Folks are seriously burying their heads in the sand if they don't think the sport is becoming much much more economically exclusive with each passing year.
Sure, your kid can "play hockey" with secondhand skates and a wooden stick. What he definitely cannot do is play on a travel team like that, or get 1-on-1 coaching, or play in a showcase tournament on the other side of the country. Guess what creates access to playing at the next level, and continuing to develop? By the time you're 12, shooting tennis balls in your garage isn't gonna get you anywhere but the house league. Which is fine for creating lifelong recreational players, but not for creating Wayne Gretzky.
This is a massive problem with the sport and has been going on right in front of our faces for the past 50 years. Nobody seems to be doing anything about it, beyond token efforts at equipment distribution.
I was a pretty natural athlete myself growing up, but my parents struggled financially and I missed an opportunity at a young age to make the top team because nobody told my parents about the tryouts. The coach for the team said I'd have made it pretty easily when he had asked my parents why I never tried out. I worked my way up over the years, but was sick two years running for AAA tryouts (bronchitis.. yay!) which began right at the end of August only to get sent back down to AA and feel like other kids were skating in mud. I can't say if I had had the same opportunities as another I grew up with who made the NHL that I definitely would have too, but I definitely think there's a snowball effect from losing out on those opportunities at a young age for better training and development/coaching that money and connections provides. On the flipside, a kid who had incredible offensive talent and poise with the puck that I met briefly at a camp but always heard about had told me he wasn't going to play AAA that year because he had to pay for his own hockey (at age 15). He still ended up playing in some junior leagues later on, but I have to wonder if that was true or if it played a role in his hockey career.
When I say we had financial issues. My parents almost lost our house when my dad had cancer, twice, and then again later on because our house had mold. I had one, maybe two pairs of jeans all year. Wore the same clothes all the time. I always had second hand equipment, and used to play with those aluminum sticks that you could fit a blade into because replacing a $15 blade was cheaper than an entire wooden stick. My equipment in my first year was all donated by the community club. I didn't care, I loved hockey. My parents got up as early as 3 am to deliver newspapers before work. My father would work 12 hr overtime shifts on his feet for weeks at a time if they'd let him. I'm grateful for all my parents went through to give me and my brother a happy childhood, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. This was 25 years ago, do they even sell aluminum sticks anymore? When my parents bought their house in 1991 it was only around $89,000. It's worth over $300,000 now, but wages haven't increased to match the inflation and costs of living. I completely agree with you, it's only becoming more difficult to put your kids into hockey each year as our dollar gets stretched further and further. I just don't know if there's any way to remove the systemic barriers to hockey without a massive overhaul to our economy. Community programs certainly help, but they're essentially a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
