I think a big issue is just the way Minor and Junior Hockey is set up that makes it very different from other sports.
Minor Hockey at the Bantam and Midget-Minor level is a total circus. (and of course this has a trickle down effect even to Pee Wee), with parents and kids hyper-focused on putting themselves in the best position for their "draft" year (age 15) to get a coveted spot in Major Junior/Junior A/USNDTP/USHL with players bouncing minor clubs to get on the right team that will give them the right amount of ice time to showcase, get invited to camps, etc. with extra powerskating lessons on the side... just an overall hyper-focus on hockey.
The closest parallel I'd say to those age 13-15 hockey years in what you'd see in something like the GTHL in another sport is to the elite AAU circuits (such as the Nike EYBL) for prep basketball. This is also a bit of a circus, as players are all hyper-focused on positioning themselves within their class (similar to Minor Hockey players) and trying to get a coveted college scholarship (or increasingly, other options like G League Ignite are becoming more popular). Even then, I would say there are two crucial difference still - these elite AAU circuits occur at ages 15-17, so you can already push the players ages up a couple years... and an AAU team is never going to be a kid's "primary" team as they will all still play high school basketball where they are still just normal high school students playing with their friends for the joy of representing their school (it can of course still be very serious, but it is not as professional-ized).
So now hockey is the kid's primary focus, making it to Juniors is a big thing in and of itself... and low and behold, they made it. They get drafted into let's say the OHL. There's a draft party or whatever, it's a local news story that you were drafted. So now you become a bit of a minor celebrity. And this is all when you're 15, barely pubescent. So if you aren't super well grounded, if your parents don't do a good job instilling that you're not better than everybody else because you're good at a sport (remember the sport that's consumed you for the last few years to reach this very moment), your ego can grow very big.
And of course, relevant in all of this is, by going to Juniors, you are likely packing up, moving to another city, living away from your family and with a billet family who do not have any parental obligations to you to make sure you grow into a respectable young man. And what I said before about hockey being your whole life? Child's play compared to now, as you are now being asked to play a 68 game schedule with additional practice and dryland time. You are going to take long trips to travel around your league for ordinary league games, and you're even in a differentiated form of schooling catered towards your hockey career. At which point, who knows if you even care about school or have any respect for your teachers or fellow classmates because you're a "hockey player" (who has already forfeited NCAA eligibility if you play Major Junior in Canada) and your goal is to make the NHL, not read some books written by dead authors. One shouldn't overlook the power of a good education in taking kids out of their bubble and exposing them to the happenings of people outside of themselves. I think the focus on obtaining an NCAA scholarship, rather than making it to Major Juniors, is one thing USA Hockey does right. A scholarship is a noble and admirable goal in and of itself in so many ways. It means you get to to college for free and come out with zero debt. It is still a feeder into the NHL so you are not closing any doors but there is a big tangible carrot in and of itself waiting for you while you still remain amateur. Major Junior on the other hand? It's a great feeder for professional hockey. That's it. It is otherwise not super valuable, but the hype and perception built around it creates a distorted viewpoint and worldview for teenage boys.
On the road so often, your "family" becomes your teammates, a group of 17-20 year olds who also grew up in this sort of environment and aren't fully mature and developed themselves. Maybe you get lucky and end up with a great group of veterans, but often times, you're gonna get a bunch of boys that subscribe to groupthink, immature attitudes towards things like drinking and sex and a culture built around hazing because "that's just how it's done" and justified with "we all had to do it".
And all of this happens at age 16. The other big North American sports have nothing like this, as you still remain a normal high school student progressing towards college eligibility (which is a must for most sports), in the vast majority of cases living at home surrounded by family. Hockey is unique in that players truly do enter a "hockey bubble" where it consumes their whole life and everything surrounding them. In basketball for instance, the goal is a college scholarship, so you get that, and then at age 18 or 19 (again older and more mature) you enter as an incoming freshman. Yes, there are some key similarities in that you are now also a local celebrity in your college bubble and many will still be susceptible to growing massive egos and senses of entitlement because they are good at a game. However, you're still also a student at the University surrounded by the remaining incoming freshman class, you live in the dorms, eat at the dining halls, etc. There also continues to be the expectation that you are taking coursework with the goal of progressing towards a degree for as long as you are in school that you can use if you do not play professionally. You also cannot be "traded" (pack your bags 17 year old, you're moving to a new city, to attend a new school and stay with a new billet family), while players may (and increasingly do) freely transfer, they are able to continue to remain at the school if they so choose (4 year guaranteed scholarships are becoming the norm, so long as a player remains academically eligible and is not removed from the team for behavioral reasons). Even then, it is not as professionalized as Junior Hockey.
It's no wonder that without better systems and programs in place that these hockey players get a warped perception of their place within reality and come out of it as 19 and 20 year old shitheads that think the world serves to cater to their needs, after all that is all it has done for the last 7 or so very formative years of their life. Add in the weird hazing culture and "fer da boyz" culture and I guess it's no wonder that gang bangs (consensual or not) because some sort of odd bizarro team-bonding ritual.
The whole system is pretty lousy... all to produce around 30-40 future NHL players per year.
excellent post. the system is garbage
