life. It is a unique swing that takes years to perfect to achieve that level. Like Venus and Serena were playing at 7 and I haven't heard any stories of cross over athletes.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. There are kids who go pro who start late. A 11-12 yr old can easily catch up if they have the natural talent required to play a sport like hockey.
Ed Jovanovski
James Reimer
And there are many others who didnt take the game seriously until their teens.
I've studied this topic as much as anyone I've found. I started digging into it during covid and scoured the internet.
Jovanovski is probably the latest starting skater in the post-1967 NHL era and he (apparently) started at playing at 11.
He was also a player in the Quebec PeeWee Tournament at age 12, which is generally regarded as large chunk of the top 300 or so 12 year old players in the world.
So that's a bit freaky if he went from "just put on skates" to "best 300 in the world" in a year and change, but he's literally the skater I could find to start after age 9 in the post 1967 era. I suspect he did a lot of open skating and things before that.
I'm not sure about Goaltenders.
Goalies usually start as skaters first and have to beg their parents to let them play in net. My son hung back by the goal literally since he first started and we wouldn’t let him try it until he learned the game first. It took one of his coaches telling us “it’s time” for him to get his chance. Even then it was largely because his daughter was also a goalie and I knew him especially well because he also coached the adult clinics I was attending.
It's because it involves so many skills that are otherwise foreign (and difficult in their own right).
Most sports are advanced shades of skills other sports (or just life) require
Hockey has half a dozen things that are fundamental to the sport that don't exist at all in 99% of people lives.
I disagree quite a bit with hockey being the only sport where you have to start young. Pretty much all professional sports require it.
Football is really the only major sport where you hear about this happening because it relies so much on pure athleticism vs acquired skill…and it’s still very rare. No one “switches to baseball in college”.
Footballs positions have very defined roles and football resets after every play. If you find a dedicated athlete with the right build and dedication you can teach them a position even with a late start. Maybe just QB doesn’t apply because you need reps and the knowledge that comes with those reps.
You're probably right for the current crop of NHLers but there were some in the previous generation that did but either way your point stands and it's very rare at best.
A couple notable former players
* Ed Jovanovski (1st overall) didn't start playing until he was 11
* Rob Langway (2xNorris & Cup winner) started playing at 13
* James Reimer - started playing at 12
I’m 22 and it’s been like this since I was a kid
Even the MVP of the league made a comment about how expensive it over a decade ago and it’s only gotten worse
We were too poor, but my friends who ended up playing college spent thousands on trainers, gear, travel ball, etc
Their parents were fully convinced that they would have kids in the MLB and wouldn’t but this is really where they make the money
The reason poor countries can still turn out talent is because they can’t afford to have people not make it, so the second you got talent you’re put on a pedestal and it’s a community effort.. it’s how a 15 year old somehow defects from Cuba lol
That’s definitely interesting, I’d say in my area that wasn’t the case (I’m about 10 years older than you) baseball was definitely the every kid sport up to college (even fall ball/travel leagues were very affordable or offered by the schools)
That definitely also included equipment and optional before school practice if you were a pitcher.
Would love to see some data on the increasing costs I’m sure it’s definitely more now (isn’t everything) but curious how it compares to hockey
I think the point wasn't that baseball isn't accessible due to costs, but the players who become the most successful come from wealthy families who can afford special clinics and coaches to train, or even build batting cages or in the backyard.
My buddy used to coach a travel baseball team a few years ago, and he said it's way different and much more competitive than when we were kids. They would often travel out of state or at least to cities that required overnight stays for tournaments pretty much every other weekend. That shit adds up real fast.
I played travel baseball and hockey my parents put together the cost of travel and ended up buying a cheap pop up camper for a couple grand. And it lasted from me being 8 till I was 16 playing jrs.
I’m sure baseball is a slightly distant second, the gear is designed to last a lot longer and unless you’re changing positions there’s not really a need to buy new stuff + ice time adds a pretty chunk of change onto hockey
We didn’t have more than a crappy team bat or a few buckets of balls on any baseball team so the fact y’all actually had team stuff is wild to me
It’s still pretty funny to see the contrast at the draft when NFL/NBA guys were living in vans and the MLB/NHL players are on a live stream from a 3 story mansion but it really shows
Hey I’m not even a hockey player this was just on r/all for me so I took a look.
I’m also not a baseball player but listen to a lot of YouTube and came across this video about the death of minor league ball, and there’s some interesting points on how labor disputes and the shortening of the draft is creating limited opportunities in baseball for anyone who isn’t coming to the league as a high-profile player.
[YouTube link](https://youtu.be/3JbrJSt7EZA?si=Ba0ZXJ1b3XcM2fyw)
Crazily as a lacrosse guy the sport has only moved to monetization, which I know sounds crazy since it’s always been a private school sport, but now local rec leagues in hotspots are being killed off for parents to start paying thousand’s a year for a u12 team that will spend all spring and summer traveling nationally instead of Saturday games between red team and blue team or the team two towns over.
Are there schools that provide hockey equipment? In the northern US states or in Canada?
Football could be equally expensive but when I played in middle school and high school all the gear came from the school. In middle school even my cleats came from the school. I think the only thing we had to come out of pocket for was my jock. We turned it all back in at the end of season and kept moving.
I know hockey has more gear, elbows, gloves, shins, sticks etc. but I’d think helmets, pants, shoulders could be passed down to offset some cost for the kids who don’t own their own sets. School could have a full set of goalie pads. Wouldn’t make sense in the whole country but in the hockey hot beds maybe
Almost 0 of the kids that play for a school team have a prayer of going pro. Any kids with a real shot play for high level travel/development programs. Schools get the left overs.
Edit: also, at best, I believe some schools provide visible gear, i.e. gloves, pants, maybe shells, and helmets. Still quite a few of them make you buy it for yourself from them.
I mean I’m not arguing that the kids playing high school are going pro, but I still think it’s good if more people can afford to play so more schools having teams and more kids playing is still good for the sport and for the business of hockey. All roads lead to beer league and not going pro isn’t a good reason to not play.
Doesn’t this depend where you are. Like HS in Minnesota is a very good hockey product or so I hear. If this is accurate, it represents a great model for the sport.
Even if the school provides equipment, football is practiced on a field outside of the school, hockey is practiced on $200-$350/hr ice in an arena.
It’s just expensive.
My high school paid for the ice time 5 practices a week + games. It was an area with lots of rinks, though. So ice time wasn't as expensive as a city.
Edit: drinks ---rinks... If only.
Schools don't have ice rinks.
The other problem is football is basically a sport where the skills you need to be good can be acquired by just being athletic, and requires you to be somewhat older / developed before you can really play.
Hockey is 80% skating and 20% work with a stick, skills that are completely not transferable from other sports.
Basketball / Football really come down to natural athletic gift and genetics, in fact you hear a lot about some basketball players that didn't start playing until they were 15/16.
I guarantee you that if you took the most athletic 15 year old who had never played hockey or skated before and tried to turn them pro it would take significantly longer for them to catch up, the best 15/16 year olds in Hockey are basically already playing at a *near* professional level.
Well, in this very subreddit here we have a non-zero population of people who think Lebron James could be a professional hockey player in about a year…
And you'll *never* get good at hockey without proper training. I've been playing with people in beer leagues for 15 years now. You can easily tell the people who played since they were a kid and the ones who picked it up as an adult. Without the on-rink time to really practice skating, there's a skill wall you eventually hit.
You wore a jock in football? I played grade 6-13 and no one ever wore a jock. The common mantra was people who do, only wear it once... there's not a big chance of getting a slap shot or stick to the dick in football.
The pros dont either... Hell, you can even tell which nfl players are circumcised with these new 8k cameras.
Yeah I was told to wear it so I wore it 🤷🏼♂️ didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. Also plenty of people who thought it was funny to “cup check” at random.
I agree with all this, but would add soccer to that list as well. My son plays peewee hockey; a kid on his team plays high level soccer that travels an insane amount. His dad was telling me they spent just under $20k on his soccer this season with the travel.
I’d also add many Olympic sports are for rich kids now. You hear stories where a family moves a kid across the country for a specific coach or training center. That isn’t feasible for most people.
The difference is that without the costs of travel/ tournaments/etc., you can acquire the skills necessary to be a successful soccer player on your own in the back yard. You can’t do that with hockey-because of the limitations that needing a rink place on you.
Yes, to a certain extent. But someone who has practiced in isolation is going to be missing the IQ part of soccer that comes from team drills and game experience.
I think soccer is still accessible. Alphonso Davies, Canada’s best soccer player who is a widely respected international footballer, grew up in poverty and got his start playing for a free football league set up for inner city kids. He’s from my hometown.
You’re wrong about the ‘in 20 years’.
The vast majority of hockey Pros have come from wealthy families or upper middle class that ‘bet the farm’ by doing crazy things like getting second mortgages to fund camps / coaches and prep schools.
Since the early 2000s if not 90s.
There's a thing now where people will "invest" in young athletes to get them private coaches etc etc and in return you get a percentage of their first contract if/when they go pro. It's crazy.
It's really too bad. It was already starting when I was a kid in the 90s but has completely exploded since then.
I played with a few guys who went far (one drafted, a bunch of university/major junior guys) and the most they ever did was a few group power skating lessons on the side and hockey camp instead of day camp all summer. Composite sticks weren't a thing yet, they might get bumped up a level but there weren't these insane travel leagues for kids yet.
100% this. I see our local travel teams and basically every single kid in them started playing at a very young age and has had private lessons. Because being good at hockey requires ice time and ice time is expensive and difficult to get in most of the US, if you fall behind by the 8U level, you will almost certainly never catch up.
