As passionate hockey players, from the very first time we strap on skates and hit the ice, kids all across the country dream of one day making it to the NHL. It all seems so easy when you are young. All of our heroes in the NHL started playing in youth leagues just like ours, whether in Canada or Europe, or anywhere in between, they all had humble beginnings before ever aspiring to realize their dream to play in the NHL. But what we do not realize as kids is the lifelong dedication to honing your craft. All of the early mornings, the late nights, and the sacrifices made that can begin at as early an age as we can remember. You do not just make it to the NHL, you earn your way there.
Childhood
From a young age, the long road to the NHL begins astride on shaky skates with our parents cheering us on! Early morning practices before school starts are common for youth hockey leagues, and the dedication to the game begins long before we even know it. There is a reason why every NHL player credits their parents at some point in their careers. Without the 5:00 AM wakeups and lugging our equipment to and from the car, how could we even get our hockey careers off the ground? Often it is our parents who sign up as coaches and volunteer their time to help develop us and ensure that the very first lesson we learn from hockey is how to have fun. If the early morning wakeups do not deter you, then you are ready for the next phase in your hockey career.
Youth Hockey
As we get older, the levels of hockey become more competitive and those who no longer enjoy the pressure of making rep teams or competing for spots, quickly lose interest in furthering their careers. This is the age in which parents start to believe that their child is an NHL star in the making. Well, statistics show that those parents are wrong about 99% of the time. Estimates have the total number of NHL players to ever play the game at well under 10,000, which is incredible considering the NHL is 104 years old. Granted, while most of the league’s history was played with less teams then there are now, it is still an astonishingly low number. If you think about how many kids play youth hockey around the world, not just in Canada, then you can quickly begin to see why making it to the NHL is considered such a long shot.
Junior Hockey
If, and this is a massive if, you are elite and talented enough to make it to the junior hockey level, consider your career already a success. This is the step that most hockey players never even make it to, and while the options do open up slightly at this point, it is still a longshot to make it to the NHL even for junior players. Several studies have been completed about the percentage chance of having a sustained NHL career for major junior players in the CHL. Each time, the estimated chance is around 5% or less. Further to this, unless you are a generational talent like Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid, you could potentially be stuck in junior leagues or minor leagues for your whole career, waiting for all of the pieces to fall into place for an NHL club to call you up.
Drafted
Wow, congratulations! You were drafted by an NHL team out of either major junior hockey or NCAA college hockey. Your dream of playing in the NHL and making millions of dollars is just around the corner right? Wrong. Let’s take Sidney Crosby’s draft class from 2005 as an example. Nine of the thirty players selected in the first round did not even have an NHL career of any substance. That is 30% of the best players in that year from around the world, who never played out their NHL careers. This percentage gets higher the later in the draft you go.
So making it to the NHL draft is not even a guarantee to play in the NHL. Every year, hundreds, perhaps thousands of young hockey players don’t even get drafted. Imagine the heartbreak for players and families who dedicated their whole lives to hockey in hopes of making it to the NHL. All the sacrifices that were made, the large chunks of childhood that they will never have a chance to get back. Quite often young players have their education disrupted in order to dedicate their lives to hockey. Is this something that sounds appealing to you?
We’re not trying to dissuade players from trying to reach the NHL, rather, it should be known how difficult it is to realize this goal. What if you don’t make the NHL? Is playing in Europe in a league like the KHL an option?
Making the NHL should never be seen as impossible, even though the actual percentage chance of it happening nearly is.
What a player does need to consider is the Climb. Where and how long you are willing to climb is your call. There are plenty of professional leagues out there that will pay you to play! How much you make and where you play in the world, depends on you!
