How much hockey is too much?

Well Stu, please show me where minor hockey starts for 4 year olds in Aug. Sure there are hockey schools and camps running thru the summer, and elite team try outs, (all of which are attended on a volunteer basis) I have been around minor hockey for years and have yet to hear of a 4 year old AAA team. A 4 year old enrolled at the grass roots level will not get on the ice until Mid September earliest, and here, it is the first weekend AFTER thanks giving. Way to sensationalize/generalize in order to sell papers.

You can't make a chicken salad with chicken shit. You are either genetically gifted for the sport or you're not. You can't teach size and you can't teach a goal scorer's touch etc. Hard work will maximize your talent............but not till you're much older and certainly way older than a toddler.
Kids should play lots of sports especially in the summer. Parents may not have the next Great One but they may have the next Tiger and they'd never have known it. When I played Pee-Wee hockey there were a couple of guys on the team who were fantastic players and always 1st or 2nd in league scoring. On that team there was a guy who was okay and probably half way down the team depth chart. He was the only one who played in the NHL and his son is playing there now. The others that were ripping it up could barely play Junior B by that time.
My nephew played in the OHL and was drafted 52 overall and didn't play AAA till he was 14 and rarely played hockey in the summer.

An interesting POV on this topic is Malcolm Gladwell's . Take a gander at just about any Team Canada/NHL roster and you'll see a large proportion of them were born in the first six months of the year.

Kids all start out at the same level, but because those born earlier in the year are bigger, more mature, and usually skilled when hockey season starts in September, they wind up getting more skating time, getting invited to skill camps, etc. Until about 9/10 it doesn't make a difference, but after that the curve steepens dramatically and in a couple of years those kids a few months older have had far more playing time, making them better.

Gladwell argues that if we had two hockey leagues, one for those born earlier in the year and another for those born in the second half, we'd have twice as many elite players as we do now.

The first chapter or two are all about it, so grab a copy from your library.

I think it really depends on the community and the demands on the local arenas.

Those who tend to start early, have breaks mid-season due to tournaments taking up the ice for more than your typical Christmas break.

Here in Ajax, Ontario, we start our kids on the week-end of September 26th. My son is 5.

I'm an OHA/OMHA referee and, with the exception of Junior B and C and Midget AAA try-out/exhibition games, there's no hockey before Thanksgiving in Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph and rural Midwestern Ontario. Most arenas don't even have ice until the end of September.

Btw, OnTheIce, my wife's from Ajax. We visit often (or at least we did before my mother-in-law lost her mind )

As for athletes being born with their gifts, I'm not so sure. Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky and the Williams sisters are examples to the contrary.

Not sure I follow you here, all three are gifted athletes. What if Tiger was never exposed to golf and only played baseball. Same for Gretzky, what if he wasn't exposed to hockey and only played baseball, which he was also quite good at.
As far as AAA here, the Minor Midgets don't start playing till later this month but their try out camp was two weeks ago. In previous years the team was picked in May which is kind of odd to me.

All 4 of those I cited became the greatest in their sport. 3 of them are likely the GREATEST of all time in their sport. All of them were driven by parent-coaches that worked them beyond any level of normal-childhood play. The 2 men are, physically, much smaller in stature than most professional athletes.

Would they all have been great athletes if not for being pushed (and pushed isn't a strong enough word) by drill-sargeant fathers? I don't know.

I got a call to do an exhibition Midget AAA game last weekend, but I have no interest in skating in August, so I turned it down...Huron-Perth vs Vaughan, I think the game was. I've never heard of try-outs in May.

I think pushed is a strong word. Gretzky was definitely not pushed at all by his family. I had dinner with his father a few years ago and he made the comment that you had to drag Wayne off the rink and I'd heard that before too. Tiger may have been pushed by his dad but to what extent, I'm not sure. And he is in NO way a athlete that's small in stature. I stood only a few feet from him at the 2000 British Open and again at the Masters in 2006. The first thing you'd notice about him is that he tall and ripped. I saw him last weekend on TV and he looks bigger yet.
Either way hard work will only get you so far in a sport and it genetics that play the biggest roll. Look at the Sutter and Staal families........how is that possible. Staal's first cousin was also a first round NHL pick too. I currently play with a bunch of NHL drafted players who some never got a sniff at the bigs. One of them has the hardest work ethic I've ever seen but only played in the AHL. After his 14 years of pro he started doing pre season hockey camps for all levels. He instills his work ethic into these camps which are very tough. In fact 4 guys who went to the Olympic camp last week go through his pro camp every summer.
My point is that kids shouldn't be stuck in one sport year round and should play other sports because they may be more gifted at another. If a sport comes easy to you, it's something you want to play more often.....which will make you better

I agree that kids should get to try as many sports as possible. Tiger is big because of gym-time, not genetics. If he weren't an athlete, I think he'd be about 140lbs. With the Sutters and the Staals the fact that many of their children succeeded could be breeding or it could be parents pushing them. The genetics vs. environment debate is hard say much about.

My best friend (and best man) played in the OHL and NHL and he said the only difference between him and the other guys he played with in the "O" that didn't make it to the NHL was work-ethic. But he's a modest guy.

Wayne certainly loved the game, but you underestimate daddy's influence, I think. Either way, I think your conclusion is backwards. Everyone has a certain amount of talent, but to take it to the pro-level you need great coaching and a drill-sargent doesn't hurt. What's unique about Gretzky, the Williams and Woods is that they were prodigies, before most kids have even tried sports. That's parental influence, not genetics.

How much hockey is too much?
After the last Canadian team is out. Then CLICK off goes the TV.

I think Gretzky's "greatness" gets overblown a bit. Don't get me wrong, he was a very skilled, incredibly talented hockey player but, he also showed up at a crucial time for the league, a time when the NHL wanted to start selling the brand in the US. I can't count how many games I've seen where somebody had him lined up and then basically gave him a pussy little brush-by instead of stapling him to the boards.
When he was nailed, it was usually by another player his size or smaller.
The league didn't want Greztky hurt. He filled the arenas of new teams when he came to town, and filled the arenas of some of the older struggling teams when he came to their town.
I just wonder if he would have accomplished all he did, had he entered the league 10 years earlier.
That would'a been some game, the dynastic team of the Edmonton Oilers of the early 80's vs the Broad Street Bullies of the early 70's.

That's the hard thing, to compare different eras. Gretzky played in the era of mass expansion, but before the influx of Europeans. So he played in the era when offense was easiest. That's why I consider Lemieux's 199 point season more of an accomplishment than Gretzky's 215...Mario did it when the talent pool was a lot richer.

The Oilers got to strut their stuff against the great Islanders teams, albeit at the end of their run.

The Staals weren't pushed either, I've skated with all of them including the dad. They loved the game and were good at it so they spent lots of time playing for fun. A truly gifted family suited for the game of hockey and of course they work at it. As far as Gretzky goes you should try to catch his father speak. All his boys got the same coaching from Walter but there was only one Great One in the family. Prodigy?
Actually if you read anatomy physiology studies genetics plays the largest roll in determining your potential level at any sport. Do some reading on fast twitch muscle fiber vs. slow twitch and that will determine what you will be best suited for. That's all genetics and there's nothing you can do to change that. Even a border line player is genetically gifted compared to the general population and it may be a work ethic that keeps him in the show. Look at Mario Lemieux who smoked and never saw the gym till he was on his second come back. Genetically gifted with little work put into the game off the ice.
Like I said......you can't make a chicken salad out of chicken shit, no matter how hard you work.

And he did it while being subjected to the same rules that applied to everyone else.



YEahhh that was sweet. I fuckin HATE the Islanders