dont pretend to know alot about the subject in terms of hockey. However, based on my knowledge on how it works in other sports combined with my hockey knowledge:
A lot of the time you find that sports run in Russian families. Alexander Ovechkin's mom was an international basketball player and his dad a pro soccer player. Thus they encourage participation in sports and sign up their kid for a sports school. Thats the trick, a sports school. If you want your kid to play hockey in Russia competitively, you don't just sign him up for a team and buy him equipment, the kid actually goes to a sport school or a pure hockey school. Its like regular school, but they also teach hockey on top of the curriculum, some/most of the time you live at the school as well. This is ofcourse the old Soviet system and things are changing (introduction of part-time clubs, ect). Yet the basic idea is that if a kid shows promise/potential in a particular sport at age 8ish, he gets accepted into a sports school. Additionally, I would think that most families can afford a set of hockey equipment with relative ease for their kid these days, especially since you consider that hockey schools/hotbeds tend to be in cities and larger towns: where the population tends to be wealthy.
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Last edited by Slitty: 03-29-2006 at 11:05 PM.
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