Estimating the size of the NHL's talent pool (1950-2023)

[overpass]

Your characterization of hockey in Canada in 1900 is not true. Either you don't have any knowledge of this, or you're not being honest.

There was hockey being played, and it was already an important part of Canadian culture....but it looked very different. Infrastructure and transportation were huge issues. There were few indoor rinks. Hockey was mostly an urban sport, and Canada was a lot more rural then. Most rural boys were almost completely cut off from any opportunity to play hockey, and many urban boys were too.

Hockey was also a lot less serious, and even most boys who did play, did so a lot less.

I've interviewed a lot of older people, including my father (who was born the same year as Henri Richard), and I have a pretty good sense of the hockey situation in multiple areas. People definitely played hockey, but often it was very informal and maybe just a couple times per year.

I once tallied my closest 200 male relatives going back 3 generations, and almost none of them had any opportunity to play any type of organized hockey. Mostly due to transportation.

The people you describe lived in Ottawa and Toronto....it was a necessity to live close to a rink....if you didn't, no hockey for you.

My characterization of hockey in Canada at that time is that it was largely informal and unorganized, but it was widely played. Of course not on indoor rinks, mostly as shinny on ponds and rivers, often with improvised equipment. Organized hockey was certainly more common in urban areas but many great players learned their skills in those games of shinny before they played organized hockey as teenagers.

 

[Neutrinos]

The talent pool is also considerably more talented than in decades earlier, as preteens with NHL aspirations are training and developing their skills in a way that previous generations had not

 

[Overrated]

The talent pool is also considerably more talented than in decades earlier, as preteens with NHL aspirations are training and developing their skills in a way that previous generations had not

Talent is something you are born with. Training doesn't increase it.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

This is completely flawed as you can't really use the size of the population as a 1:1 (or anywhere close to that) proxy for hockey participation which is determined by the popularity and access to the game.

This is from the Fastest Game book:

But hockey was more than a popular entertainment. The sport also gained more participants after the war, as youth hockey programs swelled with baby boomers. Over 3.9 million children were born in Canada in the decade after the war. This rising demographic tide, along with changing ideas about child development, brought an expansion of organized activities for kids. Sundayschool enrollment at Protestant churches climbed by a third in the 1950s; membership in Brownies and Cubs doubled, to a quarter-million children.45 Minor hockey experienced similar growth. In 1958, over 150,000 “youngsters” across the country were playing in CAHA-affiliated leagues; by 1962, that number was more than 200,000. The Toronto Hockey League alone had more than 25,000 players, ages eight to eighteen.

During the 1960s, the league was more popular than ever. Teams set attendance records, and Hockey Night in Canada was at the top of the ratings. And participation continued to grow. By the end of the decade, more than a half-million boys were playing organized hockey in Canada.

Since many of you guys are Canadian and of older age you must have access to articles books and data which I just couldn't find with a simple google search.

The game didn't have the exact same popularity throughout the years. In fact pro sports period are a relatively new thing in our civilization. My grandparents born in the 40s in Czechoslovakia spent much of their childhood working the field for example. I am aware that Canada was much more developed but prior to people going out to live games and watching the game on TV en masse the game was not as big as it eventually became There is an opposite effect you mentioned yourself. Kids becoming less physical, more obese and less interested in sports as time goes. That is why my common sense tells me the sweet spot between these moving parts was among people born between the years 1960 and 1980. Given the fact the NHL became truly worldwide in the 1990s and the fact all big hockey countries managed to produce strong generations of players it's in my view the 90s which were truly the pinnacle of hockey.

Even if we had the exact numbers of participants it wouldn't match the depth of the talent pool 1:1. Let's imagine every Canadian child was forced to participate and the rate would grow tenfold. The talent pool wouldn't grow ten times as kids who posses any talent whatsoever naturally gravitate towards the sport on their own more often and the real talent pool would be in fact much shallower. The same way it's entirely possible that in the very early days of hockey the access to league hockey was so limited that only the most talented pond players would get to play meaning the real talent pool was much deeper. This effect is probably not accounting for much and only happens in the extremities.

