My experience in the US: If you’re at a high level by the right age, it doesn’t matter how much your parents make. You will have access to everything if you’re a good enough player.
Not to say that there’s not an advantage for those with deep pocketed families. If your kid has ok talent and can make decent club teams, for sure there are those who can essentially buy further development through non stop coaching, clinics, lessons, camps, etc that a middle class family couldn’t afford.
For instance, sending an solid but otherwise unspectacular talent to an expensive top HS to take advantage of a pipeline and connections to collegiate programs. That’s a way money can be a factor/advantage.
But I don’t think it plays into youth/HS sports nearly as much as people think in the U.S.
Canada I cannot speak on.
Those types of high schools hand out a ton of money too.
The US is a somewhat separate case from Canada. There are interesting options at the High School level that can still feed into USHL and NCAA scholarships and opportunities.
Canada is a little more challenging these days. There's house league and there's rep/travel leagues, and then there's just moving your entire ass family to a different city so your kid can go to one of the "magnet program" hockey schools.
It's not
every player, but it's an alarming and rising number of those who make it to the NHL level, whose family literally uproots themselves and moves to a particular city so they can spend the thousands or tends of thousands of dollars to get their "promising" 10 year old into the right program. It's such an insane thing, but it's become so much more common. Not every, maybe even very few families can actually afford to do that. And the cities that are home to these programs tend to be substantially more expensive in cost of living than small, rural communities like many people, including Wayne grew up in. It's Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton mostly. Or you're sending your kid off alone to private "boarding school"...which is also insanely expensive, even with whatever scholarships. At 10-15 years old.
The US also has a little bit of an edge, in that they've become specialists in selecting athletically gifted kids out of abject poverty. They do it with Football, Basketball, Baseball, Track & Field, etc. America spends a lot on doing that, through various mechanisms. They're starting to figure it out with hockey...but even in the US...there are certain youth hockey and prep school programs that deliver and absolutely insane ratio of NHLer and NHL drafted players. If you can't afford to get your kid into one of those early, you're playing against the odds, no matter how talented they are. Because that's where all the best coaching and training is.
But the biggest hurdle with Hockey...is that skating isn't something poor kids can naturally "learn" if they can't afford skates and ice time. And coaching. Running and throwing balls around is a lot easier to do without a ton of money or equipment or facilities.
Are the McDavid "wealthy":
Take a Tour of Connor McDavid's House (with Connor and Gene Principe) | Go Auto
Or the Stromes family ?
Or by recent you are talking the last 3-5 years (those 2 example starting to date by now) ?
I mean, this is getting into splitting hairs...but yes, McDavey's dad is more or less "executive class" as far as i know. He grew up rich, in Newmarket area, which isn't really where struggling people tend to live. The
average house price is a million dollars. It's among the wealthiest suburban enclaves in Canada. You can call it "Markham" or whatever he actually lists it as, but lol...his dad's work all lists Newmarket. His older brother's hockey profiles list Newmarket as hometown too.
I get a dead link there, but they were not a poor or even struggling medium family by most real accounts. Maybe they made sacrifices on not upgrading to an unnecessary home so they could afford to put Connor through the better programs his older brother didn't necessarily get. But they were plenty comfortable in where they were and obviously had the money to keep him in the programs that got him on that ultra convenient local-ish York-Simcoe to GTHL express train to the NHL.
Hockey has always been too expensive to play. I live in Canada and my parents couldn't afford to get me skates until I was 12 or so, nevermind getting to have all the equipment and playing in a league. Nothing but the number of dollars to play has changed, those who are wealthy can play and those are aren't can't, same as back then.
Yeah. It's a wild thing now...where even back when i was a kid, it was expensive. The registration fees for house league, fairly nominal. But i grew up with a reasonably well off family, professional class dad, mother a teacher who decided it was more cost effective to just stay home for those earliest years but then went back to work as a second income. Still couldn't even come close to affording "rep hockey" for me. I ended up playing with them a decent amount anyway, including the age group above even...but they simply couldn't afford the fees, but more than that...they couldn't afford the time off and other costs and requirements for the travel. So i just played house league. And it's fine...i was never going anywhere with it anyway. lol. But I grew up pretty darn well off, could afford power skating classes in the summer and equipment and everything...as a stretch. But it's just gone nuts from there and everything is so much more expensive and centralized.
Looking back, i honestly feel bad about it because we were so f***ing mean to the poor kids on the house league team. They were shit skaters because they started later and couldn't afford good coaching and summer skills camps and stuff to improve. They had the worst equipment and it was so ugly and clunky and probably hard to even play in. Those f***ing Techron skates. Or no...that's the Chevron thing. What were those plastic things called? But it's just so clear looking back that they were starting from a place of supreme disadvantage, even relative to me...a relatively well off kid, whose parents still couldn't ever even remotely afford even just relative local rep/travel team expenses. Much less...moving to an entirely different city or sending me to an "elite" magnet school type program.
what happens if your child did not have a backyard rink?
Nobody wants to talk about this either. But backyard rinks and community rinks and stuff are in peril now too. Even in Northern Canada...we're getting more and more insane weather. Where it's much later before it's consistently cold enough to freeze actual ice you can skate on. And then in those months where it's cold enough, you get weird hot flashes that melt things. And then you get insane -40 cold snaps where you can't reasonably go out and play hockey.
So even that "homegrown outdoor rink" or "skating on the pond" alternative is deteriorated, relative to Wayne's days as a kid.