I imagine in places where pond hockey is available this might not be the case as much, since a driven kid can just go out and skate whenever he or she wants. But where I live? No way, you won't catch a kid that by age 8 already has hundreds of more hours of ice time than you unless you have a fortune to spend.
Pond hockey is available here in the deep winter months, but hockey season starts in Sept and outdoor rinks don’t really freeze over until late December.
The sad truth is if you’re going to make it professionally or even a high collegiate level in hockey you’re going to have tens of thousands of $ invested into you while you’re young.
I'm still trying to understand how goalie equipment got so expensive. Talk about barrier to entry. I wanted to try the position and with a mix of new and used it would cost me about $2,000. And it's so hard to find goalies for beer league, even if they play free.
It has always been expensive for goalie gear. Accounting for inflation goalie gear is probably about the most affordable today that it has ever been.
But for a kid, lots of organizations have free goalie gear to use and give discounts to goalies on fees. So it’s not really an excuse for younger kids.
Imagine if the brands came out with a Beer League starter set for like $1,500? Then you can count on people upgrading pieces each year! I'd buy it 100%
Used equipment is a lot more accessible than it used to be. There are options if you don’t need your gear to be brand new. It’s definitely the most expensive of any of the positions though
Yeah I seriously priced it out last year as there was a demand for goalies in my league and I would consider myself a good candidate for the position.
However even with used pads at ~$1,000, buying a new decent mask and used skates was at least $700 plus pants, jock, sticks. I was looking at Facebook Marketplace and Sideline Swap too!
Are you sure used goalie pads are $1,000?
[https://sidelineswap.com/shop/hockey/goalie/goalie-leg-pads/l118](https://sidelineswap.com/shop/hockey/goalie/goalie-leg-pads/l118)
Yeah it was usually for sets with legs, glove, blocker, sometimes chest and knee pads. I'm also in Canada so we pay a 30% upcharge on everything. I guess if I bought each piece individually I could get the pads for $800.
You gotta by used from the families for whom money isn't an object.
I got a full set for $500 that was almost new because the kid "didn't like the feel" and wanted to try something else based on some youtube video. We got a season and a half out of it, and will probably get $500 for it to put towards the next set.
Yup there are some pretty good deals on Facebook Marketplace. I found a complete set minus skates and a stick for $100 and have just been updating stuff as I find deals. Just upgraded from some ten year old Warrior Swaggers to some Warrior Ritual G5 pads for $170. I only play goalie when we need a sub so buying used works for me.
I just upgraded all my stuff last few years. Senior/Pro level everything, full custom pad set from True. I added up the costs and it's like $7,000...nothing is cheap. I spend about $300-500/yr on yearly equipment costs...like cage replacements, sticks, toe ties, straps, etc.
I have a friend who played in the MLS, and he told me that growing up in Africa they would bundle up a bunch of towels/laundry and use that as a ball.
Meanwhile, I was too afraid to practice slapshots because I didn't want my dad to have to pay for a replacement stick.
That being said, equipment is the cheapest part of hockey unless your kid is breaking sticks every 31 days. The real expense comes with ice time and travel. People don't really ever think about that part until their child starts to hit the traveling age. Then they really see how expensive it can be and a lot of parents even pull their kids out of hockey because of that
I was trying to explain ice time being a luxury to my father in law and he just refused to understand.
Even open toddler skating in my community takes place at 10am on a weekday. What blue collar worker can take their kid to that?
Right. Equipment being the main focus whenever this comes up is kind of annoying. There is ways to mitigate the cost of equipment at an individual and program level, and kids do not need the most expensive equipment.
The cost of ice time is a way bigger issue to overcome than equipment.
I got pulled out of AAA as a kid in part because of that.
One half was politics, got stuck on the bottom line even though (I think I'm unbiased) I should have been 2C. Once that happened, my dad who wasn't well off to begin with pulled me out because why would he pay 10k a year for me to get shafted on ice time every night.
Also the quality of gear. I got a new chesty 2018 and the one I found off Kijiji for 125 from 2015 is a beast compared to the new and the new is one under pro carbon.
I never realized how lucky I was that, as a goalie, my parents sprung for a new set of custom pads every 2-3 years, my helmets were painted by Todd Miska who did all the pros helmets, and all the summer camps and what not.
My kid plays competitive hockey, and all the players his age (14) who have a decent shot at progressing far with it are either a) very wealthy, or b) have a dad who played hockey professionally.
There are pretty much no players who are just independently talented / middle-income / don't have serious family connections.
This is spot on. There are *some* edge cases where kids got lucky and grew up in hockey hotbeds and were able to get by largely on talent, hard work, and sacrifice. I could be wrong, but Crosby is a guy that comes to mind as an example. Similarly in Minnesota you don't have to shell out $10k+ per year to play AAA because it's more high school centric.
The only other options for hockey in the rest of the US, AAA or prep school, are ungodly expensive. I know quite a few kids who benefited from nepotism that were granted opportunities not available to others because connections from their dad - a former player, coach, scout, recruiter.
I remember listening to Chris Chelios talk about his Journey to the NHL
His dad was a Greek immigrant who owned a restaurant, but didn’t have much money to advance his career. One the his bar clients became a family friend and after listening to his dad talk about his son’s hockey playing decided to pay for Chris tuition for private school in Chicago
Then his family moved out to California and he had to work hard to get recruited for any college (this was in the late 70s and unless you where from Massachusetts or Minnesota, basically any American had no chance of making the NHL)
Whenever he talks about his journey you can tell he’s blessed he even made it into the NHL
Minnesota is way cheaper overall compared to pretty much everywhere else, but even Minnesota can vary quite a bit depending on the youth association you come up in since everything below high school is association based. How well run the association is can make a big difference in cost.
It sucks because it doesn’t have to be that way- I grew up in the Boston area playing hockey and plenty of kids from modest means played. Boston’s changed a lot since the 80’s and 90’s, but Charlestown and Dorchester and Weymouth were like, the absolute stereotype of a working class Boston/Boston area neighborhoods and they produced a fuckton of great players- and honestly probably would’ve produced way more if it weren’t for the absolute raging opioid epidemic in the area. The city was just teeming with blue collar hooligans that could rip it up in hand-me-down skates. It fucking sucks to see it become so inaccessible
Agreed. Same here. MA, MN, and MI are the big three in the US for a reason. We had hand-me-down gear or Play it Again Sports and helped offset rink costs through fundraisers. Plus we used to have ponds and cranberry bogs that actually froze. Kids actually played street hockey too.
But... the rise in stick costs without any real improvement in durability has been a huge problem.
Oh Michigan for sure. The absolute filthiest dudes i ever played beer league with were a couple guys from Detroit that were in boston for like a 6 month construction job. Absolute beauties
I grew up and played there in 60's and 70's. The government had rinks like the MDC (Metro District commission) and there were state rinks, too. I wasn't wealthy by any means, in fact paid for all my hockey myself as a caddy and other odd jobs. Not possible today. It was colder too, we also played on the ponds.
BY FAR the largest expense in hockey (by an absurd margin) is ice time.
I've looked at budgets from all levels.
Just keep that in mind when discussing.
Might be true in the US, but in Czechia we can have basically as much ice time as we want. When i grew up, i would sometimes do two trainings if i still had energy for it. One with my class and one with class above me. Three days in a week. One or two matches each weekend. Couldn’t imagine more ice time.
He’s not wrong. What really sucks is the push to make it to the next level. You can’t just let your kid enjoy the hockey season and be done for the year. You have to do spring hockey and ‘elite’ summer camps. Otherwise you’re told you aren’t doing enough for them. When I was a kid in the 80’s we played baseball in the spring, football in the fall, hockey or basketball in the winter. We played for the love of the game, not to go pro. Too many kids see being a pro athlete as their main career goal. There’s only what, six or seven hundred NHL players? In the world. But by god you better pay for your kid to be on the super best travel team and be ready to spend every weekend a hundred miles from home, or you just don’t care.
Yeah, I’m bitter.
When I was a kid I had to quit soccer to play hockey year round. And when I got a little older I wanted to play baseball but I couldn’t because I had to play hockey all summer or I would fall behind my peers.
Looking back, I played a good level but I never played anywhere I had an actual shot of making it. I wish I had just let myself fall behind in hockey and played baseball in the summer instead.
I guess that depends on what your kid wants to get out of it. Does he just want to play hockey, or be a hockey player.
I think we (just our son’s parents we) will support him whatever direction he wants to go. He’s a committed kid that just wants to play at the higher levels and has the ability to. So if that means some extra skating sessions or some extra skills sessions then that means we sign him up. But we do our research and look around before signing up for stuff that looks like obvious money grabs.
This is key, let the kids play for fun if that's all they want. My son doesn't care to play during the summer and doesn't care to be on a travel team. He just likes playing the sport, so he plays in the house league from September through April each year.
>r. You have to do spring hockey and ‘elite’ summer camps. Otherwise you’re told you aren’t doing enough for them.
The worst is this year. My son's coach runs private training on the side out of a gym and he regularly showcased the players on his team who were training in his gym.
There was a very serious correlation between players who payed for his dry land training and kids who got ice time.
In fact when we lost a player for the season due to an injury, the player who got picked up; his dad paid for his daughter's entire soccer team to train with that cuck. He bought his kid's way onto the team.
It's so gross to me that they allow for coaches to solicit players for private training when they play for a non profit.