I'm not familiar with that book. The registration data is interesting, and I appreciate you sharing it. But as I mentioned in the first post, there's no consistency between how registrations are recorded from one organization to another. I'm not convinced that registration data (to the extent it's been recorded) is meaningful, as not everyone who's registered plays, and not everyone who's playing is registered anywhere.

Is the ratio (of Canada's population to the talent pool) one-to-one? Clearly not, and I've tried to explain factors that would both increase and decrease the participation rate. (On balance, I suspect, but cannot prove, that the participation rate is lower today than it was decades ago). If I was talking about a niche activity that only a small percentage of young(ish) Canadian men do (such as playing backgammon, or writing haikus, or playing trombone) - then there would probably be little benefit in using this approach. But for an activity that a large percentage of young Canadian men have participated in over the decades (such as playing hockey, drinking beer, or learning to drive a car) - surely there must be some correlation.

Love the approach and the effort. Thanks a lot for the work!



The thread title should be changed to "Estimating the size of the NHL's talent pool (1950-2023)". The first line in the opening post gives away that this is what it is about, but the title does not.

Edit: Done.

Great, thanks for making that change. I agree the title is more accurate now.

The glance at immigration in Canada, which posters who drone on about talent pool being so much larger now often choose to ignore, is important and shouldn't require so many caveats as if it is a judgement on immigrant populations. There are many factors that a person can get into (sports culture and culture in general, economic factors, assimilation in Canada now compared to in the past, other sport alternatives and exposure to other sports) but it's fairly obvious that immigrants to Canada are less likely to get involved in hockey development streams than people whose families have been in Canada for generations. I don't know if this is a factor in other countries.

All those "disclaimers" I added are overkill, but given how politically charged discussions about immigration can be, I thought it's better to clear on that point.

The talent pool is also considerably more talented than in decades earlier, as preteens with NHL aspirations are training and developing their skills in a way that previous generations had not

Agreed - over time, players have become more skilled, for a number of different reasons (which have been covered in depth in other posts). I think that's a separate question than "what's the size of the NHL's talent pool?"

 

[Sturminator]

Important and insightful work as usual, HO.

I have nothing to add, other than that I have always appreciated your work.

 

[jcbio11]

What a fascinating read. Loving the analytical approach.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Is the data Canadians aged 20-34? Or Canadians born +20-34 years?

The reason I ask is the former will include the 31 year old Afghani immigrant, who is not a potential NHL player. While the latter would include that immigrant's kid, who is a potential NHL player.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Is the data Canadians aged 20-34? Or Canadians born +20-34 years?

The reason I ask is the former will include the 31 year old Afghani immigrant, who is not a potential NHL player. While the latter would include that immigrant's kid, who is a potential NHL player.

It's all Canadian men aged 20-34 (regardless of whether they were born in Canada or not). That's what I was trying to get at in the first few posts - the size of the talent pool has probably been overestimated for this reason.

 

[MadLuke]

Is the data Canadians aged 20-34? Or Canadians born +20-34 years?

The reason I ask is the former will include the 31 year old Afghani immigrant, who is not a potential NHL player. While the latter would include that immigrant's kid, who is a potential NHL player.

Back in the days when I tried to create some era adjustment I think I used the 0-14 years old of 20 years before, to have some rough estimate of 20-34 that did grew up in Canada.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Thus, even though my data measures NHL-age Canadian males, it very likely overestimates the size of the current talent pool, because a much larger percentage of the population is of Asian descent, and for various reasons, Asian-Canadians rarely play in the NHL. (I'll say it again because I want to be very clear on this point - nothing in this paragraph should be misinterpreted to suggest I'm against immigration).

I think your data will fare better if you apply an additional layer to the Canadian population chart: native birth rate.

Statistics Canada tells us the number of live births per year.

This is an imperfect, but important window into the number of native born Canadians in a given year*. Using this data, we can project forward by 15, 20, 30 years and separate the immigrant numbers from the native born numbers. That provides a much more accurate picture of how many men were actually in the NHL's potential talent pool, and I suspect it would shift the data significantly for the time period in which Boomers were the dominant demographic. From roughly 1976 to 2000, you had record numbers of NHL-player-aged Canadian men in the actual talent pool... even though the overall population (including immigrants) is larger now than it was then.



