You can play a pickup game of hockey with something to thwack around as a puck, a stick, and some skates, all of which are dirt cheap. I think it's kind of a stretch to make any socioeconomic predictions when the much simpler correlate is that hockey is cheap and easy to play (and thus will have a larger talent pool to draw from) when you live where local ponds freeze over in the winter, and those parts of the country are predominately white.

Did you grow up with any competitive-level hockey players?

The sport is a VERY large time and finance drain on a family.

That's a bit of a non-sequitur. High-end-competitive-level anything is a tremendous time and money sink. But that doesn't mean that the majority of the people that play the sport in question need to be wealthy to participate at the rec-league levels.

> But that doesn't mean that the majority of the people that play the sport in question need to be wealthy to participate at the rec-league levels.

Rec-league hockey requires an ice rink and time on it. Ice rink time is highly demanded and you may be getting it at 6:00AM or 11:00PM. You also need to coordinate teams at those times. And if you want any practice time-you may be getting that at 3:00AM in the morning (not joking).

And, for all of that, you get the joy of shelling out lots of money for the privilege of using the ice on the graveyard shift.

ice hockey is very resource consumptive, both in terms of money and familial time) attention. Ice hockey requires both equipment and ice-time; both are costly and don't have parallels in other sports.

Why does it require more time than any other sport such as basketball?

How many basketball courts exist vs how many ice rinks exist?

Practically every high school and elementary school has a basketball court--that's probably 10,000+ in Canada. It doesn't count any associated with public parks, etc.

Contrast that with ice rinks which are probably about 1000. You have at least a factor of 10 differential--probably more. In addition, ice rinks are vastly higher outlay to keep running.

So, that means real money to use the rink when using a basketball court is, at worst, a nominal fee. Longer travel to play against another team if you're in a league. Fewer coaches which need to be paid more. And, your practice times are in the "dead zones" from 11:00PM to 6:00AM in the morning as the ice rink is looking to make real money from 3:00PM to about 11:00PM.