Youth sports' highs and lows on full display in hockey: 'Race to the bottom'

Author Malcolm Gladwell tells us an "outlier" is someone who is extraordinarily talented. An outlier, though, has been given an exceptional pathway to succeed.

Bill Gates, Gladwell writes, certainly could make the case for being a genius. But consider that as an eighth grader, he was given unlimited access to a computer terminal. He got to practice real-time programming in the late 1960s, a time when most colleges didn't have computer clubs.

Gladwell applies the same logic to teenage Canadian hockey players competing for a major junior championship in 2007. Sure they were highly skilled, but many were at the oldest edge of their age group. They had been bigger and stronger when they were younger, and thus placed into a top-level national pipeline because they were fortunate enough to be born in January, February or March.

We long for our kids to be outliers when it comes to sports. We seek that chance, that situation, that circumstance in which they can develop and take their ability as far as it will go.

The Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers, who draw nearly three-fourths of their players from the United States and Canada, gives us a chance to dream about what our kids might achieve.

Parents from both countries throw money into equipment, fees and development at an exorbitant rate in hopes their children will become so-called outliers.

Perhaps they forget the most important ingredient, one that has driven hockey players to international heights.

"We take our fun pretty seriously," says Ken Martel, senior director for player and coach development for USA Hockey. "We've really looked at what keeps kids coming back. Because if they're not having fun, they’re not enjoying the experience, they vote with their feet. They just walk away."

Youth hockey imitates a lot of what’s wrong with youth sports in America – high costs, heavy travel, parental politics and influence. But it also reminds us of how fun is a fundamental tool for success in our kids’ games.

USA TODAY Sports spoke with officials from USA Hockey and Hockey Canada and a former elite-level Canadian player and GM about the wide appeal of hockey, but also how the game can bring out the best – and the worst – of youth sports.

'Race to the bottom': Our misguided infatuation with championships

We are a results-oriented country, and the fever trickles down to our kids’ sports.

"You see sports doing national championships, for crying out loud, 8-year-olds," Martel says.

If you’ve been to tournament-style games contested between teams of little kids in America, you’re likely to see looks of anguish on players' faces. They feel everyone is watching them, and they hear their coaches or parents urging them to perform.

Now think of how their faces light up when the coach introduces game play as a part of practice. When Martel was asked to reinvent the youth hockey experience for USA Hockey a decade and a half ago, he and other coaches with pro and college backgrounds realized they were drilling too much and treating teenagers like adults.

"The next thing you know, the 8-year-olds are trying to do the same thing as the 18-year-olds," Martel says. "There’s this race to the bottom a little bit."

Martel grew up in Southern California during the free play era at ice rinks of the 1970s and ‘80s. When he wasn’t on the ice, he longed for the natural high that playing hockey with his friends brought him.

Under Martel’s watch, USA Hockey did away with a 12-year-old national championship. But the competitiveness in practice among all age groups across the country is at an all-time high.

"Now you can't walk into a rink without seeing quite a bit of small-area games or small-sided games," Martel says. "It’s go out and play the sport, maybe without the same ice surface size – we’ll make things a little smaller – but we do different things in that to get them to work on technical abilities and tactical situations.

"Kids have fun. They get to problem solve. There's autonomy to that. And you see that in our play."

At a time when kids are quitting sports at an alarming rate, they are flooding into American hockey. According to USA Hockey, 556,186 players registered in 2022-23, up from 465,975 in 2008-09.

Still, there are hundreds of thousands of kids across the U.S. and Canada who don’t have extensive access to youth sports. Hockey is a major culprit.

'A king's game': Costs are squeezing kids and their families

A 2019 Aspen Institute survey of youth sports parents with Utah State University found that ice hockey was the most expensive sport among 21 evaluated, with an average cost of $2,583 per year.

It can cost much more than that, depending on your level of motivation to help your son or daughter climb toward the top of the ladder.

Hockey remains the sports heartbeat of Canada, with its national governing body reporting more than 550,000 registered males and females in 2022-23 in a country with a vastly smaller population than the United States.

But like in the U.S., it is also becoming a sport of haves and have-nots.

"I think there’s a huge barrier because of finances," says Adam Yahn, a GM for an elite junior hockey team in Ontario (the Cobourg Cougars) from 2017 to 2020. "And I think it’s playing out in the type of players that are entering hockey. I look at the lunch-bucket players – and not even the lunch-bucket players in terms of the way they play, (but) their families. I think of Bobby Orr, I think of Wayne Gretzky, I think of some of these other folks that, at the time, finances were tight but it wasn’t a barrier to playing, and I think you look at it now, it’s people that are more wealthy or that, unfortunately, (are) just going into debt for this.

"It also creates more of an entitled player."

