the sport most similar to hockey for Americans

[OnWis97]

Football equipment may rival hockey equipment in cost, but I doubt anything else about playing football rivals "ice time."

[BBTV]

5 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

Football equipment may rival hockey equipment in cost, but I doubt anything else about playing football rivals "ice time."

 

But like I said, at least in my experience, football equipment was provided for the season by the school or youth league.  It sucked if you got stuff that was obviously 5 seasons old, but the costs were minimal.  

While it's true you just need a ball and a field to play, that doesn't help if you're a lineman or linebacker - you kinda need organized ball in order to develop those skills.  IDK if they use blocking sleds anymore, but that helps too.  Either way, those things last forever and while the "rich" schools certainly have better stuff, basically anyone can play organized football.

 

Hockey (again, in my experience only) required you to own everything outright, and for growing kids, that meant purchasing larger stuff every year.  I'm in an NFL survivor pool that's a fund raiser for a local HS's hockey program (only because my former boss is the head of their booster club) but I think the funds pretty much just subsidize the ice time, and the players are all on their own for everything else (in addition to club dues... which can be exorbitant.)

 

But this horse is dead at this point - I think the conclusion is that "growing the game" is kind of a farce, and at least in North America, it just means "getting more of the 1%ers interested in the sport".  I'm not sure outside of North America, but given how popular of a sport it is in some pretty poor countries (Serbia for example), I'd imagine the barrier to entry is far lower - but would need someone from there to weigh in.  

[chcarlson23]

2 hours ago, Sport said:

 

The only people I've ever heard of who followed that path were the Mullen brothers who played hockey on roller skates in Hell's Kitchen, New York and their story is such a long shot it's crazy it happened. Their dad worked at MSG and the GM of the Rangers started a Manhattan hockey club and put them in the league, which it turns out they were pretty good. I don't think you'll ever see anything like that again. 

Jason Zucker apparently got his start playing roller hockey in Vegas. I’m not sure exactly how he got into “ice” hockey, but that’s the next closest I can think of…

[sportsfan7]

I will say, being from rural Minnesota, I can't say I ever saw money as a barrier to playing hockey. A lot of kids played, many of whom were lower middle class. Obviously, money is needed to go anywhere in hockey, which is why our large school district's post-hs successes come from a kid every other year making it to juniors. I will also add that hockey in MN seems to be more community based than in the other two Ms. HS hockey in MN seems to be the top tier, while in the other two it seems to be the elite club teams that are the top tier.

[spartacat_12]

20 hours ago, BBTV said:

I had kinda had this vision of Canada that the government actually used tax dollars to give schools tons of equipment to dole out to any kid that wanted to play, and basically subsided most hockey-related expenses.  Like on your pay stub, there'd be $5,000 taken out for fed income tax, $2,000 for social security, and $150 for community hockey.  Guess I was way off on that.  To DGs point, most schools have warehouses where there's tons of $1k football helmets, shoulder pads, pants, girdles, etc., but for hockey, most HS programs around here are "club", and even if the level of play is pretty high (every year there would be new kids at my school that moved from Arizona or other at-the-time-non-hockey areas just to play hockey) it was the most exclusive club anyone could be a member of.  There's certainly no "bin" of equipment that you borrowed for each season and just returned at the end.

 

Public high school sports are not the same in Canada compared to the States, mainly because Canadian universities/colleges do not provide any sort of athletic scholarships. American school boards can use the potential for scholarships as justification for putting public money into sports programs, but up here people aren't going to want their taxes being used for hockey equipment that could maybe help one student out of hundreds go pro.

 

15 hours ago, IceCap said:

With hockey there's no "let's just go and play a pickup game" culture because even a pickup game involves someone paying for ice time at a local rink and they won't let you on the ice unless you've got a full set of gear. 

 

I mean you have street hockey, which is really fun in its own way when you're a kid, but it's not going to hone your skills any. 

 

I can only speak for my time living in Ottawa or Toronto, but during the winter it's easy to find pickup games. Pretty much every single city-run community centre has an outdoor rink around it that's completely free to the public (aside from the odd time where it would be reserved), and all you need is skates & a stick. In high school my friends & I would go to the ODR every Friday to play, and all it cost us was the occasional puck being lost in a snowbank.

