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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You lost me at Hockey is a Blue collar sport!  :roll:

If you can afford to fly to Boston, Chicago, Ontario ... Not blue collar.

You information is so uninformed.

OP, train you kid to be a goalie.[/quote]

In this area, hockey is the pursuit of suburbanites (and, because in DC one of the few rinks is at the Chevy Chase Club, the population skews very affluent).  However, in states with a higher number of rinks per capita, there's not that barrier to entry.  You also don't need to have your child fly everywhere for good hockey, because it's available locally.  Minnesota, Michigan, and Massachusetts -- the three Ms -- are the holy trinity of hockey and are deeply rooted in the youth sports culture.  Many blue collar or lower middle class families have kids playing hockey in those states.  (The same is true for Canada.)

By the time a player gets to high school age, if they are highly talented they can get scholarships to boarding schools (if pursuing the more academic route) or they are recruited to play junior hockey in the American midwest or the Canadian leagues.  For example, in the top U.S. junior hockey league, the USHL, there are teams in places like Bloomington, Des Moines, Green Bay, Omaha, Sioux City and Sioux Falls.  Typically, the model is that the team sponsors the junior player.  He lives with a family and attends a local high school, and the team gives the family a small stipend to cover his room and board.  It is not an expensive proposition for the families of the player because the local team bears the cost.

If you look at a current roster for a good Ivy hockey team like Yale or Harvard, you will see that almost all of the players came not directly out of HS but by way of a junior league.  Many Canadians as well.  
It is not unusual to see a 21 year old freshman (which I don't think is good, by the way.)  When Yale won the NCAA Championship a few years ago, the star goalie turned 25 on the day of the championship game.

Here's a link to a site with more information on the geographic concentration of ice hockey:  http://board.uscho.com/showthread.php?110326-Interesting-map-of-Rinks-per-state-and-per-capita

Again, it's not surprising that in places with much broader participation ice hockey is not limited to the affluent.

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