Quote:
Originally Posted by Berklon
I think some people need to take off their tin-foil hats and step away from their computers.
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No kidding. Do you think there's a small chance that people, uh, just really like basketball?
Hockey's inherent structural problem is that what you see on TV or from the stands is not easily replicated without expensive equipment and ice time. You can make do with a facsimile like ball hockey, and I had lots of fun playing that as a kid, but there's not so much playing on frozen rivers or backyard rinks anymore. It's really hard as a kid to dive into hockey really intensively because the opportunities for that are so fleeting.
The price of admission, both literally and figuratively, is really high, and you don't get all that much for the money. Plus parental involvement is so intensive.
Whereas with basketball and football/soccer you can play as much as you want, all day long. When I was a hockey player I had two games and one practice a week combined with one or two impromptu ball hockey games. But just in the winter, because we didn't play ball hockey in the summer.
When I switched to basketball I played every day of the year, virtually as much as I wanted. We'd spend hours on the court during summer vacation. Throughout the school year we played in the gym between classes and at lunchtime and after school, never mind during the actual season when we were playing games and practicing.
How can you make hockey more appealing to the mushy middle cohort of kids wavering in their choice of sports? I think you'd need to make it more accessible. Less forbidding, financially and otherwise. Maybe build lots more rinks run like roller rinks where you can go in any time you want to skate for really cheap. Have several mini-rinks in the complex with goals set up for pickup games. Have skates and sticks available for kids who don't have their own.
Just some ideas...