Oh come on. It's not insulting. There's definitely a portion of female players that quit because there's no future to be had in hockey. If they even cared to play competitively at all instead of focusing on other things. A lot of it might be driven by the parents and not the players though.
Same with guys, except there's a lot of guys who continue just because there's a hope of a future career to be had -whether in the NHL, AHL, or Europe.
And
Mrb1p's point is even less contentious than mine. It's a number's game. The 1% of elite female players will definitely have more variation in terms of ethics and passion for the game, because there's simply less individuals to compete against...
I feel like you neither know the hockey players themselves nor know about the landscape of female hockey.
First of all, the elite players are passionate. Period. Secondly, there actually is quite a lot to play for. We have Title IX here in the states, practically speaking there is more funding per female student athlete in the same school than male athletes, and the obvious objective that canadian and american female players aim for through juniors is to play in college on a scholarship.
The entire premise is quite faulty. By the time someone is 20 years old, we pretty much know if they'll ever be good enough to play in the CHL. Certainly, by 25, when a player is leaving the NCAA, we should have a good idea of whether or not they could ever play in the CHL.
There are more registered Canadian junior female hockey players, probably than Germany, France, GB, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Slovakia combined. There may be even more registered female juniors in Canada than male juniors in Russia. This is not even talking about women in the USA. And each of these women receive more resources, in terms of training opportunities. In terms of ice time. In terms of camps and private lessons. And then at 18-20, the best of the best female hockey players in Canada and the USA get scholarships to play in the NCAA, where we have Title IX, so the funding they receive there and the training is world class. Even better than male hockey players at the same university.
And yet, we have CHL players from Germany, France, GB, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Slovakia, but no females. And despite the law of averages, and their smaller population sizes, the U20 teams of every single one of those teams would be able to beat the Canadian women's U20 team or the American one. If your only explanation for this is that these 20 year old girls, who have had better training opportunities at every single level, playing in well funded NCAA programs have given up in their souls. Well...
The law of averages also is not explanatory here, if we prorate it out to the end of college. If you took the national teams of Germany, France, GB, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Slovakia. Even, in fact, if you curated it to just be college age players, U25 players. Every single player on each of their rosters would be able to play in the CHL despite having significantly fewer registered players to compete against than women's hockey in Canada or the USA. If this is also supposed to be attributed to despair, well...
If your allegation is that there are a bunch of women who are 25 and finishing college right now, who play the level of an average midget AAA player but would be able to be contributing CHL players if only there was a league? That's pretty implausible.
