Quote:
Originally Posted by #-3
What are people thinking about the Ryan Symth league? I believe it is separating out the top kids into a different program a couple years younger then the traditional AA / AAA system has started grouping the top players together.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5033314?fbc...lXAJSsDCy5U74A |
So I've been thinking some more about this and pondering how it will play out in a few years and where something like this might fit into the overall hockey landscape. On the surface it looks like parents are trying this option due to dis-satisfaction with the traditional hockey model. Whether it be times/locations of ice, team formation, perceived weakness of the programs, lack of choice in where to play, skill developement etc. In other words parents want to customize hockey for their kids as much as possible. A few things stand out here for me.
The skill development angle to me is interesting because Hockey Canada has also been overhauling the traditional model for the very same reason. Lack of skill development at an early age has been identified as one of the reasons Canada's dominance on the world stage of hockey is diminishing and they have begun changing things up in order to reverse this. For parents to remove their kids from the Hockey Canada stream indicates perhaps that these parents do not agree with the changes or feel the changes are still not sufficient.
Longer term I see this league has plans to grow into older groups which I suppose is a natural progression. I do wonder at some point however if there will be a natural tie in between this league and the various sports schools that have sprung up over the past few years. It seems almost like a natural progression to move from this league into a sports school as the kids get older as both streams are sort of outside the traditional development stream. Given this new league is taking more 'skilled' players and the sports schools also have become quite successful in drawing skilled players maybe there is a natural progression from one to the other. Evidence of the success of sports schools (or maybe evidence of lack of success of the traditional model) is the fact that in each of the past two years more players are drafted into the WHL from sports schools than the current Elite stream (13/20 in each of the past two years).
The end result might be we end up with two separate and distinct hockey systems in Alberta.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see where this all goes. Given the price point it is never going to be an option for everyone.