[AFirestormToPurify]

I'd like to address some inaccuracies here and maybe give another point of view

 

Full disclaimer and context: I'm in my late 20s, I've always lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Montreal and have never played "travel" (not really a thing here in Quebec, there's a few differences in how hockey is organized like for example, the equivalent to Ontario Jr A is called Junior AAA here, I've played QC Junior A and I wasn't that good lol) or any high or competitive level of hockey. And just as a point of reference, there are 3 hockey rinks in my neighborhood alone. I can see one from my living room window and the furthest one is a 10 minute drive

 

BUT. It's absolutely false, at least where I live that you need to be upper class or rich to play hockey here. I've played with plenty, not just one or two kids who came from monoparental families whose single parent was on social welfare. Used skates can be had for $50 dollars. The cheapest (and conveniently least fragile) composite one-piece sticks can be had for $50. Those will last you forever at lower levels. I bought a Sherwood T90 for $120CAD a few years ago and it performs well for my skill level and size and it's an absolute tank and they used those in the NHL not that long ago. You don't NEED a $300 stick if you don't play in the absolute highest level of hockey and by that point usually, you don't pay out of your pocket for your own sticks/gear anymore. And you don't NEED $1K skates either. The inscription for the season was between $200 and $300CAD. Granted, that was 15-10 years ago but I doubt prices have gone up drastically since then. Elbow pads are definitely NOT $100USD. I bought some Easton S19 pads for about $80CAD about 10 years ago and they're still practically new since I got two seasons of organized team hockey in them and I rarely play with full gear anymore. But you can definitely buy elbow pads for half of that amount and if you hang your stuff to dry and play recreatively they WILL last a lot longer than 2 years. Come on. Which is another thing I wanted to address, not every indoor rink requires you to wear full gear. I've been to plenty of places where they require only gloves, helmet with a facemask, neck guard and obviously skates and a stick. The Montreal Canadiens have funded and built full sized and refrigerated outdoor rinks in the poorer neighborhoods in and around Montreal and they all have a small building where you can tie your skates and I can't speak for everyone of them, but the one where I live lets you borrow gear if you're a kid. Or at the very least skates and helmets, maybe gloves and sticks, not sure. So as a parent, unless you're on the absolute brink of homelessness, you can definitely buy your kid a $30 pair of gloves and a $15 wooden stick at Canadian Tire and your kid can spend full days at the rink for $45 a year. Also, you can't hone your skills while playing street hockey? Absolute lie. The kids I've played with who played lots and lots of street hockey were always the ones with the best hands and the best puck possession skills. If you can deke someone flat footed in shoes with a sticky orange ball on a tennis court, those skills absolutely translate well to ice hockey. And I'm not even talking about roller hockey here.

If the argument was "you need to be rich to make it to the NHL" yeah, sure. It definitely helps. If the argument was just "you need to be rich just to play hockey" well damn maybe where some of you live but not definitely not everywhere

[IceCap]

8 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

I can only speak for my time living in Ottawa or Toronto, but during the winter it's easy to find pickup games. Pretty much every single city-run community centre has an outdoor rink around it that's completely free to the public (aside from the odd time where it would be reserved), and all you need is skates & a stick. In high school my friends & I would go to the ODR every Friday to play, and all it cost us was the occasional puck being lost in a snowbank.

The bigger the city the more opportunities there are for things like this...but as a goalie? The gear is still a huge deal. You need far more than a stick and skates if you want to...you know...not get pummelled.

 

We had those outdoor rinks where I grew up (Kitchener-Waterloo) but I can count one one hand the number of times enough of us went to play AND the ice was available. Maybe, had we lived in a bigger city, there would have been more free ice.

As it was, our best bet was to pay for ice time. Not a cheap prospect between ten sixteen year olds all working part-time!

[dont care]

On 10/27/2021 at 10:34 PM, IceCap said:

I've never priced football equipment but it's possible it's not as pricey as hockey gear. 

 

There's also the fact that you don't need a full set of football gear to at least hone your skills. You just need a football and a street or a field to pass it around on. 

With hockey there's no "let's just go and play a pickup game" culture because even a pickup game involves someone paying for ice time at a local rink and they won't let you on the ice unless you've got a full set of gear. 

 

I mean you have street hockey, which is really fun in its own way when you're a kid, but it's not going to hone your skills any. 

