Hamilton minor hockey: does size matter?

In the end, there’s no substitute for good coaching to attract and keep kids playing

My local hockey association held a meeting recently to discuss possible strategies to increase enrolment, with a focus on population and competitive “rep” teams. Put simply: Ontario Minor Hockey Association (OMHA) teams in Hamilton draw from small populations. Milton, for example, draws from a population of 110,000 and Oakville from 200,000, while Stoney Creek draws from about 63,000 and Flamborough has a feeder population of 40,000. Typically, teams like Milton and Oakville sit atop the league rankings, while teams from smaller populations sit at the bottom.

Kids who struggle to win a game all season are, naturally, less enthusiastic about hockey, and more likely to leave the sport, so there have been discussions about removing borders so small associations can act as one, and players can attend whichever tryouts they wish. At first glance, it makes sense: after all, if you have more players at tryouts, then you have more choice and a better chance of finding better players. If there’s a greater choice of tryouts, a player who fails to get on one might get on another and be able to play at the same competitive level.

But it’s possible that the association with the best record in a certain age group would draw the most players at tryouts, thereby shunting all the best players to one team. It’s possible that a coach with a poor record of development or an association with some unpopular board members would drive players away to other associations’ tryouts. And in the end, wouldn’t these still be the same kids who lose to Milton and Oakville, just in a bigger, more mobile group?

Certainly, this year’s Winter Olympics seemed to prove that population size doesn’t determine a sport’s success or popularity. The Norwegians came first with a total of 39 medals, despite its small population of 5.2 million. Germany, population 82.6 million, came next with 31 medals. The United States, population 323.1 million, came fourth with 23 medals. So the USA won 16 fewer medals than Norway, even though it has 64 times the population. Another example: Finland, population 5.4 million, has produced more NHL goalies than any other country in Europe since 1980. Why not Sweden, with 9.9 million?

Because it’s not about population size, it’s about culture. Different places create different cultures for different sports. It would be nice if we could simply switch associations or remove geographical boundaries and solve the problem, but really improving the long-declining fortunes of minor hockey in Hamilton won’t be that easy. The challenge of boosting minor hockey isn’t unique to our city, or even our country. A recent series in The Athletic called “From Grassroots to Gold” looks at how different hockey associations have increased participation and development. None of them, for what it’s worth, increased their feeder population.

In fact, places like Finland and Sweden have done the opposite, emphasizing the local club system as a development hub, which is far from what’s often done here: parents in Dundas might take their player to Stoney Creek for goalie training, or an Ancaster player might end up in Burlington for a defence clinic. Finding the right development-for-hire takes not only money and travel time, but trial-and-error. These aren’t the kinds of experiences that encourage other parents to enrol their kids in hockey.

In contrast, Finnish clubs assign dedicated in-house goalie coaches to each team starting when kids are seven. The common refrain in The Athletic’s series is that better coaching is the keystone when it comes to building thriving associations: coaches for coaches, hands-on coach training, consistent quality of coaches.

Another possible solution being discussed by some of Hamilton’s small associations is moving from the OMHA to the Alliance, in which teams are seeded in stronger and weaker groups to protect the weaker ones from a whole season of blowouts; this would increase competitive play, and save some kids from a miserable experience. Similarly, opening up the borders might help a few kids find a better situation than was previously possible. My concern is that these measures might distract us from keeping our eye on the prize, because if we’re talking about improving the minor hockey experience for the majority of players, enough so that word gets out and parents start enrolling their kids again (and the kids want to stay), there’s no replacement for creating a culture of effective, encouraging, locally accessible coaching for all levels of play. This is the real solution. This is the real challenge.

Latham Hunter is a writer and professor of communications and cultural studies; her work has been published in journals, anthologies, magazines and print news for over 20 years. She blogs at The Kids’ Book Curator.