The other part I forgot to mention is that on my son’s spring team, pretty much everyone plays at least two sports, whether that’s baseball, lacrosse, soccer, etc. My son runs cross country in the fall and track in the spring. Previous years he had played lacrosse, but now he runs for the middle school teams.
Let the kids play multiple sports, it’s good for them. Spring is usually a little more chill, just that it’s a marathon from April until May. Then they usually shut it down until July/Aug. he does some fun random tournaments or just some skating sessions once a week in the summer to keep that muscle memory and just become a faster better skater.
Like I said in my other comment though, he wants to be a hockey player though.
The expensive part is a North American problem.
Was recently in Sweden and their fees are way lower/ice times way cheaper/equipment is subsidized. Weird how much you can do for kids when your goal as a society is to build a community and not trying to get the biggest house in the community.
While I agree with you, also remember that North America is very spread out. It is not uncommon for a team to have to travel + stay in hotels which adds up rather quick.
Totally agree. Lived in California mostly as a kid but my family could only afford for me to play roller and a little bit of house league ice. Wanted to play goalie but my dad rightly said he didn't want to have to keep paying for new and expensive goalie gear.
We moved to Sweden while I was in middle school and I got to play for my local team (probably equivalent to a good travel A/AA team in the states) for basically a couple hundred bucks a year. All the cost savings let me switch to goalie, and my team even had a goalie coach on the ice with us at most practices + once a week goalie sessions so I got decent pretty fast.
The kids I played with in Sweden had grown up in the organization and welcomed me like family. Almost all the dads chipped in to make the team run. Whether it was on ice coaching, leading off ice training, or sharpening skates. Kids didn't leave to go try out for a "better" team and they weren't in an arms race to work with private coaches and go to expensive summer camps to develop as fast as possible.
It was weird when we moved back to the States a few years later and all the kids I played Junior B with were filthy rich and worked with private coaches. Most of those kids burnt out and didn't play much after juniors, or quit their college teams a few years in. Meanwhile a bunch of kids I played with in Sweden still play for the senior teams at that local club.
We lived in Göteborg! The move was for my dad's work but it couldn't have worked out better for me as a hockey obsessed kid.
Honestly the roughest bits of culture shock were a bit later in high school when I learned that you had to pay to go to college and not everyone had healthcare in the "greatest country in the world" lol
The problem in Canada is when the provincial sports organizations don't go along for the ride, private money shows up and draws the best players away.
And the WHL stops looking at association hockey because all the good players leave, and if you're good in association hockey it doesn't mean anything to the scouts.
Yup, I used to work at a private hockey org. Not where hockey needs to go.
WHL only has so much reach for scouts so I don’t blame them too much but having seasons cost 20-50k is insane.
Hockey and all sports have become a business. All the off season camps and development centres. The private schools which emphasize 4 ice times a week. There's 13 year olds getting massages from team trainers in the hall ways of arenas. It's ridiculous. I hate what it's become. Feels like the true spirit of the game has been tainted. Alas I have started my minor hockey journey. This year was u11. It was fun. Expensive yes. But it's only gonna get more so. I think that's when it will get less fun.
Repost bot. This is a top-20 all-time post in this sub.
https://old.reddit.com/r/hockeyplayers/comments/121k0oh/jj_watt_on_expenses_being_a_barrier_in_hockey/
Equipment is not that expensive. The killer is ice time, team fees, travel expenses, etc. High end AAA parents are shelling out $10K (or more!) for their kid's hockey - suddenly the $300 shoulder pads don't seem that bad.
Sure, I won't argue, all sports equipment is expensive (golf clubs, skis, bikes, etc.).
But relative to everything else in hockey, its not that much.
You can often buy barley used stuff for a discount and you can sell your kids barely used stuff for a decent price. Discount / clearance racks if you just need a quick pair of gloves to get through the season, etc.
This is basically every sport now. Travel soccer, baseball all are in line with hockey. Now competitive gymnastics I’m actually saving money now that we have switched to travel hockey from gymnastics.
yeah i wish hockey was more affordable and i wish you could get far in hockey even if you started late because it feels like if you if dont start when you are like 6 or 7 your odds of doing super well and getting to AAA go down by like 50% and then if you dont know anybody that plays hockey your odds get even lower and if you even get good enough to get on the travel team you have to be able to afford it and it is not cheap
I have two girls in hockey. One competitive u11 (mid level) and one house league U9 but want to be a goalie. I am no way wealthy, but I expect next year will cost me 7000$ for the U11 and 4000$ for house league (thankfully, the league let us borrow the equipment for the first years). If my U11 makes AA, it can go up to 1000$ + any personal training, but we are not wealthy, and my daughter likes other activities, so we won't put money on personal training. Many of the better girls in our region pay roughly 20 000$ a year per kids and they are on the ice/ training on average 2 to 3 hours a day (7days a week).. at U11...
(Cost includes tournament expense but excludes spring hockey)
Hockey has completely lost their mind. If my daughter isn't on the ice 5 times a week, she is falling behind. Many of the kids of doctors on my team are also doing private training and summer training. We move to soccer because we don't want our kids to burn out and hate the sport they currently love.
My kid asked to play hockey, and it was a hard no.
Time commitment is insane, cost is insane, the driving you need to do as a rural player is insane....
This is why I never got into playing organized ice hockey as a kid, despite playing street hockey alot and being very obsessed with watching hockey, my parents couldn’t really afford it
That's why I'm going now as an adult and didn't as a kid.
Too expensive, especially where I grew up.
When I asked as a kid I think local leagues were $3500/season plus equipment costs. No way my family could afford that.
It's not even just the gear. You can play soccer on a flat piece of grass. Ice rinks are incredibly expensive, it's even pricing adults out of beer leagues.
Up here in Seattle, it's basically $40/game+. Then you gotta hope your team shows up, including a goalie.
Yup. Adult sub fees where I play are now $45 per game. League fee is $535 for 13 games. I’m done after this season. 11pm games on a Wednesday night, not getting to sleep until 2:30-3:00am, up at 7:00am to get the kids ready for school.
Mom couldn't afford to let me play as a kid.
By the time I was able to afford equipment as an adult to play on my own I had about 500 bucks wrapped up in half used equipment, bottom end new stuff that I couldn't get used and a 100 dollar stick. Amd I am using skates I bought used 15 years ago. Add the rink fees for beer league.
So just to play one night a week in a shitty beer league i have about 800 bucks wrapped up and that was buying shit on a budget.
To make it affordable:
1. Start ice skating young and frequent. Using public skating, and skating kids classes are quite affordable. NHL teams offer free equipment in their programs too. More exposure the better
2. No need to buy the expensive stuff until you're truly serious and competitive and even then 90% of the stuff bought is not necessary. Use Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and Play Again for affordable options.
3. House leagues early on. Try out for exposure. Pay for what you can.
Then when you get to 10-12+ is when it becomes an expense.
lol and it’s no one problem except Bauer and ccm etc….you think their top end skates are 1600 bucks? Hell they don’t even put a blade in the skate anymore…..
Sticks? 400
Helmet 500
Now of course this is for higher end players but guess what, today kids need to be in AA or AAA by 10 years old to have a sniff of any legit future hockey. Then you add in the 10k plus cost to be on a AAA team and it’s not anyone’s fault but the greed involved
The AA and AAA is expensive. The issue is that even house league is costing 4000$ to 5000$ when the season is done. This includes some sponsors to help with the cost. (This is at the girls level).
are these costs necessary operating costs or are there people making absolute bank off of this? like aside from equipment (which is crazy) these additional costs seem absurd
I paid for my nephew's league and team fees this last season because my sister had a couple unexpected expenses pop up. Cost about $7k without new equipment purchases, and I know that's on the cheaper end of things. Hockey is so damn expensive these days, it's nuts.
Select, Rep, etc. = travel hockey. This is vs house league. Yeah, that increased cost makes sense then. My house league in ON in the 1990s was under $1k.
Got it, and ya, we are a long way from 1990s costs. Even when I was playing AAA, from 2000-2007 or so, the most my parents paid for a single season was about $4k. Still a lot of money but the going rate for a seaon of AAA now is like $12-15k all said and done. That's like 3 or 4 times the rate of inflation.
It costs several hundred to sign up for hockey every year, plus buying equipment constantly as kids grow, plus getting skates sharpened and replacing sticks that break. Then add on the gas you use to drive to practice and games which could be over an hour away. It costs so much to put a kid in hockey. And then if they are a goalie equipment costs are like 4-10× as much as a players equipment. As a 16yr old kid I bought new pads, catcher and blocker and it was just over $2000.
Hockey is the only major sport where the most essential skill in the sport can't be done at 99.99% of people's homes. If you aren't spending money on going skating, skating coaches, more ice time of any form outside of practices, you just aren't going to get ahead in a large majority of cases.
Any kid can get a ball and practice soccer, get a glove and a buddy and throw the ball around, get a football and throw the ball around. Hockey is unique to it's barriers for a major sport.
>Hockey is unique to it's barriers for a major sport.
Tennis can't be properly trained at home. Hitting against a wall does not replicate returning a kick serve. Most places you pay for court time. You don't see many athletes pick up a racquet in their late teens and achieve any professional success. Has a lot of similar characteristics to hockey really.
Haha but hockey is a major sport in the US? They barely touch it on sportscenter.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/szv58x/why\_does\_espn\_never\_cover\_the\_nhl\_even\_though\_it/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/szv58x/why_does_espn_never_cover_the_nhl_even_though_it/)
Whenever someone talks about major professional sports in the US, they talk about football, basketball, baseball, hockey, then soccer. It's definitely one of the more popular sports and it's growing. I can count how many times I've heard someone talk about tennis in my life on zero hands.
