My cousin is 11 and he wants to play at a decent rep level for hockey when he's ~15. I saw him in a gym playing floor hockey. He could score, pass, deke and even defend significantly better than most players in that community center league. Unfortunately, he has never laced up skates. Assuming he works really hard to catch up to 11 year olds who played hockey most of their life, how different is floor hockey to ice hockey? Besides a different surface.
Stickhandling on ice is an an entirely different beast than land. Puck moves differently on ice, almost like trying to stickhandle an air hockey puck when the air is on (ice) vs it being off (land).
It takes much softer/faster hands to handle a puck gliding on ice. Just getting proficient at it will take hundreds of hours, triple that for being able to handle the puck at high speeds in traffic.
My daughter is 11 and started skating at 4… she’s put in thousands of hours at developing her skating at a AA level.
Then there are the AAA kids who will dunk all over AA kids with their skating.
If you put a good AA player into a game with AAA players, he/she can have the sickest hands, but he/she won’t be able to do much unless he/she is an elite skater.
Even at single A, these kids all backcheck their asses off.
My daughter has to beat not only AA blue liners, but she constantly has backcheckers on her ass - and she can motor and really handle the puck, but it’s a slog for her and other kids at this level to show off their skill because everyone can skate and is coming for you shift after shift.
This is what your cousin is up agt, and while he’s learning the basics, these kids are putting in countless hours to master advanced skating techniques.
These kids aren’t going to suddenly stop learning while your cousin catches up. That’s the rub right there.
If he starts now he can still become a hell of a good player when he hits his late teens and early 20s and I’ll bet he will never regret it.
But when I say hell of a player, I mean compared to the avg beer leaguer and such.