World Hockey Summit Analyses Changed Perspective to Hockey
The ability to bring out and develop new talent is what keeps any game alive, ice hockey is no different. To survive, hockey depends on the youth. It's only when young hockey players go on to become professionals that the sport is fueled across the globe. And the best way to do this was at the World Hockey Summit’s agenda in Toronto.
Every conceivable aspect of the game was considered. Graphs and Statistics were on display to highlight the problems and the solutions. It was all pretty serious business but its seriousness might actually have been the only problem that couldn’t be expressed on a graph.
The Hockey World gathered in Toronto and collectively told itself that it needed to lighten things up. The bottom line fact is that 44 percent of youth that take up Hockey stop playing before the age of nine, The rest ofcourse don’t continue playing either. The dropout rate is atrocious and something is definitely not right. There are a myriad of reasons why young players give up hockey. It’s a fairly intense game and parents pull their children out in fear of injury, the costs of playing are too high for some, others like football better.
In a ‘serious’ effort to bring out the very best a young player could perform on the ice, highly demanding skill development programs were initiated. With a little bit of creativity, playing hockey could be likened to boot camp. The stakes somehow become high right from the get go and this really just sucks the life out of the actual game. Any initiative the hockey world takes to develop young players into tomorrow’s professionals will meet failure if today’s youth is not having fun playing the game.
USA Hockey’s Bob Mancini said exactly that at the summit. “We have to change the introduction kids get to Hockey”. Hockey has become too rigid and non-fun even for its youngest players.
Brendan Shanahan, NHL vice president of Hockey has firmly anchored himself to the ‘fun-first’ camp. He recalled how before his hockey career began; Shanahan just loved playing the game. The goal for them when Shanahan and his peers first started playing hockey was to simply enjoy themselves instead of looking at playing hockey as training to play more hockey.
Shanahan said that the goal for hockey should be to get the youth onto the ice and keep them there while making it an enjoyable experience. The young players would develop skills and improve without even realizing it. The youth who show interest in the sport do so because it is a fun game and that concept needs to be preserved. Shanahan said that if they could get player development while keeping the game interesting and fun then they would have ‘locked onto something valuable.’
Another change that Shanahan believed would be good for the youth was to have an offseason. Shanahan didn’t approve of the idea of Hockey all year round. He said that youngsters need a break from hockey and that too much of it would most likely turn out to be counterproductive. “Make them miss it a little bit,” he said.
Shanahan urged the hockey community to ease the pressure off its younger players. As things stand at present, the young players are under enough pressure to make the adults crack. There are two kinds of players, those who are good at the game and those who struggle with a hockey stick. Professional ice hockey focuses on those who are good and puts them under the microscope. While they are on the ice sometimes it’s too competitive making it less enjoyable. Their minds aren’t in the game as much as they are on potential scholarships, impressing scouts, playing in the professional league and maybe even making an NHL career. The actual game can take a back seat to everything else.
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