Toronto Maple Leaf fans at a game during the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Tom Szczerbowski/USA TODAY Sports)
By: Waverly Neufeld and Raizel Harjosubroto
With 100 years of the NHL being celebrated this year, Canadians are coming together to celebrate hockey’s role in their culture.
Today’s young hockey players are gaining skills faster than ever before. Buffalo Sabres coach Andrew Allen said that his ten-year-old son has better coaching than he did as a child.
“They have more personal coaching and there’s better strength and conditioning techniques. The science behind it all, they have way more tools at their disposal. You see them developing quicker and younger,” he said.
As the culture surrounding hockey is becoming more positive, former minor league hockey player Hannah Johnston believes that young people can benefit from playing the sport.
“With most team sports…you learn cooperation, teamwork and compromise,” she said. “You might not always get your way or get along with everyone on your team, but you will learn things like how to make friends and how to behave in social situations. So I think it’s a good idea for kids to play team sports like hockey.”
While hockey brings teamwork and cooperation out of young players, it gets more serious as the athletes mature. Casim Shaikh, a minor league player for Everest Academy, said that hockey was designed to be more enjoyable as a kid.
“When you’re younger if you do something wrong in a game you still end up playing without sitting, at my age now, if you mess up, you’re going to sit so you won’t harm the team’s ability to win.”
The competitiveness, for some, is the best part. “I like the competitive aspect and just being on a team full of friends,” said James Hamlin, a Ryerson intramural hockey player.
Not everyone plays hockey for its competitiveness, but simply for the fun it brings. Liam Bell, first-year engineering student, said that it’s a sport that unifies the country.
“It brings us Canadians together and when winter comes around, you can make a full-on ice ring out of a pond and everyone can just go play.”
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