* this is important because, as you have already pointed out, immigrants and children of immigrants are almost a total non-factor in the NHL talent pool. This is particularly true of immigrant visible minorities, which constitute some 90% of Canadian immigration but less than 1% of the NHL workforce. These groups really have to be taken out of the data in order for the data to have any resemblance of reality.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I think your data will fare better if you apply an additional layer to the Canadian population chart: native birth rate.

Statistics Canada tells us the number of live births per year.

This is an imperfect, but important window into the number of native born Canadians in a given year*. Using this data, we can project forward by 15, 20, 30 years and separate the immigrant numbers from the native born numbers. That provides a much more accurate picture of how many men were actually in the NHL's potential talent pool, and I suspect it would shift the data significantly for the time period in which Boomers were the dominant demographic. From roughly 1976 to 2000, you had record numbers of NHL-player-aged Canadian men in the actual talent pool... even though the overall population (including immigrants) is larger now than it was then.



* this is important because, as you have already pointed out, immigrants and children of immigrants are almost a total non-factor in the NHL talent pool. This is particularly true of immigrant visible minorities, which constitute some 90% of Canadian immigration but less than 1% of the NHL workforce. These groups really have to be taken out of the data in order for the data to have any resemblance of reality.

Thanks for this, and fully agreed. This method would be preferable for the reasons that many of us have talked about. If you have a link to the data set, I can update the charts.

 

[BadgerBruce]

I think your data will fare better if you apply an additional layer to the Canadian population chart: native birth rate.

Statistics Canada tells us the number of live births per year.

This is an imperfect, but important window into the number of native born Canadians in a given year*. Using this data, we can project forward by 15, 20, 30 years and separate the immigrant numbers from the native born numbers. That provides a much more accurate picture of how many men were actually in the NHL's potential talent pool, and I suspect it would shift the data significantly for the time period in which Boomers were the dominant demographic. From roughly 1976 to 2000, you had record numbers of NHL-player-aged Canadian men in the actual talent pool... even though the overall population (including immigrants) is larger now than it was then.



* this is important because, as you have already pointed out, immigrants and children of immigrants are almost a total non-factor in the NHL talent pool. This is particularly true of immigrant visible minorities, which constitute some 90% of Canadian immigration but less than 1% of the NHL workforce. These groups really have to be taken out of the data in order for the data to have any resemblance of reality.

If anyone is interested, this is the most recent demographic breakdown from the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL).

 

[BadgerBruce]

For perspective on the GTHL demographic chart:

The league had a grand total of 26,750 registered players.

So … unless a bunch of “prefer not to answer” kids are actually West/Central Asian and/or Middle Eastern” my math says that 26750 x 0.3% is 80. Yikes!

And Black kids (1.1%)? That’s 294 in total, or 22 black kids per birth year (there are 13 birth years in the GTHL).

 

[jigglysquishy]

If anyone is interested, this is the most recent demographic breakdown from the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL).

View attachment 658482

Taking out prefer not to answer/not specified and comparing to Toronto CMA numbers

Profile table, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population - Toronto, City (C) [Census subdivision], Ontario;Toronto [Census metropolitan area], Ontario

Statistics Canada's Census Profile presents information from the 2021 Census of Population - Toronto, City (C) [Census subdivision], Ontario;Toronto [Census metropolitan area], Ontario.

www12.statcan.gc.ca

Background	Toronto CMA	GTHL	Difference	Ratio
White	42.5%	74.7%	+32.2%	1.78
Multi-racial	2.1%	11.5%	+9.4%	5.48
East Asian	18.9%	7.8%	-11.1%	0.41
South Asian	19.2%	2.3%	-16.9%	0.12
Black	7.9%	1.4%	-6.5%	0.18
Indigenous	0.5%	0.5%	+-0	-
Arab	2.1%	0.5%	-1.6%	0.24
Hispanic	2.5%	0.4%	-2.1%	0.16
West/Central Asian	2.6%	0.4%	-2.2%	0.15

I took the white population as total-visible minority-Indigenous
For Indigenous I added the columns under racial origin
East Asian I added the racial columns (Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asian)
Hispanic I used Latin American racial origin

Shows a pretty stark gap.

