Hockey Is Dying In Canada!

Hockey has been known to be Canadas game.  In the past few years…actually decades I feel that hasn’t really been the case.  Canada hasn’t had a Stanley Cup since 1993, the sport has become more and more Americanized, there has been no growth in the game in Canada and the audience of Hockey relies more and more on nepotism and is aging as well.

It’s a privileged sport.

So I was speaking with a co-worker one time, his nephew is 10 years old and plays hockey a lot at a high level, it costs him $10,000 a month!  That’s over $100,000 a year!  This is just for a 10 year old to play hockey, most families don’t have this combined income for necessities let alone have this for just 1 person in the family to play!

Blue Jays, TFC and Raptors effect

While the Blue Jays unfortunately never won the World Series, TFC and Raptors have and these teams have had more constant success than the NHL teams in Canada.  You will see these kids growing up admiring people like Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradly, Kyle Lowry, Demar DeRozen, Kawhi Leonard, Jose Bautista and others and will want to play in their respective sports!

Next to no success in the NHL

While I do feel there is significant interreference done by the NHL and especially number 1 asshole Gary Bettman himself.  We don’t have a lot of success in Hockey besides the Olympics.  How is it that teams like Carolina, Anaheim, Los Angelas who are in the sunbelt area, where you can only play in indoor rinks all have championships.  Where here in Canada, where it’s supposed to be our sport haven’t had a cup since 1993! And not only that only 5 times since 1993 has a Canadian team gone to the finals!

Medical issues

This is one that will show an issue in the next 10-20 years.  Like football, there is a lot of head trauma in hockey, I feel in football, you get hit more often, but with hockey you get hit significantly harder.  You’re usually at speeds of 20+ kph plus with the equipment added on creating extra weight…it’s going to cause extra damage.  Parents are going to be concerned with the injuries especially head injuries.  You can see the older players (Example Chris Pronger), they have a lot of issues that’s going to stick with them for life.

Limited exposure

Of the major sports in North America, Hockey is probably the least viewed worldwide.  Besides North America and some parts of Europe, most people don’t view Hockey besides Olympics. If even that!

Skills don’t translate to the ice

You can play Basketball on the turf and you can play the same way on the court.  You can play soccer in a flat park and play almost the same on the pitch.  You can even most of the time play Baseball in a local park and it can translate to the diamond.  You can’t play road or floor Hockey and expect to have the same skills to translate to the ice!  If you want to doubt that, tell me how a ball on a floor and a puck on the ice move similar…

Players aren’t relatable

Most Hockey players are robots and don’t have personalities.  And the ones that do, usually get shit on.  It’s like they’re afraid to be human and have a sense of humor or personality, or they’re basically forced or raised not to.

Immigrant uprising

Here is one that’s going to cause a lot of flak.  But the reality is, more and more people in Canada are immigrants, they’re usually more into more worldwide sports such as Soccer and Cricket.  And they’re usually not familiar with the sport to begin with.