Friend of mine sent me the link to this article.....it's a great little piece on hockey parents and the reality of what a given kid's chances are of having an NHL career.
Anyone who has seen any number of minor hockey games anywhere in this country (or probably in the world, at that) has seen the parents who are convinced they're rearing the next Sidney Crosby and/or who are reliving their own NHL dreams through their kids.
Let's think about this.....I don't know how many kids play minor hockey in Canada. But, according to the 2006 census, there's about 3 million boys between ages 5 and 19 in Canada so I'll guess around 500,000 play organized minor hockey. I could be way off, but I'll run with that number. There's what, 400 Canadian players in the NHL? Doing the math, that means about 0.08% of those 500,000 kids will eventually play in the NHL. That's less than one-tenth of one percent and about 1 out of every 1,250 kids. At 20 kids per team you would have to pick 62 random teams before you found a team with a future NHLer on it.
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A study was done about ten years ago on Ontario players born in 1975. NHL scouts considered this class to be one of the best ever in Ontario. Approximately 30,000 kids born in 1975 had played minor hockey at some point and by 1991, there were 22,000 players born in 1975 playing hockey in Ontario. Of these 22,000, only 48 were drafted by the NHL, and 34 had signed NHL contract. As of 1/1/99 (age 23 for this group), 23 had played a game in the NHL and only 11 were active in the NHL. That 0.08% of the 30,000.
Also, only 105 kids ever played a game in the OHL (0.35%) and only 41 played NCAA Division 1 hockey (0.14%).
The report can be found here:
http://www.ts-mha.com/STRAIGHT%20FACTS%20ABOUT%20MAKING%20IT%20IN%20PRO%20HOCKEY.htm
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