There is clearly some difference in reporting data for multi-racial.

The gap for South Asian really jumps out at me. 603,000 South Asian men in the GTA and barely a presense in the GTHL. If Canada wants to stay the number one hockey country, we have to do a better job of welcoming the literal millions of Canadians who aren't included in the hockey community.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Thanks for this, and fully agreed. This method would be preferable for the reasons that many of us have talked about. If you have a link to the data set, I can update the charts.

Frustratingly, the government site that graphic came from doesn’t link to raw data and I can’t find the precise cohort of data they used to construct it. There are of course a bunch of data sets available, but they all cut off in relatively recent years rather than going back to 1921 (what that site calls “comparable Canada-wide vital statistics”).

The raw data is probably in a place that would seem obvious to someone who does this more often, but as a layman I’m finding it hard to navigate the rabbit’s warren of government data browsers.

 

[MadLuke]

The raw data is probably in a place that would seem obvious to someone who does this more often, but as a layman I’m finding it hard to navigate the rabbit’s warren of government data browsers.

Chatgpt after complaining about how hard those stats are to find on statistics canada or on the provincial level, had the idea to use the crude birth rate (people born by 100,000 people of a country) that it could find for different years, extrapolate the in between year from the 2 closest and estimating with the easier to find Canada total population.

It gave me this:

Year	Population (thousands)	Crude birth rate (per 1000)	Number of births
1900	5,371	40	214,840
1901	5,481	39.7	217,605
1902	5,592	39.4	220,227
1903	5,704	39	222,456
1904	5,817	38.6	224,536
1905	6,538	38.2	249,753

 

[jigglysquishy]

Chatgpt after complaining about how hard those states to find on statistics canada or on the provincial level, had the idea to use the crude birth rate (people born by 100,000 people of a country) that it could find for different years, extrapolate the in between year from the 2 closest and estimating with the easier to find Canada total population.

It gave me this:

Year	Population (thousands)	Crude birth rate (per 1000)	Number of births
1900	5,371	40	214,840
1901	5,481	39.7	217,605
1902	5,592	39.4	220,227
1903	5,704	39	222,456
1904	5,817	38.6	224,536
1905	6,538	38.2	249,753

Using this method I got births 1900-2015

 

[Vilica]

Glad to see those better versed in finding statistics have kinda confirmed my hypothesis about the post-WW2 period, that a baby bust during the depression caused the lack of top-end talent in the late 40s/early 50s. One other portion contributing to that is that WW2 casualties would overwhelmingly be concentrated in males of hockey-playing age. Someone who died at 20 in 1944 would be in prime hockey age in 1950. That percentage would be really marginal, but in a league of 100 skaters, changing one or two players from 4th liners to 1st liners would be enough to shift things.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Chatgpt after complaining about how hard those states to find on statistics canada or on the provincial level, had the idea to use the crude birth rate (people born by 100,000 people of a country) that it could find for different years, extrapolate the in between year from the 2 closest and estimating with the easier to find Canada total population.

It gave me this:

Year	Population (thousands)	Crude birth rate (per 1000)	Number of births
1900	5,371	40	214,840
1901	5,481	39.7	217,605
1902	5,592	39.4	220,227
1903	5,704	39	222,456
1904	5,817	38.6	224,536
1905	6,538	38.2	249,753

And we take one step closer to just sitting here watching ChatGPT argue with itself over the player rankings it has created

Glad to see those better versed in finding statistics have kinda confirmed my hypothesis about the post-WW2 period, that a baby bust during the depression caused the lack of top-end talent in the late 40s/early 50s. One other portion contributing to that is that WW2 casualties would overwhelmingly be concentrated in males of hockey-playing age. Someone who died at 20 in 1944 would be in prime hockey age in 1950. That percentage would be really marginal, but in a league of 100 skaters, changing one or two players from 4th liners to 1st liners would be enough to shift things.

Not just deaths, which are a marginal percentage, but the number of lives which were profoundly disrupted by the war, which is not marginal at all. Just two factors alone undoubtedly made a tremendous difference:

1) The number of well-paying manual labor jobs that were suddenly available to a generation of athletically-inclined young men

2) The fact that pro hockey very nearly ceased to exist by 1945, which made it a highly questionable career choice for men in that 18-20 age range

Then throw in all the anecdotal things like young men quitting sports to do military service, even if only for a year. That would have left a deep impression on the talent pool.

