And if the idea is to keep kids in the game, we're failing there, too. Although Canada has more children playing hockey than any country in the world, about 475,000, the dropout rate skyrockets at age 12. Seventy-five per cent of the kids who start by age five or six have quit by age 15. Soccer, with a youth enrolment of about 530,000, has surpassed hockey as the most popular participation sport in Canada. For the most part, skilled players in the National Hockey League are European.
Adolescents leave hockey for reasons that include lifestyle, maturity, money and relationships.
But they also drop out because they are old enough to make a decision independent of their parents. And by age 13, most of them don't want any part of what they consider a hostile environment. In the early years, a child faces the problem of the overinvolved parent. At the arena they are called Screamer Dads and Screamer Moms. Ray Lalonde, a minor hockey coach in Toronto, remembers one boy who insisted on carrying the puck down only one side of the rink.