Amid Blackface and Abuse Allegations, Hockey Wonders Why Young Canadians Don’t Play

Bettman’s latest initiative comes at a time when the sport is grappling with both its culture and a decline in popularity in Canada, the country of its birth.

At all levels, concerns about ice hockey’s head injuries, scant diversity and costs are rankling parents and prospective players, and Canadians are now investing their time and money in other sports. Demographic and socioeconomic trends in the country and the sport suggest a reversal to the decline is not coming.

That shift came into focus over the summer.

A million people in Toronto celebrated Canada’s first N.B.A. championship at the Raptors’ victory parade, drawn to how the team’s racial, cultural and socioeconomic diversity reflected the country as a whole. Two months later, 7.4 million Canadians watched on TV as Bianca Andreescu defeated Serena Williams to win the United States Open and become Canada’s first Grand Slam singles champion in tennis.

In this N.H.L. season, the Canadiens are on a pace to record their lowest attendance in more than 15 seasons; the Ottawa Senators are selling just 60 percent of their tickets; and the Flames, the Edmonton Oilers and the Winnipeg Jets frequently play in front of hundreds of empty seats. Only the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Vancouver Canucks have seen attendance increases this season. (Not unrelated: A Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup since 1993.)

At the N.H.L. draft in June, only 69 of the 217 selected players, or 32 percent, were Canadian, the lowest total since the league expanded the event in 1969. Last season, the percentage of N.H.L. players who were Canadian was 43 percent, down from 59.6 percent in 2011-12. The N.H.L. continues to be almost exclusively white: Of the 999 players who played in at least one game last season, 5 percent were members of minority groups. According to Statistics Canada, 22.3 percent of the country’s population in 2016 were people of color.

Even though more than 500,000 boys registered for minor hockey last year, enrollment in the Ontario Hockey Federation, the largest minor hockey league in the country, has dropped 8.5 percent since the 2012-13 season. Hockey Québec, the second largest league, has seen a decrease of 6.7 percent over that same span. According to Statistics Canada, the populations of both provinces increased over that same period.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/sports/hockey/akim-aliu-nhl-diversity.html?emc=rss&partner=rss