Similar impacts occurred during the post-WWI era as well, and we see a similar dip in quality of competition in the late teens and early 20s. Things really revved up from roughly 1925-1940, but the bookends were not good for pro hockey.

 

[JackSlater]

And we take one step closer to just sitting here watching ChatGPT argue with itself over the player rankings it has created



Not just deaths, which are a marginal percentage, but the number of lives which were profoundly disrupted by the war, which is not marginal at all. Just two factors alone undoubtedly made a tremendous difference:

1) The number of well-paying manual labor jobs that were suddenly available to a generation of athletically-inclined young men

2) The fact that pro hockey very nearly ceased to exist by 1945, which made it a highly questionable career choice for men in that 18-20 age range

Then throw in all the anecdotal things like young men quitting sports to do military service, even if only for a year. That would have left a deep impression on the talent pool.

Similar impacts occurred during the post-WWI era as well, and we see a similar dip in quality of competition in the late teens and early 20s. Things really revved up from roughly 1925-1940, but the bookends were not good for pro hockey.

Yes I find the development aspect during those years is somewhat overlooked. The NHL saw a massive exodus of talent in 1943 and especially 1944 and 1945, but there is no chance that the biggest disruption to Canadian society that ever happened left development streams completely unchanged for teenagers and young adults. It would be much harder to measure than what percent of the NHLers were gone in 1944, but there must have been a disruption to some degree for the late 1940s and early 1950s.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Frustratingly, the government site that graphic came from doesn’t link to raw data and I can’t find the precise cohort of data they used to construct it. There are of course a bunch of data sets available, but they all cut off in relatively recent years rather than going back to 1921 (what that site calls “comparable Canada-wide vital statistics”).

The raw data is probably in a place that would seem obvious to someone who does this more often, but as a layman I’m finding it hard to navigate the rabbit’s warren of government data browsers.

I reached out to Statistics Canada to see if they have that type of data, which could be incorporated into a 2nd draft of the analysis. If they have that information, it will be trivial for me to update the charts. If they're able to share anything, I'll update this thread.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I reached out to Statistics Canada to see if they have that type of data, which could be incorporated into a 2nd draft of the analysis. If they have that information, it will be trivial for me to update the charts. If they're able to share anything, I'll update this thread.

Here’s hoping! It would be nice if they would simply post it somewhere easily accessible on their website. It seems like fairly important information for a wide variety of purposes.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I'm amazed how quickly Statistics Canada wrote back. Within 24 hours of me reaching out, they sent me a long email with several useful sources of data. They're all freely available, so I'll share the two key documents here:

Link 1 - Information archivée dans le Web | Information Archived on the Web
This is a 100 page PDF (which was scanned from a hard copy from 1993). It provides lots of interesting demographic data from 1921 to 1990. The table that was most relevant was on pages 38-39 of the PDF, which shows the number of male births in Canada, each year from 1921 to 1990. (Fortunately it was a high-quality scan, so it was simply a matter of copying and pasting it into Excel).

Link 2 - Add/Remove data - Estimates of births, by sex, annual
This is a table that shows birth, by sex, annually from 1971-72 to 2021-22. It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison since the data from the first table is on a calendar year basis, and this seems to straddle two calendar years. For the purpose of this analysis, I've taken the data for 1921 to 1990 from the first source, and the data for 1991 onwards from the second source. I've treated "1990-91" as equivalent to 1991. This is close enough for what's obviously intended to be a high-level analysis.

From there, I estimated the talent pool to consist of the number of male births, from 18-36 years before the season in question. In other words - the 1980 season (as an example) consists of the male births from 1945 to 1962 (inclusive). This means I've had to start the analysis in 1956 (rather than 1950), because the earliest year with data is 1921. One important (but grim) factor to consider is infant and child mortality. I've assumed it's zero for the purpose of this analysis. Canada (thankfully) has had miniscule death rates for children through the 21st century. I'm essentially assuming that of the (roughly) 128,000 male infants born in Canada, all of them lived to adulthood. (Or, more accurately, the percentage who didn't survive to adulthood hasn't changed significantly from year to year).