And a more entitled sport. According to a story published last week by Radio-Canada, annual costs can soar to $25,000 or more in the United States and Canada just for a teenager to play on a high-level club. Yahn says that even a preteen on a travel team in his country could pay $7,000 to $10,000 Canadian (about $5,000 to $7,000 U.S.) per year.

Instead of a minor league system Gladwell described, in which kids are left out because they’re aren’t among the oldest and strongest at that age, it’s one in which some kids are simply priced out.

"I always said back when I played, you had to have natural talent to move on," says Brent Tully, a defenseman who won gold for Team Canada at the world junior championships in 1993 and 1994. "You still do but there’s an opportunity for kids that maybe normally would not have progressed solely on their natural talent.

"Parents pay for all this extra training, whether it’s skating or passing. There’s more kids that may not have had success in years past where today that’s an opportunity."

Conversely, Tully, who was drafted by the Vancouver Canucks in the fourth round in 1992, doesn’t see a similar path for kids who don't have enough financial means to help keep up with other top players.

"We used to call hockey a king’s game in the USA. But I feel like that's kind of where things are turning in Canada," he says.

'How much money did you get for my son'? What parents will do, or say, to move their kid along

Martel and Corey McNabb, director of NextGen development at Hockey Canada, say their organizations promote environments that are inclusive and in which kids can develop and rise at their own pace while being matched with players of similar skill levels.

Kids are tiered by skill level in Canada at the 11U level in most cases.

"If you are good or show promise, you’ll be seen and the reality is that may not happen until you’re 14 or 15," McNabb says. "As long as everyone is getting the same number of practices and games, tiering is fine. The caliber you are placed at when you are 10, 11 or 12 does not predict the caliber that you will end up at. Proper tiering ensures that development and competition are age-appropriate and that everyone has the opportunity for success, instead of not touching the puck or not getting any shots on net."

USA Hockey encourages its teams to play kids together − and not tier them − until they are 12.

"But that isn't what actually happens,"  Martel says. "We've gotten overcompetitive too soon."

Especially when parents get involved. Yahn has seen rampant parental politics in smaller Canadian towns, where families use their closeness with the coach to influence their kid's position on the team.

Tully, who served as Cobourg’s GM before Yahn, had a theory that if a parent was too nice to him or talked to him an excessive amount, it was a red flag.

"That conversation over a period of time would turn into, 'Oh, my son should be doing this,'" he says. "And it always played out that that parent wanted a little bit more of your time and the conversation changed. It was kind of comical how often that did come to life. At that level (when kids are in their late teens), you hope to deal with parents on a very limited basis."

One parent even asked him after a trade: "How much money did you get for my son?"

"Sometimes that's also interesting, where the kid’s great and you wonder how is the parent not," Tully says. "The dad in this case was just incessant that I was trying to ruin his son's career."

Coach Steve: 'Do I get floor seats?' College coaches pass on athletes because of parents

Tully could quickly tell when one of his players was mentally exhausted, programmed to do one thing for so long, worried whom he might disappoint if he stopped.

"There’s players in the NHL today that I’ve seen documentaries on or whatever where you could tell the parent was hard on them but there’s a good number of them that burn out at some point and just don’t want to do it and understand that they’d be having more fun doing other things," he says.

Having fun creates winners, and hockey lifers

What constitutes fun?

It was a question Martel had to answer when he took a deep dive into why kids were leaving American hockey 15 years ago.

Fun is that game-space training with three 10-year-old teams playing on one rink, which keeps costs down and kids away from those boring isolated drills.

Fun is promoting the hockey experience at the grassroots level instead of putting pressure on kids to reach their optimum skill level at an early age.

"It’s important that players and their parents don’t look at development as a sprint; it’s a marathon," Hockey Canada’s McNabb says.

Fun is operating within systems the U.S. and Canada say a kid can advance in if he or she is good enough but also play house league with friends.

Fun is not synonymous with “goofing off.” That is a scientific fact.

Around the time Martel was trying to recast USA Hockey, an assistant professor at George Washington University in the department of exercise science was diving into what kids find fun when it comes to sports.

Amanda Visek authored the groundbreaking “Fun Maps,” which came up with 81 fun determinants among youth soccer players, parents and coaches from ages 8 to 19. She later broadened her study to other sports.

Visek and her colleagues found the three highest rated dimensions of fun were "Being a good sport," "Trying hard," and "Positive coaching"

In other words, fun is essential to your sports experience, and synonymous with your athletic development, whether you are a girl or boy, younger or older or a recreational or travel player.

Everyone wants to win but a more important indicator of fun is the look on the face of the kid who scores. Martel saw it when Team USA won world juniors gold in January, but also in all of that free play on the ice leading up to that moment.

"Kids are about the experience," Martel says. "They want a positive environment. They want to be with their friends. There's all kinds of other things that are way more important. But the adults in youth sport tend to overdo the winning side of things."

Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for a high schooler and middle schooler. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.

Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at [email protected]