All four ice rinks at Susan Fennell Sportsplex are full of action on this winter Saturday morning, the air filled with the sound of hockey skates grinding through ice and pucks clanging off the glass.
“It does sadden me,” said Alex Klimsiak, who coaches two teams in Brampton as his way to giving back to the game he still plays recreationally in suburban Toronto at the age of 44. “Enrolment’s probably been declining for the last five, six years. Definitely before the pandemic you could see it. A pandemic just put a magnifying glass and escalated it.”
Yet the sport may no longer be the go-to for kids in Canada. According to the Canadian Youth Sports Report released last summer by Solutions Research Group, soccer is the top choice at 16 per cent, followed by swimming, hockey and basketball. Raw participation numbers for the sports are not comparable given differences in registration requirements across various governing bodies.
When her husband, Amit, first looked at equipment for Shawn, the $1,000 price tag was a shock. Add to that limits on available ice for practices or for fun and games and basketball or soccer suddenly seem easier. “It’s a low-cost entry point, and then it obviously is able to accelerate growth because it provides opportunity,” said Matt Herr, a former NHL player who is now the league’s senior director of youth hockey and industry growth. “Especially in Canada, we’re competing now where it used to be the pastime. … it was everybody’s first choice, and now there’s all these different choices and we’ve got to make sure we’re still everybody’s first choice.
Klimsiak, the Brampton coach, estimated that the cost of being on a competitive team – the ones that travel to tournaments and have multiple set practice times as opposed to recreational teams – starts at $4,000, with some teams charging $10,000 or more. He said some Toronto hockey organizations are combining resources because there aren’t enough players to go around.
“It’s like if you don’t want to participate in hockey on those terms, then there isn’t as much space for you I think as there should be,” Darnell said. “It’s if you don’t want to play by those rules, then there isn’t space for you and then you go and play a different sport.