The Rise of Big-City Hockey Players and Its Implication for Diversity in the National Hockey League

Abstract

Canadian-raised players in the National Hockey League are increasingly coming from large cities with rising numbers of visible minority and immigrant youth. In this paper, we compare the demographic characteristics of recent big-city NHL players with those of their hometowns. We also examine which city-level characteristics are associated with the number of NHL players from the same hometown. Our analysis of publicly available hockey player data and Canadian Census data show that the NHL players from big cities do not reflect the growing diversity in their hometowns, whether they are from established hockey hometowns (e.g., Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto) or emerging hockey hometowns (e.g., Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan). Our city-level regression analysis also finds that the size of the male youth population and local socioeconomic characteristics are associated with the number of NHL players from a certain city. Finally, we discuss the implications of majority-minority Canadian cities in recent years for the diversity of NHL players in the near future.