The umbrella of North American hockey growth
USA Hockey and Hockey Canada have a lot in common as the quintessential overseers of all things hockey in North America, but they also have very different roles.
USA Hockey president Ron DeGregorio sees his organization focused on four sectors: high performance, recreational, developmental, and competitive activities.
“The high performance is the one that’s most visible. The competitive is probably our core unit where you have the recreation hockey programs traveling around playing their games. Our highest growing segment is adult hockey.”
USA Hockey’s biggest job is getting more people involved in the sport. The OneGoal Program provides equipment lend-lease options to get people to try hockey without having to invest a lot of up-front dollars on equipment.
Bottom line, DeGregorio admits USA Hockey is not just about player development; it’s involved in participation development.
“We see USA Hockey as a membership services organization that helps those who have an interest or stake in the game be able to get the most out of the game and grow as much as they can.”
Getting media interested certainly helps USA Hockey create growth, but so far, the interest is mainly regional, such as in the strong hockey markets of Minnesota, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
DeGregorio thinks hockey has a very powerful niche. “In concentrated areas, we have many views. Now with the new media – the Internet and electronic publications – we can impact that group. That’s part of our business plan – to impact that group and give them the hockey fix that they want.”
In Canada, raising the profile of the game is not an issue. Hockey is entrenched in Canadian culture. Even so, Hockey Canada knows it can’t be complacent about its role.
“We’ve really grown,” says Johnny Misley, Hockey Canada’s Executive Vice President, Hockey Operations, “but we often think we’re a third of where we’d like to be as an organization.”
Hockey Canada’s staff has grown at least 300 percent since 1994-95.
Misley admits, “While that’s great in a sense that it shows a service to the game; it also creates some obstacles. The building we’re in right now is small. We need to upgrade the training facilities that we have.”
President Bob Nicholson adds, “We’d love to have a training facility for all Olympic athletes, national team athletes for all sports, and a place that all Canadians can come and say, wow, this is the way you should prepare athletes for world championships. I’d love to see hockey become the leader in that.”
Meanwhile, USA Hockey started the STAR program (Serving The American Rinks) to provide education and resources to rink professionals to ultimately improve the quality of the existing rinks.
Every year both organizations review its programs and services to make the game better, and when budgets allow, add to what they have.
Both look at what works and doesn’t work in other leagues, review their own governance, get current and former NHL players involved in their programs, and rely heavily on volunteers.
Both USA Hockey and Hockey Canada agree that it is a great game to grow. “We’ve got a lot of opportunities,” says DeGregorio. “As long as we stay true to the game, true to the core values of the game, then the distribution of that is so much easier because of the technology of today.”