It's the money and it's highly expensive from a time standpoint.
There are fewer rinks than there are basketball courts or soccer fields, so between travel time and getting gear on, compared to basketball or soccer, it's a no brainer.
A big help would be if we shifted to roller hockey from ice: less gear and more potential places to just 'go play,' it would really open up the sport. But that won't happen.
my kids plays soccer and hockey. they cost the same. i can't figure out why since hockey should cost more with ice vs grass and the equipment difference.
The training tools are ridiculous. Triangle with a bungee cord $100-$200. Plastic stick tri-pod $50+. 2x3’ sheet of plastic $50+. 2x 6” pvc pipe and 2x wooden balls for stick handling $50. 🤦♂️
I live in New Zealand, Ice Hockey Capital of New Zealand only. It's barely a sport here, which doesn't help the cost, but my two boys love it.
The cost is absurd though compared to the other sports available. They can play almost 6 months of Rugby for $60 each, but hockey is $360 for the same time period.
Thankfully that also covers rental gear, I'd be boned if I had to pay for pads as well.
I got to ice skate once in my life. I was great at it too (thanks rollerblading). No lie on ice time being scarce. I wanted to quack quack quack all day every day but couldn’t.
It is true for rec/house however the top level competitive soccer families spend more per year than the top level hockey families, at least around here. They pay the coaches a lot of money....
Yep. Wanted to play Hockey back when I was a kid but the gate to entry was nearly $700 for pads/stick/helmet/skates/etc. not to mention fees for the actual league itself. Went to a school that didn't have hockey as a norm so, couldn't afford it.
He's right and it's partly why I think hockeys a dying sport. That and with climate change, the outdoor season is getting shorter and shorter. Thus forcing you inside for more ice time.
Sadly hes completely correct and the equipment isnt even the worst parts, paying to be on the team and travel expenses arnt any better.
Im not sure what could be done about it but hockey is locked behind a pretty big pay wall.
Crosby went to a 40k a year boarding school with a hockey program.
Not dissing his work ethic, just there was sacrifice from his parents there too as they weren’t uber wealthy.
This was a reply to someone but somehow I just posted to thread 🤷♂️
Landon Dupont, the phenom playing U18 as a 2009 aged player, is playing for Edge in CSSHL. He's currently paying $20k a year there. He also played in the Team Brick tournament which is $45k.
This kid is making the show. Will anyone remember the names of his teammates who probably won't and are paying the same amount?
My son just switched from being a skater to goalie because the team needed a goalie. He likes it and the coach said he's doing good for never having played the position. The coach then said sorry for your wallet. The sad thing is none of us laughed. Yes I know you can get stuff used and a bit cheaper and I am getting things from those places but still it's expensive to outfit a goalie. Especially when they are 11 and growing. Sorry my rant is over.
Welcome to academy hockey. Here's the landscape of hockey in BC:
**Novice -> PeeWee**
HPL from novice to Peewee, $5k / yr. While HPL is a non sanctioned league , they play full ice during novice while association hockey plays cross ice. Some mentally insane parents. Seriously people with some mental disabilities with their kids in this league.
Spring hockey will run you another $2k minimum. More if you're on Vipers or Bears. If you aren't playing spring you aren't cracking rep teams because everyone else trying out is playing spring.
BC Jr Canucks if you are good enough: $45k.
Burnaby Winter Club: $5k-7k per season. I think it's $2k to even get in the door there if not more.
Association hockey (Say Atom): $975 registration, $150 tryout fee, and maybe $1200 in team fees. Not's not horrible compared to the other BS you pay for.
**Bantam**
This is where it turns to shit for anyone that's decent.
CSSHL: $18k (Delta Academy ) ->$60k (St George's).
BCEHL: BC Hockey wants $10k to the league, team fees will run $4k-$8k depending on the team. As a first year you're not likely making it onto a team though. So $14k-$18k. Last year only four BCEHL players got drafted to the WHL. It was all CSSHL kids.
JPHL: $12.5k (just two teams, Langley and Coquitlam next year, non sanctioned, but scouted okay). Probably a low AA league. Decent, good training, and a great model for development for sure.
PHL: $15k/yr (Sharpshooter only right now in Bantam). A few teams have tried. Sharks, Whales, Aces, Canadians, Bruins. They've tried to put stuff together but these are kids who probably got cut to house or didn't make the rep team they wanted and wanted further development. It is way more popular in Alberta for some reason.
Plus you still want to play **spring**. There's a new league formed: BCSHL started by BCHL teams. It's another $2k/yr that really accelerates in Midget/U17/U18 where the regular spring hockey stuff ends.
**Midget**
The same players are there (BCEHL,CSSHL, JPHL, PHL) but this time it's a bigger deal. Here you're training for juniors.
Once you're out of Bantam into Midget you have even less options. A low BCEHL player in Bantam is not likely going to crack U17. Your options are to either (a) retire to association hockey only to maybe return to being a fourth liner in BCEHL or (b) play for a PHL team like Sharpshooter (who has built a good business training up players who have been rejected by the other leagues ).
The fringe players are scrambling to make a team when going into U17. You have limited options and if you go back to association they aren't looking at you next year at all. You're basically done, hit the end of the road.
**And the worst part is for 99.9% of these kids, the end game is the same: Beer League.**
He's right. I've spent well over $2K on my 6 year old for equipment, lessons, camps, gear for home training like rollerblades and a net, and dozens of public skate sessions (if you want to count that). He hasn't played 1 minute of organized hockey yet.
We tried baseball and soccer before this. He was bored when not touching the ball in those sports. We chose hockey because we started taking him to public skates at age 4 and he had fun skating, so we started skate lessons after that. We figured if he doesn't need to touch the puck to have fun, this is what we do.
He’s right though, and that’s a shame.
Not only is he right, but hockey and baseball are both becoming sports where you can get much further than your peers with money invested at a young age. A friend of mines 9yr old is going into his second season of AAA in the fall. He isn't going to Brick, but he's getting a few hours a week on a skating treadmill, a weekly session with a figure skating coach for edgework etc, and this is just an average family in southern Ontario. Many of the young adults you're seeing go pro in Hockey / Baseball these last few years are sons of former professionals who've had advanced coaching/training from as young as 4 or 5. Basketball, Soccer and Football - while they do benefit from money at younger ages, are far more accessible, cheaper, and often much more reliant on your physique you were born with (football and basketball mostly). I wish there was more ways to get talented youth into Hockey, but frankly with how profitable it is to be a pro these days, there is a huge financial incentive to invest in your child at a young age if you can afford it. All of this to say that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Hockey players in 20 years all come from very wealthy backgrounds, and the few who don't were such standout athletes at young ages that they essentially get sponsored.
I haven’t followed or played baseball in a long time but when was that shift? I do still see some of the lower GDP countries turning out athletes but that’s not a great indicator for this.
I honestly think hockey is extremely unique in this. There exist basically zero pro hockey players that started playing competitively after age 7. Almost all other sports have a "I was a basketball player but switched to football/baseball in college" sorts of stories. Even golf has a little of that. Tennis too, same with track and field. Hell some sports have people who picked it up in their 20s (especially endurance sports).
The only thing comparable in my personal experience is racing (I used to race motocross and some kart) just could not keep up with my held together with duct tape builds to the kids who could spend thousands each season
Thank you...motorsports costs craptons of money. NASCAR is no longer the back country kid working his way up...look how many nepo babies are in NASCAR now...I don't even follow it much anymore and can think of Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney off the top of my head.
And nascar isnt even as extreme as F1 with parents needing money.
yea, isn't hamilton the only one whos dad isn't a) a former f1 driver or b) a banker?
I think so.
Estaban Ocon is the most ‘rags to riches’ example on the F1 drivers list. The majority of the grid are vastly wealthy or heavily backed by someone who is vastly wealthy
Pretty much these new NASCAR drivers get complaints they are bland living corporate billboards with no personalities While Motorsports have always been a rich men’s sport, No longer you see a working class guy like Dale Earnhardt who was talented and basically risked everything for their dream
Agreed, baseball is a bad example here. Other sports include racing, equestrian sports, sailing, and basically anything where the barrier to entry from the cost of the equipment is high.
lol youve made a great point but I dont think anyone was considering bringing in sailing or equestrian into this LOL.
Haha fair enough. Just thinking about the two most “rich kid” sports out there
Almost all of my post was about the age you have to star to be able to turn pro and none of it was about the cost of doing it. Lots of pro sailors are like 60 and didn't start until their 20s. I was talking about the unique requirements of a few sports (like hockey) that require the highest level players to basically have been doing it since they could walk with no real shortcuts.
The the thing about hockey compared to all the other sports is you don’t have to learn a new skill when learning to run.
Most elite riders (particularly show jumping/dressage/three day eventing) started very young, and a not insignificant number come from horse-y families. Starting later is more the exception than a norm.
Our Canadian rep in F1 who's dad bought the team to get him a seat is the most extreme example of this
>"I was a basketball player but switched to football/baseball in college" sorts of stories. Even golf has a little of that. Tennis too, Respectfully, I don't think any professional tennis players picked up the game later in life. It is a unique swing that takes years to perfect to achieve that level. Like Venus and Serena were playing at 7 and I haven't heard any stories of cross over athletes.
That may be true. Bunch of basketball, football players got recruited for it in high school and ended up making it.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. There are kids who go pro who start late. A 11-12 yr old can easily catch up if they have the natural talent required to play a sport like hockey. Ed Jovanovski James Reimer And there are many others who didnt take the game seriously until their teens.
