Why are there so rare american born hockey plaeyers?

Question

i'm new to the game, just started watching a few months ago and i've noticed that there are only a handful of people born in the US who play...I'm not against foreigners or anything, so dont think i'm prejudiced against them

Answer 1

Cuse Canadians are born with skates on there feet.

Answer 2

Everyone has really given you the answer, I'd just like to add that in the early 90's it looked like there was going to be a huge American player surge, but what ended up happening instead was the invasion of the Swedes and Fins, and man do I love watching those folks play. Very skilled, very finesse, very accurate. The Canadians and Americans play more of a gritty, grind it out punch you in the face style of hockey.

Anyway, welcome to the greatest game on Earth.

Answer 3

my opinon is because hockey isnt really an american sport we dont really have hockey weather all the time.

Answer 4

it's not as ingrained into the culture. There aren't the abundance of youth leagues either.

Answer 5

Because our best athletes usually gravitate to the more popular sports in the US, football, baseball, and basketball.

Answer 6

there are more than u think but in Canada they are all hockey and hockey is still growing in the us

Answer 7

or Estonia, eh Joe?

invasion now that's funny. the vast majority of people in both Canada and America had roots in Europe .. ya'll are funny

Answer 8

Canada is the only country with more active players than the U.S.

Answer 9

Before you all give me a thumbs down and take away my recently returned top contributor badge. This is a joke answer.

Because it takes brains to play hockey and Americans (btw Canada is in America) gravitate towards baseball, basketball, and bowling.

Answer 10

Hockey is expensive. I mean people say football is, but with hockey you need skates and the ice surface to play on as well. So kids play the other sports usually. Not as many places for outdoor rinks as you get in Canada, which is why so many players were Canadian for so long. Now you get the Europeans as well. The U.S. does produce some good players though when they make it to the NHL level.

Also consider the level of interest in hockey in the U.S. If more people were interested you'd probably get more people playing at a young age.

Answer 11

If you look up the stats, almost 80 percent of the players are north american, about 25 percent are infact american.  It's just everyone in Canada is addicted to hockey, like me.  As for the europeans, it only seems like there are many of them because teams pluck the very best from europe and most of them are stars who receive more exposure than the role playing americans.

Answer 12

I prefer mine well done. As to your question, there are a LOT of US born players in the NHL. Do a search at the nhl.com website.

*** suspendedagain...what are you implying...that hockey players aren't among the best athletes?

Answer 13

Americans have the second biggest number of players to Canadians in the NHL

Answer 14

I hope you mean rare like a steak.  Look at the USA hockey website and see how many teams there are nation-wide.

Answer 15

Handful?Theres a handful of Americans on each team..Now Latvia,thats a different story.

Answer 16

In other countries that is all they know. Hockey is to Canada what football is to the US and soccer is to say Brazil. But there are quite a few US born players in the league. I mean compared to all of the European countries it seems like there aren't many US born players but they lump all of the European players together as a whole. If you just go by individual players from a particular country like say Finland and compare their # of players to the # of US born players I would bet that there are more Americans in the NHL than there are Fins.

The NHL seems to generalize the players as being North American or European. If you think about it that way you are saying that North Americans come from the US and Canada but Europeans come from Russia,Latvia,Sweden,Finland,Czech Republic,Germany etc.... I guarantee there are more Canadian Players than there are Russians and Czechs and even Fins and Swedes combined.The US has more than most if not all of the individual European countries as well