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Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025 [message #839843 is a reply to message #839842 ]	Thu, 02 January 2025 13:42

Skookum Jim
Messages: 6155
Registered: March 2006
Location: Burnaby, BC

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CrusaderPi wrote on Thu, 02 January 2025 10:22

I think it's time for Hockey Canada to come to god again and do a refocus. They did it in the 90s after the World Cup or maybe Nagano and it set us on the right path for success. The entire elite / youth / junior system is in chaos right now and we're seeing the results. Things that need to be addressed (in my opinion):

Major junior teams can't compete unless they take massive cupboard emptying swings
Major junior, at the stock of a pen in America, became a feeder system for the NCAA
The BCHL left Hockey Canada because a better path to the NCAA was needed
Junior A is essentially pointless now
The academy system is now limiting growth potential in hockey in the early teen year (I blame this most of all for the problems we're seeing at the world junior tournament)

I think the solution is a european soccer style tiering of junior hockey and making a premier league for the memorial cup, Turn U18 into U17, and maybe making the bottom tiers of u21 into u20. I have no idea what can be done about the academy system, but it sure seems to me like these elite teams are all playing the same kind of hockey now.

I think this is absolutely true.. the "academy" is just an advance hockey school for kids with wealthy parents.. having a kid in rep hockey is expensive enough.. now these "academies" make it even more expensive..

A Hypothesis:

The COST of putting a kid through hockey at the rep level.. the elite level.. causes the selection pool of kids advancing through the system of elite level hockey .. to become exclusionary.

The huge cost acts to limit the percentage (and probability) of kids with great natural athletic ability and physical attributes (eg. size, strength) that will be able to move on to elite level youth hockey ..

Instead the youth system favours those kids with wealthy parents.. due to the huge cost, the major selection criteria to move through elite level hockey tends to become wealth of parents..

A "Gordie Howe" would still be farming with this model.

At that age the extra skill development (and ice time) a kid gets by going to an "academy" or elite hockey school.. is enough to separate them in skill and skating level from the kids just playing hockey during hockey season.. so when its time to select rep teams in the fall.. the hockey school kids will displace kids that might have more natural athletic ability and better physical attributes.. and more future potential.. These kids will never get the opportunity to develop and realize their true potential.

A few of the kids with wealthy parents that do advance through the youth system go on to be great pro players (i.e. Cellibrini) .. but at a certain point a lot of these kids (those with less natural ability and physical attributes) eventually plateau .. they don't get much better when they get older.. they've reached their maximum ability level at the youth level.. maybe enough to make the CHL.. or get drafted.. then fall of the map.

IMO the academies and hockey schools act as a magnifier to natural abilities.. a kid with high natural ability will have their hockey skills magnified to a higher level than a kid with less.. however, a kid with less natural ability will tend to reach a higher hockey level than a kid with more natural ability that does not receive the magnifying effect of going to an academy.

Essentially, the huge cost eliminates a very large pool of potential hockey stars from ever developing.. which was not a major impediment in years (decades) past..

Don't know how you fix it.. the extra training develops kids faster and to a higher level.. maybe make youth sport costs to families tax deductions?

Just a working hypothesis.. :)

[Updated on: Thu, 02 January 2025 14:03]

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Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Mon, 02 December 2024 22:24
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: CrusaderPi on Mon, 02 December 2024 23:13
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Tue, 03 December 2024 12:23
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: welcometotheOC on Fri, 13 December 2024 19:15
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Fri, 13 December 2024 20:26
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Sun, 15 December 2024 11:34
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Sun, 15 December 2024 11:40
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Sun, 15 December 2024 14:05
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Sat, 28 December 2024 07:24
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: HamBlaster on Sun, 29 December 2024 19:01
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Mon, 30 December 2024 16:31
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: PlusOne on Mon, 30 December 2024 20:06
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Tue, 31 December 2024 21:22
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: CrusaderPi on Thu, 02 January 2025 11:22
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Thu, 02 January 2025 13:42
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: CrusaderPi on Thu, 02 January 2025 13:59
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: oilfan94 on Thu, 02 January 2025 14:08
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Thu, 02 January 2025 14:09
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Thu, 02 January 2025 14:18
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: NZ Oiler Fan on Thu, 02 January 2025 19:43
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: NZ Oiler Fan on Thu, 02 January 2025 20:10
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: HamBlaster on Thu, 02 January 2025 22:18
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Thu, 02 January 2025 23:54
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Fri, 03 January 2025 00:05
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: CrusaderPi on Fri, 03 January 2025 08:20
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: NZ Oiler Fan on Fri, 03 January 2025 09:37
Re: Team Canada World Juniors 2024 / 2025	By: Skookum Jim on Sat, 04 January 2025 18:20

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