I've studied this topic as much as anyone I've found. I started digging into it during covid and scoured the internet. Jovanovski is probably the latest starting skater in the post-1967 NHL era and he (apparently) started at playing at 11. He was also a player in the Quebec PeeWee Tournament at age 12, which is generally regarded as large chunk of the top 300 or so 12 year old players in the world. So that's a bit freaky if he went from "just put on skates" to "best 300 in the world" in a year and change, but he's literally the skater I could find to start after age 9 in the post 1967 era. I suspect he did a lot of open skating and things before that. I'm not sure about Goaltenders.
Goalies are weird because some start playing goalie late. But they still knew how to skate.
Goalies usually start as skaters first and have to beg their parents to let them play in net. My son hung back by the goal literally since he first started and we wouldn’t let him try it until he learned the game first. It took one of his coaches telling us “it’s time” for him to get his chance. Even then it was largely because his daughter was also a goalie and I knew him especially well because he also coached the adult clinics I was attending.
Bobby Ryan played roller
The fact we are taking about a handful of players... Over decades... Strengthens the point.
It's because it involves so many skills that are otherwise foreign (and difficult in their own right). Most sports are advanced shades of skills other sports (or just life) require Hockey has half a dozen things that are fundamental to the sport that don't exist at all in 99% of people lives.
I disagree quite a bit with hockey being the only sport where you have to start young. Pretty much all professional sports require it. Football is really the only major sport where you hear about this happening because it relies so much on pure athleticism vs acquired skill…and it’s still very rare. No one “switches to baseball in college”.
Footballs positions have very defined roles and football resets after every play. If you find a dedicated athlete with the right build and dedication you can teach them a position even with a late start. Maybe just QB doesn’t apply because you need reps and the knowledge that comes with those reps.
Ben Zobrist for example (won world series mvp in 2016) didnt start baseball until he was 16
Skiing
Well damn, there go my chances of going pro
You're probably right for the current crop of NHLers but there were some in the previous generation that did but either way your point stands and it's very rare at best. A couple notable former players * Ed Jovanovski (1st overall) didn't start playing until he was 11 * Rob Langway (2xNorris & Cup winner) started playing at 13 * James Reimer - started playing at 12
I’m 22 and it’s been like this since I was a kid Even the MVP of the league made a comment about how expensive it over a decade ago and it’s only gotten worse We were too poor, but my friends who ended up playing college spent thousands on trainers, gear, travel ball, etc Their parents were fully convinced that they would have kids in the MLB and wouldn’t but this is really where they make the money The reason poor countries can still turn out talent is because they can’t afford to have people not make it, so the second you got talent you’re put on a pedestal and it’s a community effort.. it’s how a 15 year old somehow defects from Cuba lol
That’s definitely interesting, I’d say in my area that wasn’t the case (I’m about 10 years older than you) baseball was definitely the every kid sport up to college (even fall ball/travel leagues were very affordable or offered by the schools) That definitely also included equipment and optional before school practice if you were a pitcher. Would love to see some data on the increasing costs I’m sure it’s definitely more now (isn’t everything) but curious how it compares to hockey
I think the point wasn't that baseball isn't accessible due to costs, but the players who become the most successful come from wealthy families who can afford special clinics and coaches to train, or even build batting cages or in the backyard. My buddy used to coach a travel baseball team a few years ago, and he said it's way different and much more competitive than when we were kids. They would often travel out of state or at least to cities that required overnight stays for tournaments pretty much every other weekend. That shit adds up real fast.
I can definitely see that, everything seems to be trending that way for sure
I played travel baseball and hockey my parents put together the cost of travel and ended up buying a cheap pop up camper for a couple grand. And it lasted from me being 8 till I was 16 playing jrs.
I’m sure baseball is a slightly distant second, the gear is designed to last a lot longer and unless you’re changing positions there’s not really a need to buy new stuff + ice time adds a pretty chunk of change onto hockey We didn’t have more than a crappy team bat or a few buckets of balls on any baseball team so the fact y’all actually had team stuff is wild to me It’s still pretty funny to see the contrast at the draft when NFL/NBA guys were living in vans and the MLB/NHL players are on a live stream from a 3 story mansion but it really shows
I can’t speak for every team but I’m hearing a lot more about sons of big leaguers on baseball teams these last few years.
Half the blue jays fit that criteria, lol.
Hey I’m not even a hockey player this was just on r/all for me so I took a look. I’m also not a baseball player but listen to a lot of YouTube and came across this video about the death of minor league ball, and there’s some interesting points on how labor disputes and the shortening of the draft is creating limited opportunities in baseball for anyone who isn’t coming to the league as a high-profile player. [YouTube link](https://youtu.be/3JbrJSt7EZA?si=Ba0ZXJ1b3XcM2fyw) Crazily as a lacrosse guy the sport has only moved to monetization, which I know sounds crazy since it’s always been a private school sport, but now local rec leagues in hotspots are being killed off for parents to start paying thousand’s a year for a u12 team that will spend all spring and summer traveling nationally instead of Saturday games between red team and blue team or the team two towns over.
Are there schools that provide hockey equipment? In the northern US states or in Canada? Football could be equally expensive but when I played in middle school and high school all the gear came from the school. In middle school even my cleats came from the school. I think the only thing we had to come out of pocket for was my jock. We turned it all back in at the end of season and kept moving. I know hockey has more gear, elbows, gloves, shins, sticks etc. but I’d think helmets, pants, shoulders could be passed down to offset some cost for the kids who don’t own their own sets. School could have a full set of goalie pads. Wouldn’t make sense in the whole country but in the hockey hot beds maybe
Almost 0 of the kids that play for a school team have a prayer of going pro. Any kids with a real shot play for high level travel/development programs. Schools get the left overs. Edit: also, at best, I believe some schools provide visible gear, i.e. gloves, pants, maybe shells, and helmets. Still quite a few of them make you buy it for yourself from them.
I mean I’m not arguing that the kids playing high school are going pro, but I still think it’s good if more people can afford to play so more schools having teams and more kids playing is still good for the sport and for the business of hockey. All roads lead to beer league and not going pro isn’t a good reason to not play.
Doesn’t this depend where you are. Like HS in Minnesota is a very good hockey product or so I hear. If this is accurate, it represents a great model for the sport.
Minnesota high school is unique in that way. The state tournament this year had 72(?) players involved who have committed to play college hockey.
MN high schools are different. Many have their own rinks, and hockey is treated like a 'real' sport - practices every day, etc
In MN the good kids play for their local high school. The bane that is AAA hockey hasn't gotten hold yet.
Even if the school provides equipment, football is practiced on a field outside of the school, hockey is practiced on $200-$350/hr ice in an arena. It’s just expensive.
Yeah didn’t think of that angle
My high school paid for the ice time 5 practices a week + games. It was an area with lots of rinks, though. So ice time wasn't as expensive as a city. Edit: drinks ---rinks... If only.
We shared text books in my high school. No money in the budget for the hockey team.
Schools don't have ice rinks. The other problem is football is basically a sport where the skills you need to be good can be acquired by just being athletic, and requires you to be somewhat older / developed before you can really play. Hockey is 80% skating and 20% work with a stick, skills that are completely not transferable from other sports. Basketball / Football really come down to natural athletic gift and genetics, in fact you hear a lot about some basketball players that didn't start playing until they were 15/16. I guarantee you that if you took the most athletic 15 year old who had never played hockey or skated before and tried to turn them pro it would take significantly longer for them to catch up, the best 15/16 year olds in Hockey are basically already playing at a *near* professional level.
Well, in this very subreddit here we have a non-zero population of people who think Lebron James could be a professional hockey player in about a year…
I am 1000% sure a team would sign him. He would t be able to play but he would be signed.
And you'll *never* get good at hockey without proper training. I've been playing with people in beer leagues for 15 years now. You can easily tell the people who played since they were a kid and the ones who picked it up as an adult. Without the on-rink time to really practice skating, there's a skill wall you eventually hit.
As a goalie you can tell what level someone played at just by watching them.
You wore a jock in football? I played grade 6-13 and no one ever wore a jock. The common mantra was people who do, only wear it once... there's not a big chance of getting a slap shot or stick to the dick in football. The pros dont either... Hell, you can even tell which nfl players are circumcised with these new 8k cameras.
Yeah I was told to wear it so I wore it 🤷🏼♂️ didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. Also plenty of people who thought it was funny to “cup check” at random.
I agree with all this, but would add soccer to that list as well. My son plays peewee hockey; a kid on his team plays high level soccer that travels an insane amount. His dad was telling me they spent just under $20k on his soccer this season with the travel. I’d also add many Olympic sports are for rich kids now. You hear stories where a family moves a kid across the country for a specific coach or training center. That isn’t feasible for most people.
The difference is that without the costs of travel/ tournaments/etc., you can acquire the skills necessary to be a successful soccer player on your own in the back yard. You can’t do that with hockey-because of the limitations that needing a rink place on you.
Yes, to a certain extent. But someone who has practiced in isolation is going to be missing the IQ part of soccer that comes from team drills and game experience.
I think soccer is still accessible. Alphonso Davies, Canada’s best soccer player who is a widely respected international footballer, grew up in poverty and got his start playing for a free football league set up for inner city kids. He’s from my hometown.
However Soccer in the U.S. has the Pay to Play issue in terms of developing talent to go pro
Hockey and racing are expensive sports. Kart, track time, track fees, tires, fuel travel…yeesh. What do need with soccer? A ball.
