The Current24:04Making hockey a game for everyone
Kensi Bridges hustles up the stairs and into the kitchen with an arm load of sports trophies she collected from her room.
“Baseball trophy, hockey trophy, hockey trophy,” the eight-year-old, who lives in Mississauga, Ont., exclaimed proudly while short of breath, dropping them on the table with a wide smile on her face.
Two seasons on the ice with her under-eight (U-8) girls teams are immortalized in these prizes. Kensi recalls the good times she had on the ice and the friends she made.
But despite fond memories, she’s not playing hockey this season.
“Sometimes in hockey teams you have to get up early, which I don’t like,” Kensi said. “We’ve had to wake up when the sun isn’t even up yet.”
Her dad, Billy Bridges, who was her coach and is also a decorated Paralympic hockey champion, says Kensi’s games were all between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. every weekend during the season. He isn’t shocked his daughter doesn’t want to play any more.
“U-8 girls are pushed to these other times to leave the rink open for all the rep [representative competitive] teams,” Billy says.
“You can certainly see the game of hockey trying to grow its interests and grow its roots. But it certainly can be a very divisive sport, and can be a bit of an elitist sport as well.”
Hockey Canada recently identified access to appropriate ice time as one of the barriers to growth for women in the game. Other groups whose participants aren’t on track to play competitively, such as children with disabilities and newcomers to Canada, also report structural issues that can make them feel unwelcome in hockey.
“For a sport that’s trying to draw people in and grow, it’s certainly not doing itself any favours,” Billy says.
Ice time challenges for adapted youth program
As the president and founder of Avalanche Kidz Hockey, Linda Matteo struggled to find ice time for her privately run adapted hockey program for children on the autism spectrum.
“We’re not associated with any hockey team or hockey league under Hockey Quebec’s banner. We just don’t fit in,” Matteo said. The provincial authority doesn’t offer adapted hockey programs in Montreal.
Playing with a local association can be a challenge if you need assistance on the ice, like many autistic children do, so this leaves programs like Avalanche as the only option for many parents.
Jennifer Silver’s son Matthew is part of the program for the first time this season, and says Avalanche has filled a gaping need. “I never thought I’d be a hockey mom,” she said.
“The fact that he now has access is life changing for him. He’s now going to be able to partake in Canada’s national sport.”
But keeping the program alive was a struggle. Matteo says every municipality and association she reached out to for ice time sang a similar tune: they would love to help, but they can’t because they need the ice for the kids in their programs — and there isn’t any extra.
When Matteo finally found ice at an appropriate time, she says the rink demanded Avalanche pay 15 per cent more than groups that are part of hockey associations. She says the whole process made her feel like autistic children aren’t welcome in hockey.
“I think everyone just needs to open up their scope and they need to start looking at things in a different light,” Matteo said.
“We are playing hockey. We’re just playing hockey our way.”
Many rinks with different approaches
Hockey Canada says there are more than 2,800 authorities managing ice across the country. That includes provincial and municipal hockey associations, local governments, school boards and a wide range of private arena owners.
Marin Hickox, vice president for women and girls hockey at Hockey Canada, says that the organization has no control over how rinks divvy up ice time.
“A lot of times ice time is grandfathered, and when you’re starting to have new teams … you’re up against potential barriers from an association that’s had the same ice for 30-some odd years,” she said.
Hockey Canada has acknowledged this is a challenge facing the game, particularly for girls because it appears that through policy or unofficially, legacy organizations — that mainly manage boys hockey — have historical rights to the best ice times.
In Toronto, Abrar Al Mouktaran got into the game through a program called Hockey 4 Youth.
“It brought me closer to people and other friends,” she said.
Hockey 4 Youth provides kids, focusing on newcomers to Canada, with equipment and funding so they can experience playing hockey in an accepting, positive environment. If they can get ice time, that is.
Moezine Hasham, the organization’s founder, says rink managers often cite groups with existing or long-running agreements taking priority as a reason for inflexibility.
“We’ve had problems in several jurisdictions,” he said.
But even when they do get on the ice, sometimes people still don’t welcome them.
Last year, Al Mouktaran was coaching when she says a misunderstanding led to a heated exchange with a group of men.
“It was so clear that they were not interested in whatever we were doing. Like, I want to say they hated us,” Al Mouktaran said. “Hate is a strong word, but they did hate us.”
The girls thought they had the ice for a full hour. The men thought they were going to be able to start 10 minutes earlier. Al Moukataran says, eventually, they entered the ice while the young players were learning to skate.
“They were shooting pucks, being aggressive, skating fast and the girls did not know what was happening,” she recalled. “Honestly, it was very scary.”
Hasham was told the men had been booking that same ice time for decades, and believes it’s why they felt entitled to kick the girls off.
“There are certain adults that will ruin things and [say] ‘Oh, we have a policy,’ Well, policy was written by your organization and policy can be changed, right?” he said.
Using data to optimize ice time
Amy Walsh, CEO of the Future of Hockey Lab and former executive director of Hockey Nova Scotia, is working on what she hopes can be a solution to better manage ice time.
She is gathering data from all arenas in Nova Scotia and believes that she can use analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize ice use.
“We have discovered, actually in this project, that a number of ice surfaces don’t even have a booking system, so it’s still pen and paper,” Walsh said.
“So unless you know the rink manager’s phone number, or unless you’re friends with the rink manager, it’s really hard to get access.”
A group of senior recreational hockey players say they’ve been renting the same ice times for decades, but have now been displaced after a deal put a private hockey academy in charge.
Hockey Canada launched in May a 15-person steering committee looking into what can be done about the barriers women and girls face in the sport. It found girls play hockey on an average of 2.4 years less than boys, and the retention rate for girls is lower than boys.
Right now about 108,000 players in Canada are female, according to the organization’s numbers. Hockey Canada has set a goal to increase that number to 170,000 by 2030.
“[Hockey Canada] need … to have more influence over what is happening at the local level,” Hickox says.
For Walsh, the solution isn’t about cutting ice time from boys. She believes the data will allow rinks to optimize how they allocate ice time so everyone gets a shot.
“We need to flip the script and think of it from an abundance mindset.”
Billy Bridges, meanwhile, isn’t sure his daughter Kensi will ever return to the game. Her schedule is already full with Girl Guides, karate and rock climbing. She’s also into arts.
Billy says those activities have much kinder schedules and, overall, are more diverse and inclusive than hockey.
“You’re either going to suck them in or spit them out,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of those ones that leave the sport because of those reasons at a young age don’t tend to come back to it.”
He doesn’t think the competitive side of hockey needs to go away. After 24 years on Canada’s national team he says the game has shaped his life and he’s grateful for all of it.
But he also maintains that the goal of developing Canada’s next star player and winning another gold medal can co-exist with the joy of playing the game and connecting with community and country.
“The highest level is so cutthroat that there still needs to be that other side,” Billy said.