Minor hockey association seeks to attract kids of new Canadians

A leading local minor hockey association is sounding the buzzer on sinking enrolment levels — and hoping a focus on getting the children of new Canadians onto the ice can refill arena benches and locker rooms.

Alliance Hockey, which represents 20 associations and roughly 25,000 youth players in a region stretching from Burlington to Windsor, is seeing a drop in player ranks of three to four per cent a year, said executive director Tony Martindale — enough to prompt a recent email from the agency encouraging its member leagues to promote the sport.

“It’s been ongoing for quite some time,” Martindale said of the drop in youth hockey registration. With the latest national census citing “continuously low ” fertility rates since the 1970s and a growing reliance on immigrants for population growth, Martindale said attracting the families of new Canadians to the sport is going to be key to the game’s longevity. “We need to get those first-generation Canadians, get their kids interested in playing hockey,” Martindale said.

“We’ve got to welcome them with hockey.”

Long gone, it seems, are the days of Canada’s national sport as the go-to activity of its young people. The head of another provincial hockey organization put the change in blunt terms. “In the past, we’ve had the luck of it being the predominant sport. We’d open the doors and people would flock to the rink,” Ontario Hockey Federation president Phillip McKee said.

“Now we’re in the situation where we’re competing against other sports. There’s more opportunity today for kids than there ever was.”

The consequences of slumping membership are real. Hockey clubs might end up with smaller teams, putting more pressure on individual players, Martindale said.

There’s also the possibility that smaller communities could be forced to band together in a combined league if enrolment keeps dropping.

While Ontario Minor Hockey Association leagues have flat enrolment — there were 178,660 registered players across its mainly smaller communities in 2016-17 — hockey’s less-favoured status is no surprise to its leader.

“It used to be, it’s winter in Canada so everybody plays hockey,” executive director Ian Taylor said. “Clearly, that’s just not the case anymore,” he said, adding families have more sport and extracurricular options than ever before.” The fight to attract and retain children is even changing the game itself, Taylor said. For the youngest players, ages five through seven, there’s new focus on skills development and engagement.

The Greater London Hockey Association — which includes West London, Oakridge, North London and the London Bandits — participates in Hockey Canada’s First Shift program, a six-week program designed to introduce hockey to children.

Hockey is looming large in London this spring, with the arrival of the 2018 Hockey Canada Foundation Golf and Gala on June 18-19 — an event that supports First Shift programs in communities across Canada.

It used to be, it’s winter in Canada so everybody plays hockey. Clearly, that’s just not the case anymore.