Yukon Joe
Registered User
I don’t know of a single minor hockey club in Canada or U.S. that doesn’t do this. Typically it’s a page on the website showing all the NHL, AHL, CHL and NCAA D1 players that passed through. Basically “if they could do it, you can too”
Of course those guys probably would have gotten there regardless of where they had played as kids. Just as long as they had somewhere to play.
My kid's hockey club hands out a t-shirt to anyone who does one of their camps - it lists all the one-time members of the club who went on to play in the NHL on the back of the shirt.
It's a fairly impressive list - until you start to think about how many kids have played in the club over it's entire history - the odds now look a lot worse.
That being said, I would tend to disagree with the fatalistic notion that great players will just always get noticed. I mean it's probably true for the elite of the elite - Connor Bedard would probably be noticed no matter where he played - but you hear to many stories of full on professionals who had to really grind to try and make a name for themselves.
I was listening to former goalie Joaquin Gage on the radio on my way to work this morning. He's hardly a household name - he had less than 30 games in the NHL over a couple of different stints - but he played professionally for 15+ years in the NHL, AHL and Europe, which is a pretty respectable career. And he was talking about cold-calling GMs and sending out highlight videos just to try and get noticed
I've always followed the career of Dylan Cozens because I knew his parents when I lived in Yukon (it's the Yukon - everyone knows everyone). But he had to move down to BC as a kid precisely because he couldn't find quality opposition and wouldn't get noticed.
I know my kid's club probably has a better reputation than many for developing high-level hockey players in Edmonton - but then those hockey academies, although new, have an even better reputation.
So friends of ours are doctors. I believe they're going to put their kid into a hockey academy next year. Their kid is good - he won't be out of place - but he's nothing special and I don't think he's going anywhere in hockey. You know what though - if I had their kind of money I would probably put my kid in a hockey academy too. It has nothing to do with it being an "investment", but I know my kid kind of wishes he could go to one. (I don't have their kind of money though and barring an academy suddenly offering him a free ride he's not going to one)
So that being said - I do sometimes think that articles like this kind of just assume that parents are idiots. So yes - spending $20k to send your kid to a travel football program is pretty unlikely to "pay off". But do you think that most parents don't realize that? From all of the hockey parents I know (and I know a lot) there are a handful that are kind of delusional when it comes to their kid, but most of them know what the odds are. So maybe those football parents just think the chance to travel and play high level highschool football is worth it to give their kid that experience even if they wind up never being recruited into a D1 program.