I don’t often listen to the sports shows on talk radio, but something caught my attention Jan. 6. The commentators on CJME were going on at length about trading in junior hockey. Specifically, they didn’t like the idea of trading high school kids during the season, which would force them to move and change schools. Apparently the Regina Pats had made a number of trades in recent days, sending four boys elsewhere.
What was this blasphemy I was hearing? Someone was actually questioning the logic behind the hockey developmental system? The podcast for the segment was entitled “Should trades be banned in junior hockey because of age and lack of wage?” I had to listen to it to be sure I was hearing right.
“These are kids after all,” was one of the comments. Some people thought transfers should only happen in the off season.
“I’m in the camp that they should at least be allowed to finish high school before they’re traded,” said Warren Woods, one of the CJME commentators. “It’s bad enough that some of these kids are traded away, half a country away. A Regina kid that ends up being drafted by Portland, and ends up having to play out there, unless he’s traded back, he never sees his family.”
I nearly fell out of my truck seat when I first heard that. Someone who is paid to live and breathe sports actually thinks the same way I do about the player meat market. Apparently I’m not the only apostate.
This reminded me of the novel my daughter is studying in Grade 5. It’s called Underground to Canada, and follows two 13-year-old girls, both slaves, as they escape to Canada.
It’s amazing, when you think of it, how similar the two are – trades in hockey and slave trades pre-abolition. Young people get told where to go, when to go and have little say in the matter.
(“They want to play! Didn’t you know? No one forces them!” I can hear some people saying already).
Before you fly off the handle, consider this: On one occasion several years ago when covering sports while the News-Optimistsports reporter was on holidays, I asked the North Stars coach at the time just what “traded for future considerations” meant. I always thought it meant at some point in the future, they could pluck a player from the other roster to make up for the one they gave up. No sir. It means money. It means the player’s rights were sold for cash on the barrelhead.
I see the SJHL has just introduced an entry draft. They remind me of a slave auction, like the ones my daughter is currently studying. You get drafted (sold), you go where you are told, live with who they choose for you and don’t get paid a wage. The difference is you do get to play hockey, and if you give up that privilege, you get to go home.
I’ve been to only a handful of SJHL games, including just two in Estevan. One was a few weeks ago, when we were given free tickets to attend.
When I turned over my ticket at the box office, I asked where do I sit? They looked at me a little funny, and reassured me it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t.
I was astonished, truly astonished at the low attendance. I counted every head on the opposite side of the rink, and then estimated my side of the rink. I would have been shocked if the total attendance was much over 300. There was an entire section of 128 seats with a total two people sitting in them. It was beyond barren. The reported attendance? 925. How could that be? I asked around and was told that season tickets count. It’s also common practice. Funny, I always thought attendance meant bums in seats. Nine hundred and twenty-five is more than a farce, it’s an outright lie.
Didn’t the citizens of Estevan, Saskatchewan and Canada (through grants) recently pay $22 million to build this beautiful rink? All of that for 300 people to show up? I thought we were a hockey-mad country! That’s what we’re brainwashed to believe, yet here was evidence not many people really gave a damn.
Everyone knows so very few go on to make a career in professional hockey, yet that’s the dream. Kids are pushed and pushed and pushed from a young age, only to find that most give up the sport at age 14 or 15. Those who do go further end up on the aforementioned auction, cough, I mean, draft block. They give up years of family time to live with billets, to play in empty rinks that we pay absurd amounts for.
In fleshing out my arguments, a friend asked what else that $22 million (and more in other places, I’m sure) could have gone for. Hospital improvements? Perhaps a new elementary school? Road repairs? Infrastructure upgrades?
If Canada is truly a hockey-mad nation, rinks should be full. There would be no need to puff up their attendance numbers. Then maybe the sacrifice kids are making might have some purpose; something, anything beyond playing to nearly-empty rinks.
But what do I know? I’m just a nerd from the debate team.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