Here's the revised numbers:

Year	Total	% CDN	Talent Pool	Teams	Roster	Spots	Per spot
1956​	2,238,708​	98.6%​	2,270,495	6​	17​	102​	22,260
1957​	2,222,969​	98.6%​	2,254,532	6​	17​	102​	22,103
1958​	2,219,478​	96.8%​	2,292,849	6​	17​	102​	22,479
1959​	2,227,431​	98.6%​	2,259,058	6​	17​	102​	22,148
1960​	2,243,431​	98.0%​	2,289,215	6​	17​	102​	22,443
1961​	2,265,447​	96.8%​	2,340,338	6​	18​	108​	21,670
1962​	2,293,429​	98.7%​	2,323,636	6​	18​	108​	21,515
1963​	2,323,949​	98.0%​	2,371,377	6​	18​	108​	21,957
1964​	2,375,066​	98.2%​	2,418,601	6​	18​	108​	22,394
1965​	2,441,281​	97.0%​	2,516,785	6​	18​	108​	23,304
1966​	2,497,106​	97.3%​	2,566,399	6​	18​	108​	23,763
1967​	2,558,420​	97.7%​	2,618,649	6​	18​	108​	24,247
1968​	2,625,336​	96.6%​	2,717,739	12​	18​	216​	12,582
1969​	2,703,450​	96.6%​	2,798,602	12​	18​	216​	12,956
1970​	2,794,735​	96.0%​	2,911,182	12​	18​	216​	13,478
1971​	2,892,427​	96.1%​	3,009,810	14​	18​	252​	11,944
1972​	2,999,589​	95.0%​	3,157,462	14​	19​	266​	11,870
1973​	3,110,038​	94.5%​	3,291,046	16​	19​	304​	10,826
1974​	3,220,151​	91.3%​	3,527,000	16​	19​	304​	11,602
1975​	3,339,388​	90.6%​	3,685,859	18​	19​	342​	10,777
1976​	3,451,721​	90.6%​	3,809,847	18​	19​	342​	11,140
1977​	3,562,324​	89.4%​	3,984,702	18​	19​	342​	11,651
1978​	3,663,317​	87.5%​	4,186,648	18​	19​	342​	12,242
1979​	3,757,475​	85.1%​	4,415,364	17​	19​	323​	13,670
1980​	3,846,808​	83.6%​	4,601,445	21​	19​	399​	11,532
1981​	3,930,964​	81.9%​	4,799,712	21​	19​	399​	12,029
1982​	3,987,650​	80.6%​	4,947,457	21​	19​	399​	12,400
1983​	4,012,222​	80.7%​	4,971,774	21​	20​	420​	11,838
1984​	4,027,095​	78.8%​	5,110,527	21​	20​	420​	12,168
1985​	4,028,603​	75.7%​	5,321,801	21​	20​	420​	12,671
1986​	4,024,679​	76.0%​	5,295,630	21​	20​	420​	12,609
1987​	4,018,559​	76.3%​	5,266,788	21​	20​	420​	12,540
1988​	4,001,924​	76.9%​	5,204,062	21​	20​	420​	12,391
1989​	3,974,147​	75.6%​	5,256,808	21​	20​	420​	12,516
1990​	3,928,761​	74.2%​	5,294,826	21​	20​	420​	12,607
1991​	3,878,180​	73.9%​	5,247,876	21​	20​	420​	12,495
1992​	3,826,733​	70.6%​	5,420,302	22​	20​	440​	12,319
1993​	3,770,194​	66.6%​	5,660,952	24​	20​	480​	11,794
1994​	3,713,351​	65.3%​	5,686,602	26​	20​	520​	10,936
1995​	3,653,201​	62.9%​	5,807,951	26​	20​	520​	11,169
1996​	3,591,051​	62.3%​	5,764,127	26​	20​	520​	11,085
1997​	3,535,030​	62.1%​	5,692,480	26​	20​	520​	10,947
1998​	3,484,555​	61.3%​	5,684,429	26​	20​	520​	10,932
1999​	3,436,293​	61.0%​	5,633,267	27​	20​	540​	10,432
2000​	3,394,943​	57.1%​	5,945,609	28​	20​	560​	10,617
2001​	3,372,067​	54.8%​	6,153,407	30​	20​	600​	10,256
2002​	3,366,817​	53.6%​	6,281,375	30​	20​	600​	10,469
2003​	3,370,217​	54.7%​	6,161,274	30​	20​	600​	10,269
2004​	3,373,771​	54.3%​	6,213,206	30​	20​	600​	10,355
2006​	3,373,287​	53.4%​	6,317,017	30​	20​	600​	10,528
2007​	3,374,841​	51.9%​	6,502,584	30​	20​	600​	10,838
2008​	3,389,347​	51.2%​	6,619,818	30​	20​	600​	11,033
2009​	3,418,794​	51.6%​	6,625,570	30​	20​	600​	11,043
2010​	3,448,997​	53.5%​	6,446,723	30​	20​	600​	10,745
2011​	3,475,379​	52.8%​	6,582,157	30​	20​	600​	10,970
2012​	3,492,458​	53.4%​	6,540,184	30​	20​	600​	10,900
2013​	3,506,025​	52.8%​	6,640,199	30​	20​	600​	11,067
2014​	3,516,428​	52.2%​	6,736,452	30​	20​	600​	11,227
2015​	3,523,246​	50.8%​	6,935,524	30​	20​	600​	11,559
2016​	3,519,123​	49.0%​	7,181,884	30​	20​	600​	11,970
2017​	3,505,325​	45.9%​	7,636,874	30​	20​	600​	12,728
2018​	3,488,071​	45.1%​	7,734,082	31​	20​	620​	12,474
2019​	3,469,587​	43.5%​	7,976,062	31​	20​	620​	12,865
2020​	3,445,401​	42.6%​	8,087,796	31​	20​	620​	13,045
2021​	3,419,914​	42.7%​	8,009,166	31​	20​	620​	12,918
2022​	3,396,136​	43.2%​	7,861,426	32​	20​	640​	12,283

