Quote:
Originally Posted by Loosh
It’s going to take some time but over time you will see some Arab descent players. The Canadians first rounder Hage is of Arab descent. 3 of the top 60 players drafted in the Q this year were of Lebanese background.
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I predict you'll see more Lebanese-Canadian players much sooner than other Arabs. It's simply a function of the dates of immigration.
Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s was a very good place to get the hell out of, and there are now far more people of Lebanese ancestry outside Lebanon than in it. Canada has a fair share of these.
Large-scale immigration from other Arab countries into Canada started somewhat later. As others have pointed out, it tends to be the second generation that get interested in hockey and put their kids in hockey programs, and the third generation where those kids start to make the pros.
This kind of time lag is normal. In the earliest days of organized hockey, even though it was mostly played in Montreal, it was almost entirely an anglophone sport. It was over 20 years before the first senior team of francophone players was organized, and until that happened, if you can believe it, a lot of anglos believed that francophones were incapable of playing the game.