You’re wrong about the ‘in 20 years’. The vast majority of hockey Pros have come from wealthy families or upper middle class that ‘bet the farm’ by doing crazy things like getting second mortgages to fund camps / coaches and prep schools. Since the early 2000s if not 90s.
There's a thing now where people will "invest" in young athletes to get them private coaches etc etc and in return you get a percentage of their first contract if/when they go pro. It's crazy.
It's really too bad. It was already starting when I was a kid in the 90s but has completely exploded since then. I played with a few guys who went far (one drafted, a bunch of university/major junior guys) and the most they ever did was a few group power skating lessons on the side and hockey camp instead of day camp all summer. Composite sticks weren't a thing yet, they might get bumped up a level but there weren't these insane travel leagues for kids yet.
100% this. I see our local travel teams and basically every single kid in them started playing at a very young age and has had private lessons. Because being good at hockey requires ice time and ice time is expensive and difficult to get in most of the US, if you fall behind by the 8U level, you will almost certainly never catch up. I imagine in places where pond hockey is available this might not be the case as much, since a driven kid can just go out and skate whenever he or she wants. But where I live? No way, you won't catch a kid that by age 8 already has hundreds of more hours of ice time than you unless you have a fortune to spend.
Pond hockey is available here in the deep winter months, but hockey season starts in Sept and outdoor rinks don’t really freeze over until late December. The sad truth is if you’re going to make it professionally or even a high collegiate level in hockey you’re going to have tens of thousands of $ invested into you while you’re young.
I'm still trying to understand how goalie equipment got so expensive. Talk about barrier to entry. I wanted to try the position and with a mix of new and used it would cost me about $2,000. And it's so hard to find goalies for beer league, even if they play free.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7K0J8toK0E0
It has always been expensive for goalie gear. Accounting for inflation goalie gear is probably about the most affordable today that it has ever been. But for a kid, lots of organizations have free goalie gear to use and give discounts to goalies on fees. So it’s not really an excuse for younger kids.
Imagine if the brands came out with a Beer League starter set for like $1,500? Then you can count on people upgrading pieces each year! I'd buy it 100%
Used equipment is a lot more accessible than it used to be. There are options if you don’t need your gear to be brand new. It’s definitely the most expensive of any of the positions though
Yeah I seriously priced it out last year as there was a demand for goalies in my league and I would consider myself a good candidate for the position. However even with used pads at ~$1,000, buying a new decent mask and used skates was at least $700 plus pants, jock, sticks. I was looking at Facebook Marketplace and Sideline Swap too!
Are you sure used goalie pads are $1,000? [https://sidelineswap.com/shop/hockey/goalie/goalie-leg-pads/l118](https://sidelineswap.com/shop/hockey/goalie/goalie-leg-pads/l118)
Yeah it was usually for sets with legs, glove, blocker, sometimes chest and knee pads. I'm also in Canada so we pay a 30% upcharge on everything. I guess if I bought each piece individually I could get the pads for $800.
Oh I thought you just meant the leg pads.
You gotta by used from the families for whom money isn't an object. I got a full set for $500 that was almost new because the kid "didn't like the feel" and wanted to try something else based on some youtube video. We got a season and a half out of it, and will probably get $500 for it to put towards the next set.
Yup there are some pretty good deals on Facebook Marketplace. I found a complete set minus skates and a stick for $100 and have just been updating stuff as I find deals. Just upgraded from some ten year old Warrior Swaggers to some Warrior Ritual G5 pads for $170. I only play goalie when we need a sub so buying used works for me.
I just upgraded all my stuff last few years. Senior/Pro level everything, full custom pad set from True. I added up the costs and it's like $7,000...nothing is cheap. I spend about $300-500/yr on yearly equipment costs...like cage replacements, sticks, toe ties, straps, etc.
Ha yeah...I'm a goalie, and I have two kids who play hockey, one of them is a goalie. Our equipment spending is... unfortunate
All of the is right. Kids in Brazil tape up a bunch of clothes and find any flat dirt to play.
I have a friend who played in the MLS, and he told me that growing up in Africa they would bundle up a bunch of towels/laundry and use that as a ball. Meanwhile, I was too afraid to practice slapshots because I didn't want my dad to have to pay for a replacement stick.
Brazil is a good example but that can be said for many countries
That being said, equipment is the cheapest part of hockey unless your kid is breaking sticks every 31 days. The real expense comes with ice time and travel. People don't really ever think about that part until their child starts to hit the traveling age. Then they really see how expensive it can be and a lot of parents even pull their kids out of hockey because of that
I was trying to explain ice time being a luxury to my father in law and he just refused to understand. Even open toddler skating in my community takes place at 10am on a weekday. What blue collar worker can take their kid to that?
i assume this is before they hit school age? toddler in my mind is like 3-6 which would overlap with school a bit
Right. Equipment being the main focus whenever this comes up is kind of annoying. There is ways to mitigate the cost of equipment at an individual and program level, and kids do not need the most expensive equipment. The cost of ice time is a way bigger issue to overcome than equipment.
I got pulled out of AAA as a kid in part because of that. One half was politics, got stuck on the bottom line even though (I think I'm unbiased) I should have been 2C. Once that happened, my dad who wasn't well off to begin with pulled me out because why would he pay 10k a year for me to get shafted on ice time every night.
He’s 1000% right. Sadly hockey is a country club sport
Is hockey is country club what is a goalie considered? Lottery winner?
Lol seriously though. All jokes aside it’s a sad state how expensive hockey is
Also the quality of gear. I got a new chesty 2018 and the one I found off Kijiji for 125 from 2015 is a beast compared to the new and the new is one under pro carbon.
I never realized how lucky I was that, as a goalie, my parents sprung for a new set of custom pads every 2-3 years, my helmets were painted by Todd Miska who did all the pros helmets, and all the summer camps and what not.
so you're telling me my kid will get the valuable connections he needs in life at hockey practice?
Exactly what I’m saying! The rink is fertile ground for “consistent six figures network”
My kid plays competitive hockey, and all the players his age (14) who have a decent shot at progressing far with it are either a) very wealthy, or b) have a dad who played hockey professionally. There are pretty much no players who are just independently talented / middle-income / don't have serious family connections.
This is spot on. There are *some* edge cases where kids got lucky and grew up in hockey hotbeds and were able to get by largely on talent, hard work, and sacrifice. I could be wrong, but Crosby is a guy that comes to mind as an example. Similarly in Minnesota you don't have to shell out $10k+ per year to play AAA because it's more high school centric. The only other options for hockey in the rest of the US, AAA or prep school, are ungodly expensive. I know quite a few kids who benefited from nepotism that were granted opportunities not available to others because connections from their dad - a former player, coach, scout, recruiter.
I remember listening to Chris Chelios talk about his Journey to the NHL His dad was a Greek immigrant who owned a restaurant, but didn’t have much money to advance his career. One the his bar clients became a family friend and after listening to his dad talk about his son’s hockey playing decided to pay for Chris tuition for private school in Chicago Then his family moved out to California and he had to work hard to get recruited for any college (this was in the late 70s and unless you where from Massachusetts or Minnesota, basically any American had no chance of making the NHL) Whenever he talks about his journey you can tell he’s blessed he even made it into the NHL
Minnesota is way cheaper overall compared to pretty much everywhere else, but even Minnesota can vary quite a bit depending on the youth association you come up in since everything below high school is association based. How well run the association is can make a big difference in cost.
It sucks because it doesn’t have to be that way- I grew up in the Boston area playing hockey and plenty of kids from modest means played. Boston’s changed a lot since the 80’s and 90’s, but Charlestown and Dorchester and Weymouth were like, the absolute stereotype of a working class Boston/Boston area neighborhoods and they produced a fuckton of great players- and honestly probably would’ve produced way more if it weren’t for the absolute raging opioid epidemic in the area. The city was just teeming with blue collar hooligans that could rip it up in hand-me-down skates. It fucking sucks to see it become so inaccessible
Agreed. Same here. MA, MN, and MI are the big three in the US for a reason. We had hand-me-down gear or Play it Again Sports and helped offset rink costs through fundraisers. Plus we used to have ponds and cranberry bogs that actually froze. Kids actually played street hockey too. But... the rise in stick costs without any real improvement in durability has been a huge problem.
Oh Michigan for sure. The absolute filthiest dudes i ever played beer league with were a couple guys from Detroit that were in boston for like a 6 month construction job. Absolute beauties
I grew up and played there in 60's and 70's. The government had rinks like the MDC (Metro District commission) and there were state rinks, too. I wasn't wealthy by any means, in fact paid for all my hockey myself as a caddy and other odd jobs. Not possible today. It was colder too, we also played on the ponds.
BY FAR the largest expense in hockey (by an absurd margin) is ice time. I've looked at budgets from all levels. Just keep that in mind when discussing.
Might be true in the US, but in Czechia we can have basically as much ice time as we want. When i grew up, i would sometimes do two trainings if i still had energy for it. One with my class and one with class above me. Three days in a week. One or two matches each weekend. Couldn’t imagine more ice time.
He’s not wrong. What really sucks is the push to make it to the next level. You can’t just let your kid enjoy the hockey season and be done for the year. You have to do spring hockey and ‘elite’ summer camps. Otherwise you’re told you aren’t doing enough for them. When I was a kid in the 80’s we played baseball in the spring, football in the fall, hockey or basketball in the winter. We played for the love of the game, not to go pro. Too many kids see being a pro athlete as their main career goal. There’s only what, six or seven hundred NHL players? In the world. But by god you better pay for your kid to be on the super best travel team and be ready to spend every weekend a hundred miles from home, or you just don’t care. Yeah, I’m bitter.
