Private Hockey Advantages
The private hockey development stream is a different path for families looking for an alternative experience in hockey. A comparable could easily be made to a family electing to go with private school instead of a public school. In HPL Hockey our practices typically have fewer players on a full sheet of ice compared to community hockey. This allows for a more personalized experience when working on skill development in practice, where the player has more interaction with a coach getting feedback, as well as a better athlete to coach ratio. This allows for an accelerated development curve and a great athlete experience. HPL Hockey strives to have competitive teams with quality coaches who are here for the right reasons and maintain their integrity and hard work which leads to great examples for our players and families which ultimately leads to the success both on and off the ice.
Private hockey often have hired coaches working with each team, or have a parent coach that played as a professional hockey player and is motivated to give back to the sport. The schedule in private hockey is considered to be a lot more structured with game nights, or game days, being consistent for the entire season. This gives our players more opportunities to be involved in multiple sports, or have more time to pursue other interests. Another advantage to private hockey, like private school, is you can participate in programming outside of your community. A family in HPL Hockey can play for any team they can get selected to, they are not forced to play in a city where they purchased a property.
Having a single birth year league has a great benefit and is similar to the education system, this allows kids to build lifelong friendships being with the same group of players each year. As community hockey is double birth year it takes away from having a consistent friend base year after year. A single birth year model also creates a safer environment on the ice, as players are among more players of a similar size and body mass. Also with a selective admission focused on high performance it allows players to be surrounded by players similarly motivated and engaged in the game of hockey. Being in a competitive environment with other players creates better training habits and that will build valuable characteristics helping in school, future careers and building good goal setting.
We are extremely proud of our 4 step development pathway which has more stability and consistency than community hockey, that is constantly flipping things around at the crucial grass root years and recently creating their own pathways and not supporting the model laid out by the national body in the sport. HPL Hockey has created a development stream that other programs are now trying to replicate which is a compliment for us only having been in the winter hockey landscape for the last 6 years. Our development model is more gradual with an increase of an additional 1.25 hours of ice each two years. A player starts in the program at age 6 with 3 hours of ice a week and graduates at 12 years old with 6.25 hours of hockey a week. There are two increases in ice from 6 years old to 12 years but the consistency in a set schedule and single birth year remain the same.
We recognize there is a financial investment in private hockey, but we know families will see the benefits their son or daughter takes out of a hockey season are long term, not only growing their hockey skills but building them up as a great kid off of the ice. Those benefits far exceed just on ice success.
We also feel for the amount of hours of practice and games our players receive in U12 and U13 is actually at a cheaper price point when compared to the U15 BC Elite Model that our players may graduate into. We have studied and compared the fees as well as collecting parent feedback and we are repeatedly told parents have to pay 2x to 5x after graduating out of our league and wanting to stay in elite hockey streams. To be clear we believe those development streams also provide good value to their players, but we are transparent that it costs much more money when players graduate from HPL Hockey and stay in high performance streams at the U15 and U18 divisions.
Lastly, we want to encourage parents to educate themselves as a lot of misinformation is shared and misleads parents. In the WHL draft this year 11 players from the provinces of BC and Alberta were selected in the first round of the WHL draft. 10 of the 11 players were alumni of HPL Hockey and the Hockey Super League. We are proud of the players selected, we recognize the great job that coaches did developing players and we are most proud that players living in smaller traditional hockey communities took advantage of an opportunity to develop their skills and get recognized for their development. We also want to highlight that over 70 percent of our players graduate out of our league into CSSHL teams and an additional 10 percent of our players move into the BCEHL. Please note that we have 6 to 8 teams graduating out of HPL Hockey each year with an average of 14 players on each team.