Blogs: Minnesota Youth Hockey Culture Clash

Bob Cook of the incomparable Your Kids Not Going Pro blog, in his new digs at Forbes btw, has a new piece on the Minnesota Made Hockey Inc v. Minnesota Hockey tussle:

Money, Power and a Culture Clash in Minnesota Youth Hockey

I find this case fascinating because Minnesota Made is the Michigan model of hockey ... a model of which Illinois is a pale imitation.  That model is one where talent and money combine to form elite AAA travel clubs.  Many in our hockey community pine for the Minnesota model, where teams are formed by community-based associations and the elite talent plays with other good players from their own community.

From the blog post:

While Minnesota Hockey trumpets its pros, the overarching goal is to get as many kids to participate in the sport as possible. It also is community-based, so if you’re a hotshot from Bemidji, you’re going to play on a Bemidji team, no matter what your ability.

McBain, on the other hand, has a goal of getting parents to pay as much money possible so he can develop their kids into elite players. His leagues are divided on pure ability, not location. (Minnesota Hockey leagues will have divisions based on ability, but in McBain’s league, the kid from Bemidji could play with teammates from all over the state.)

Bob riffs of a recent article at ESPN by Tom Farrey:

Minnesota Faces Changes to its Community-based Hockey Programs

From the article:

McBain, whose club does not hold a USA Hockey membership, was a taxi cab driver when he got his start in the hockey business, holding clinics on the side on rented ice in the early 1990s. His profile rose later in the decade with his coaching a highly successful off-season traveling team featuring his son, Jamie McBain, now a defenseman with the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes. Eleven players on that team went on to receive NCAA Division I scholarships, and eight got taken in the NHL drafts of 2006 and '07.

Tearse considers McBain more of an aggregator than a cultivator of talent -- akin to an AAU basketball coach who cherry picks budding stars from across a region to chase summer tournament titles. "The only reason he's considered a super coach is because he had a son who was genetically predisposed to be a pro," he said. "And good players tend to gravitate to other good players. But getting all the good kids on one team is not development. He didn't develop any of those kids."

While I believe the people have the right to spend their money as they wish, and that McBain does in fact have a good case, such a victory in court is ultimately negative for the sport.  How many of the 182 NCAA Division I players from Minnesota, more than any other state, would be playing football or baseball instead if the sport of hockey was not as accessible to them as it is today?  As the article and blog point out, a victory for Minnesota Made will take resources (money) away from Minnesota Hockey, eroding the ability of the State of Hockey to create the next Phil Housley or Neal Broten by casting the net wide.

Hockey in Illinois will never be the "rink in every community" Utopia of Minnesota due to the higher cost of land coupled with the competition for attention from other sports.  But all to often, it is held hostage by former taxi cab drivers looking to make a buck off of ambitious parents with big checkbooks to the detriment of us all.  As long as we have the phenomenon of too much money chasing too few sheets of ice, I don't see how that can change.  One step is to arm yourself with information so that you, the consumer, know when to say you kidding me !?!

Hall of Fame player Mark Messier, now a youth coach himself, chimed in at an Aspen Institute event in New York in January, issuing a harsh critique of coaches promoting the idea that training for the NHL needs to start in grade school.

"It's not going to matter one bit if these kids are [on that track] at 7, 8, 9 years old," Messier said. "I've seen it a hundred times. But the people who control the ice, and the people selling this propaganda that 'this is what the kids need to do in order to become a professional hockey player,' are in it for the money. It's a business for them, and they've managed to sell the Kool-Aid to the parents. It's horrifying to see."

Emphasis added.  

Our previous coverage of the Minnesota Made suit can be found here.






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