Ove
You still get good players but you don’t get the guys who would have played shinny 10 hours a day.
Over the last 10 years of global warming outdoor rinks have melted. It’s a lot of work for the 2-3 days a month you can get ice. There are other factors but in Montreal I couldn’t imagine trying to get backyard ice.There was a time when almost every kid in Canada played hockey of some sort. Road hockey on every block, outdoor rinks every 10 blocks, kids just being kids. Indoor rinks and video games changed all that. The rich kids only wanted to play indoors and the rest left for their living rooms and TV's to play video games. The volunteers who looked after the block rinks got discouraged because hardly any kids showed up any more and those rinks disappeared. The only way to explore and develop skills is to just have fun and let your mind imagine what you can do with your body. Soon the only way to partake in any form of hockey was expensive indoor rinks and a lot could not participate because of money.
You still get good players but you don’t get the guys who would have played shinny 10 hours a day.