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Here's the table based on the revised data:

It looks similar to the original table (on the first page), but the growth rate is slower. For example, the talent pool in 2022 is estimated to be 71% larger than in 1980. Under the original method, it was estimated to be 139% larger.

On a per-team basis, this suggests that the league was at its most competitive during the mid/late Original Six era. Compared to the previous version, the biggest difference is the talent pool (on a per roster spot basis) is estimated to be much smaller over the past decade. It's still healthy, but it's roughly in line with where it was during Gretzky's prime (rather than being vastly higher, which is what the first version suggested). Intuitively this result makes more sense. Based on the data I've compiled, there were only 13 years in Canadian history where there were 210,000+ males born. Those were 1953 through 1965 (which would populate the NHL from the mid 1970's to late 1990's).

To illustrate the point - today, Canada's population is more than double what it was in 1960. But the country still produces fewer births.

There are other qualitative factors that need to be considered. I went through these in detail on the first page. My conclusion is, overall, the qualitative factors suggest that I've overestimated the size of the talent pool in recent years. (I've thought about incorporating obesity rates as a proxy for those who didn't play sports growing up, but I couldn't find reliable data).

Based on this method, when comparing 2022 to 1990, the numbers say the talent pool is close to 50% larger today. (That's in total - on a per roster basis, it's virtually equal). But the rising cost of hockey, higher obesity rates, and the explosion of other forms of (non-athletic) recreation all reduce the number of Canadian men playing hockey. For those reasons, I suspect (but can't prove) that the talent pool today probably isn't that much larger than it was ~35 years ago.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Based on this method, when comparing 2022 to 1990, the numbers say the talent pool is close to 50% larger today. (That's in total - on a per roster basis, it's virtually equal). But the rising cost of hockey, higher obesity rates, and the explosion of other forms of (non-athletic) recreation all reduce the number of Canadian men playing hockey. For those reasons, I suspect (but can't prove) that the talent pool today probably isn't that much larger than it was ~35 years ago.

This is an interesting set of points. Thanks for doing the footwork on this topic which is the foundation of so many other discussions around here.