Also normally gear for football is provided by the school from high school on Atleast. While for hockey their gear doesn’t seem to be provided by the teams. In football you only need cleats and gloves to play competitively.

[spartacat_12]

12 hours ago, IceCap said:

The bigger the city the more opportunities there are for things like this...but as a goalie? The gear is still a huge deal. You need far more than a stick and skates if you want to...you know...not get pummelled.

 

Yeah, goalie is a different animal. When we'd play outside we never had anyone playing in net. We'd either flip the net over or just play posts.

 

I remember my brother deciding one year that he wanted to switch to playing goalie. He quickly realized he didn't like it, so my parents weren't too thrilled about paying for the gear for one season.

[Sport]

I don't know why any person would ever choose to eschew the most fun thing you can do in sports so they can stand in one place in gear that's 3 times as expensive to get hit with shots. That's why goalies are usually weirdos. 

 

You guys are getting into the weeds here, though. Yes the gear can be had for less if you buy used (that's what I did) and yes in some hockey hotbeds the house league ice time doesn't cost that much and there's outdoor rinks and/or ponds. But the biggest prohibitive cost to get in the youth-to-NHL pipeline is the travel leagues with professional youth coaches (read: not just one of the kids' dads) and getting game experience against other top level competition and private coaching. You don't absolutely have to go that route and there are, of course, exceptions currently in the NHL, but it's a lot lot harder if you don't. 

 

Here's an example: I used to go to summer hockey camp every year. The rink was 10 minutes from my house and it was 5 full days on the ice, which was really good for my game, but it wasn't cheap. A couple of my teammates, though, went to far more expensive sleepaway hockey camps in addition to our local camps with me and the next fall they were clearly better than me at the opening practice. That kind of experience and practice adds up. Not saying I'd be in the NHL if I got more attention and practice, but I might've made first team all-conference instead of All-Conference Honorable Mention. 

[IceCap]

2 hours ago, Sport said:

I don't know why any person would ever choose to eschew the most fun thing you can do in sports so they can stand in one place in gear that's 3 times as expensive to get hit with shots. That's why goalies are usually weirdos. 

We're sick, broken people.

[Digby]

3 hours ago, Sport said:

I don't know why any person would ever choose to eschew the most fun thing you can do in sports so they can stand in one place in gear that's 3 times as expensive to get hit with shots. That's why goalies are usually weirdos. 

 

You guys are getting into the weeds here, though. Yes the gear can be had for less if you buy used (that's what I did) and yes in some hockey hotbeds the house league ice time doesn't cost that much and there's outdoor rinks and/or ponds. But the biggest prohibitive cost to get in the youth-to-NHL pipeline is the travel leagues with professional youth coaches (read: not just one of the kids' dads) and getting game experience against other top level competition and private coaching. You don't absolutely have to go that route and there are, of course, exceptions currently in the NHL, but it's a lot lot harder if you don't. 

 

This is correct. When I was younger I lived in Vermont for a while and still have family there. The proliferation of hand-me-down gear and presence of outdoor rinks and even ponds/rivers made playing a pretty popular and casual recreational game. But outside of John LeClair we weren't producing pros; even with UVM right there the pros come from the suburbs north near Montreal or south near Boston, which had that kind of infrastructure. (Pond hockey is seemingly a dicier proposition with each passing winter, as well.)

 

I'd also say that, gear aside, the filthy rich stage-parents route is the way to go for any sport. Basketball and soccer are as low-barrier as it gets but pay-to-play is still the way to go.

[Discrim]

On 10/28/2021 at 11:27 AM, BBTV said:

While it's true you just need a ball and a field to play, that doesn't help if you're a lineman or linebacker - you kinda need organized ball in order to develop those skills.  IDK if they use blocking sleds anymore, but that helps too.  Either way, those things last forever and while the "rich" schools certainly have better stuff, basically anyone can play organized football.

Only way I really knew how to get around that limitation was either with a wall or a garbage can.  The former was basically the solo version of a team drill, and while I didn't really talk about the garbage can thing, my varsity coach was aware of it.

[Chromatic]

If your football gear is costing more than your hockey gear, you must be wearing both the most expensive football equipment available and cheapest hockey equipment.

[dont care]

I’ll just say this. I didn’t play hockey in high school because you had to bring your own equipment. I played football though and all the gear except cleats, gloves and jock were provided by the school. It was an easy choice.