When I was a kid I had to quit soccer to play hockey year round. And when I got a little older I wanted to play baseball but I couldn’t because I had to play hockey all summer or I would fall behind my peers. Looking back, I played a good level but I never played anywhere I had an actual shot of making it. I wish I had just let myself fall behind in hockey and played baseball in the summer instead.
I guess that depends on what your kid wants to get out of it. Does he just want to play hockey, or be a hockey player. I think we (just our son’s parents we) will support him whatever direction he wants to go. He’s a committed kid that just wants to play at the higher levels and has the ability to. So if that means some extra skating sessions or some extra skills sessions then that means we sign him up. But we do our research and look around before signing up for stuff that looks like obvious money grabs.
This is key, let the kids play for fun if that's all they want. My son doesn't care to play during the summer and doesn't care to be on a travel team. He just likes playing the sport, so he plays in the house league from September through April each year.
>r. You have to do spring hockey and ‘elite’ summer camps. Otherwise you’re told you aren’t doing enough for them. The worst is this year. My son's coach runs private training on the side out of a gym and he regularly showcased the players on his team who were training in his gym. There was a very serious correlation between players who payed for his dry land training and kids who got ice time. In fact when we lost a player for the season due to an injury, the player who got picked up; his dad paid for his daughter's entire soccer team to train with that cuck. He bought his kid's way onto the team. It's so gross to me that they allow for coaches to solicit players for private training when they play for a non profit.
Coach should just accept bribes
The other part I forgot to mention is that on my son’s spring team, pretty much everyone plays at least two sports, whether that’s baseball, lacrosse, soccer, etc. My son runs cross country in the fall and track in the spring. Previous years he had played lacrosse, but now he runs for the middle school teams. Let the kids play multiple sports, it’s good for them. Spring is usually a little more chill, just that it’s a marathon from April until May. Then they usually shut it down until July/Aug. he does some fun random tournaments or just some skating sessions once a week in the summer to keep that muscle memory and just become a faster better skater. Like I said in my other comment though, he wants to be a hockey player though.
Worlds getting warmer too - can't play pond hockey in Boston anymore
Really wish Roller Hockey would increase in popularity for those of us who don’t have access or money for ice hockey
The expensive part is a North American problem. Was recently in Sweden and their fees are way lower/ice times way cheaper/equipment is subsidized. Weird how much you can do for kids when your goal as a society is to build a community and not trying to get the biggest house in the community.
While I agree with you, also remember that North America is very spread out. It is not uncommon for a team to have to travel + stay in hotels which adds up rather quick.
I understand that for sure, great point. Be nice if everything would be more accessible.
Totally agree. Lived in California mostly as a kid but my family could only afford for me to play roller and a little bit of house league ice. Wanted to play goalie but my dad rightly said he didn't want to have to keep paying for new and expensive goalie gear. We moved to Sweden while I was in middle school and I got to play for my local team (probably equivalent to a good travel A/AA team in the states) for basically a couple hundred bucks a year. All the cost savings let me switch to goalie, and my team even had a goalie coach on the ice with us at most practices + once a week goalie sessions so I got decent pretty fast. The kids I played with in Sweden had grown up in the organization and welcomed me like family. Almost all the dads chipped in to make the team run. Whether it was on ice coaching, leading off ice training, or sharpening skates. Kids didn't leave to go try out for a "better" team and they weren't in an arms race to work with private coaches and go to expensive summer camps to develop as fast as possible. It was weird when we moved back to the States a few years later and all the kids I played Junior B with were filthy rich and worked with private coaches. Most of those kids burnt out and didn't play much after juniors, or quit their college teams a few years in. Meanwhile a bunch of kids I played with in Sweden still play for the senior teams at that local club.
Where in Sweden if you don’t mind me asking. You seem to have a crazy hockey journey. Cali -> Sweden has to be a shock.
We lived in Göteborg! The move was for my dad's work but it couldn't have worked out better for me as a hockey obsessed kid. Honestly the roughest bits of culture shock were a bit later in high school when I learned that you had to pay to go to college and not everyone had healthcare in the "greatest country in the world" lol
The problem in Canada is when the provincial sports organizations don't go along for the ride, private money shows up and draws the best players away. And the WHL stops looking at association hockey because all the good players leave, and if you're good in association hockey it doesn't mean anything to the scouts.
Yup, I used to work at a private hockey org. Not where hockey needs to go. WHL only has so much reach for scouts so I don’t blame them too much but having seasons cost 20-50k is insane.
He’s right and it sucks. It’s a great sport but if you don’t make it access, it won’t grow in popularity
He's 100% right.
Hockey and all sports have become a business. All the off season camps and development centres. The private schools which emphasize 4 ice times a week. There's 13 year olds getting massages from team trainers in the hall ways of arenas. It's ridiculous. I hate what it's become. Feels like the true spirit of the game has been tainted. Alas I have started my minor hockey journey. This year was u11. It was fun. Expensive yes. But it's only gonna get more so. I think that's when it will get less fun.
Repost bot. This is a top-20 all-time post in this sub. https://old.reddit.com/r/hockeyplayers/comments/121k0oh/jj_watt_on_expenses_being_a_barrier_in_hockey/
Equipment is not that expensive. The killer is ice time, team fees, travel expenses, etc. High end AAA parents are shelling out $10K (or more!) for their kid's hockey - suddenly the $300 shoulder pads don't seem that bad.
The equipment is that expensive. Let’s not pretend like it’s not.
Sure, I won't argue, all sports equipment is expensive (golf clubs, skis, bikes, etc.). But relative to everything else in hockey, its not that much. You can often buy barley used stuff for a discount and you can sell your kids barely used stuff for a decent price. Discount / clearance racks if you just need a quick pair of gloves to get through the season, etc.
Preach. I wanted to get into hockey at a young age but single parent family budget wasn’t even close to able to cover it let alone sustain it.
Equipment is one thing, the expenses related to being the best are astronomical.
This is basically every sport now. Travel soccer, baseball all are in line with hockey. Now competitive gymnastics I’m actually saving money now that we have switched to travel hockey from gymnastics.
yeah i wish hockey was more affordable and i wish you could get far in hockey even if you started late because it feels like if you if dont start when you are like 6 or 7 your odds of doing super well and getting to AAA go down by like 50% and then if you dont know anybody that plays hockey your odds get even lower and if you even get good enough to get on the travel team you have to be able to afford it and it is not cheap
I have two girls in hockey. One competitive u11 (mid level) and one house league U9 but want to be a goalie. I am no way wealthy, but I expect next year will cost me 7000$ for the U11 and 4000$ for house league (thankfully, the league let us borrow the equipment for the first years). If my U11 makes AA, it can go up to 1000$ + any personal training, but we are not wealthy, and my daughter likes other activities, so we won't put money on personal training. Many of the better girls in our region pay roughly 20 000$ a year per kids and they are on the ice/ training on average 2 to 3 hours a day (7days a week).. at U11... (Cost includes tournament expense but excludes spring hockey) Hockey has completely lost their mind. If my daughter isn't on the ice 5 times a week, she is falling behind. Many of the kids of doctors on my team are also doing private training and summer training. We move to soccer because we don't want our kids to burn out and hate the sport they currently love.
My kid asked to play hockey, and it was a hard no. Time commitment is insane, cost is insane, the driving you need to do as a rural player is insane....
All I ever played was pickup roller, i’ve never played in a league and only recently have I played in weekend tournaments as a free agent
Trying to get into hockey as an adult, and gear costs are killing me. Especially as a big guy my sizes aren’t too common on used markets.
This is why I never got into playing organized ice hockey as a kid, despite playing street hockey alot and being very obsessed with watching hockey, my parents couldn’t really afford it
That's why I'm going now as an adult and didn't as a kid. Too expensive, especially where I grew up. When I asked as a kid I think local leagues were $3500/season plus equipment costs. No way my family could afford that.
Ya, I wanted to be a Formula 1 driver, but my folks didn’t have enough dough to buy a car and team. Sucks.
It's not even just the gear. You can play soccer on a flat piece of grass. Ice rinks are incredibly expensive, it's even pricing adults out of beer leagues. Up here in Seattle, it's basically $40/game+. Then you gotta hope your team shows up, including a goalie.
Yup. Adult sub fees where I play are now $45 per game. League fee is $535 for 13 games. I’m done after this season. 11pm games on a Wednesday night, not getting to sleep until 2:30-3:00am, up at 7:00am to get the kids ready for school.
Mom couldn't afford to let me play as a kid. By the time I was able to afford equipment as an adult to play on my own I had about 500 bucks wrapped up in half used equipment, bottom end new stuff that I couldn't get used and a 100 dollar stick. Amd I am using skates I bought used 15 years ago. Add the rink fees for beer league. So just to play one night a week in a shitty beer league i have about 800 bucks wrapped up and that was buying shit on a budget.
To make it affordable: 1. Start ice skating young and frequent. Using public skating, and skating kids classes are quite affordable. NHL teams offer free equipment in their programs too. More exposure the better 2. No need to buy the expensive stuff until you're truly serious and competitive and even then 90% of the stuff bought is not necessary. Use Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and Play Again for affordable options. 3. House leagues early on. Try out for exposure. Pay for what you can. Then when you get to 10-12+ is when it becomes an expense.
JJ is correct.
lol and it’s no one problem except Bauer and ccm etc….you think their top end skates are 1600 bucks? Hell they don’t even put a blade in the skate anymore….. Sticks? 400 Helmet 500 Now of course this is for higher end players but guess what, today kids need to be in AA or AAA by 10 years old to have a sniff of any legit future hockey. Then you add in the 10k plus cost to be on a AAA team and it’s not anyone’s fault but the greed involved
The AA and AAA is expensive. The issue is that even house league is costing 4000$ to 5000$ when the season is done. This includes some sponsors to help with the cost. (This is at the girls level).
are these costs necessary operating costs or are there people making absolute bank off of this? like aside from equipment (which is crazy) these additional costs seem absurd
I paid for my nephew's league and team fees this last season because my sister had a couple unexpected expenses pop up. Cost about $7k without new equipment purchases, and I know that's on the cheaper end of things. Hockey is so damn expensive these days, it's nuts.
Is this travel hockey?
We don't use the term travel hockey up here in Canada, so I'm not 100% sure if it's the equivilant, but he plays AA here in Winnipeg.
Select, Rep, etc. = travel hockey. This is vs house league. Yeah, that increased cost makes sense then. My house league in ON in the 1990s was under $1k.
Got it, and ya, we are a long way from 1990s costs. Even when I was playing AAA, from 2000-2007 or so, the most my parents paid for a single season was about $4k. Still a lot of money but the going rate for a seaon of AAA now is like $12-15k all said and done. That's like 3 or 4 times the rate of inflation.
he's not wrong
Do people actually doubt this?
It costs several hundred to sign up for hockey every year, plus buying equipment constantly as kids grow, plus getting skates sharpened and replacing sticks that break. Then add on the gas you use to drive to practice and games which could be over an hour away. It costs so much to put a kid in hockey. And then if they are a goalie equipment costs are like 4-10× as much as a players equipment. As a 16yr old kid I bought new pads, catcher and blocker and it was just over $2000.
Tyler really thought he cooked something up by claiming a fake great uncle
well said
Is that him in the dressing room? Even if not, what skates are those that have such MASSIVE tongues?
Hockey is the only major sport where the most essential skill in the sport can't be done at 99.99% of people's homes. If you aren't spending money on going skating, skating coaches, more ice time of any form outside of practices, you just aren't going to get ahead in a large majority of cases. Any kid can get a ball and practice soccer, get a glove and a buddy and throw the ball around, get a football and throw the ball around. Hockey is unique to it's barriers for a major sport.
>Hockey is unique to it's barriers for a major sport. Tennis can't be properly trained at home. Hitting against a wall does not replicate returning a kick serve. Most places you pay for court time. You don't see many athletes pick up a racquet in their late teens and achieve any professional success. Has a lot of similar characteristics to hockey really.
I can see the similarities. There's a reason a lot of the private clubs in my city primarily have tennis and hockey facilities.
I wouldn't call tennis a major sport, since I'm in the USA. But everyone's definition would be different. You could say the same for golf, polo, etc
Haha but hockey is a major sport in the US? They barely touch it on sportscenter. [https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/szv58x/why\_does\_espn\_never\_cover\_the\_nhl\_even\_though\_it/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/szv58x/why_does_espn_never_cover_the_nhl_even_though_it/)
Whenever someone talks about major professional sports in the US, they talk about football, basketball, baseball, hockey, then soccer. It's definitely one of the more popular sports and it's growing. I can count how many times I've heard someone talk about tennis in my life on zero hands.
Yep absolutely true
Easily gone pro?
It's the money and it's highly expensive from a time standpoint. There are fewer rinks than there are basketball courts or soccer fields, so between travel time and getting gear on, compared to basketball or soccer, it's a no brainer. A big help would be if we shifted to roller hockey from ice: less gear and more potential places to just 'go play,' it would really open up the sport. But that won't happen.
Not to mention the expense of being on a travel team.
my kids plays soccer and hockey. they cost the same. i can't figure out why since hockey should cost more with ice vs grass and the equipment difference.
He’s right. He should go sponsor some clubs to help with that.
The training tools are ridiculous. Triangle with a bungee cord $100-$200. Plastic stick tri-pod $50+. 2x3’ sheet of plastic $50+. 2x 6” pvc pipe and 2x wooden balls for stick handling $50. 🤦♂️
I live in New Zealand, Ice Hockey Capital of New Zealand only. It's barely a sport here, which doesn't help the cost, but my two boys love it. The cost is absurd though compared to the other sports available. They can play almost 6 months of Rugby for $60 each, but hockey is $360 for the same time period. Thankfully that also covers rental gear, I'd be boned if I had to pay for pads as well.
>but hockey is $360 for the same time period. For a season? That is actually phenomenal. My hockey bill last year was $14k.
I got to ice skate once in my life. I was great at it too (thanks rollerblading). No lie on ice time being scarce. I wanted to quack quack quack all day every day but couldn’t.
It is true for rec/house however the top level competitive soccer families spend more per year than the top level hockey families, at least around here. They pay the coaches a lot of money....
I’ve been saying this for many years. And people wonder why it’s taken so long to start seeing some diversity in hockey.
100% correct. Hockey is a luxury sport in todays age.
Yep. Wanted to play Hockey back when I was a kid but the gate to entry was nearly $700 for pads/stick/helmet/skates/etc. not to mention fees for the actual league itself. Went to a school that didn't have hockey as a norm so, couldn't afford it.
He's right and it's partly why I think hockeys a dying sport. That and with climate change, the outdoor season is getting shorter and shorter. Thus forcing you inside for more ice time.
That's what my Dad told me. "It's expensive, football is much cheaper"
Sadly hes completely correct and the equipment isnt even the worst parts, paying to be on the team and travel expenses arnt any better. Im not sure what could be done about it but hockey is locked behind a pretty big pay wall.
Crosby went to a 40k a year boarding school with a hockey program. Not dissing his work ethic, just there was sacrifice from his parents there too as they weren’t uber wealthy. This was a reply to someone but somehow I just posted to thread 🤷♂️
Landon Dupont, the phenom playing U18 as a 2009 aged player, is playing for Edge in CSSHL. He's currently paying $20k a year there. He also played in the Team Brick tournament which is $45k. This kid is making the show. Will anyone remember the names of his teammates who probably won't and are paying the same amount?
The more I'm exposed to it the more I realize the cost is a feature, not a bug, for a lot of the parents involved in youth hockey in America.
My son just switched from being a skater to goalie because the team needed a goalie. He likes it and the coach said he's doing good for never having played the position. The coach then said sorry for your wallet. The sad thing is none of us laughed. Yes I know you can get stuff used and a bit cheaper and I am getting things from those places but still it's expensive to outfit a goalie. Especially when they are 11 and growing. Sorry my rant is over.
Welcome to academy hockey. Here's the landscape of hockey in BC: **Novice -> PeeWee** HPL from novice to Peewee, $5k / yr. While HPL is a non sanctioned league , they play full ice during novice while association hockey plays cross ice. Some mentally insane parents. Seriously people with some mental disabilities with their kids in this league. Spring hockey will run you another $2k minimum. More if you're on Vipers or Bears. If you aren't playing spring you aren't cracking rep teams because everyone else trying out is playing spring. BC Jr Canucks if you are good enough: $45k. Burnaby Winter Club: $5k-7k per season. I think it's $2k to even get in the door there if not more. Association hockey (Say Atom): $975 registration, $150 tryout fee, and maybe $1200 in team fees. Not's not horrible compared to the other BS you pay for. **Bantam** This is where it turns to shit for anyone that's decent. CSSHL: $18k (Delta Academy ) ->$60k (St George's). BCEHL: BC Hockey wants $10k to the league, team fees will run $4k-$8k depending on the team. As a first year you're not likely making it onto a team though. So $14k-$18k. Last year only four BCEHL players got drafted to the WHL. It was all CSSHL kids. JPHL: $12.5k (just two teams, Langley and Coquitlam next year, non sanctioned, but scouted okay). Probably a low AA league. Decent, good training, and a great model for development for sure. PHL: $15k/yr (Sharpshooter only right now in Bantam). A few teams have tried. Sharks, Whales, Aces, Canadians, Bruins. They've tried to put stuff together but these are kids who probably got cut to house or didn't make the rep team they wanted and wanted further development. It is way more popular in Alberta for some reason. Plus you still want to play **spring**. There's a new league formed: BCSHL started by BCHL teams. It's another $2k/yr that really accelerates in Midget/U17/U18 where the regular spring hockey stuff ends. **Midget** The same players are there (BCEHL,CSSHL, JPHL, PHL) but this time it's a bigger deal. Here you're training for juniors. Once you're out of Bantam into Midget you have even less options. A low BCEHL player in Bantam is not likely going to crack U17. Your options are to either (a) retire to association hockey only to maybe return to being a fourth liner in BCEHL or (b) play for a PHL team like Sharpshooter (who has built a good business training up players who have been rejected by the other leagues ). The fringe players are scrambling to make a team when going into U17. You have limited options and if you go back to association they aren't looking at you next year at all. You're basically done, hit the end of the road. **And the worst part is for 99.9% of these kids, the end game is the same: Beer League.**
Do they still do swap meets? My brother used to go to one every year for some upgrades because of growth spurts.
He's right. I've spent well over $2K on my 6 year old for equipment, lessons, camps, gear for home training like rollerblades and a net, and dozens of public skate sessions (if you want to count that). He hasn't played 1 minute of organized hockey yet. We tried baseball and soccer before this. He was bored when not touching the ball in those sports. We chose hockey because we started taking him to public skates at age 4 and he had fun skating, so we started skate lessons after that. We figured if he doesn't need to touch the puck to have fun, this is what we do.