 
Icehockey is a popular and widespread sport among young people in Europe. It also exists in the other continents on earth, except for Africa. The sport is biggest in North America and Europe. To many youth, icehockey can be the saviour from abuse of narcotics or alcohol. Icehockey also gives a lot of new friends, like all team sports do. But icehockey does not only bring good things to one's life, the chance of getting injured is high, and if one does not spend much time in school, only on the training, and still not become a professional, one has to go back to school, otherwise one has to take a job as a cleaner or worse. After a career, many players say that they regret that they did not spend more time on studies. Not very often the career lasts more then 20 years, and by then the player is about 40 years old. What should one do? Go to school can't be very fun, at the age of 40. Often they take a job as a coach, but not everyone can work as coach. If they are lucky, they don't need any job, because they have already earned their millions.
Why does one choose icehockey? Many boys and girls choose icehockey because it has so many stars, like Peter Forsberg, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. These stars are huge role models for younger kids, the kids want to be just like those big stars. But icehockey is a very expensive sport, due to that the parents want to see their sons become a new star, perhaps that's why they drive their kids several miles to see them practice, then drive them home again. The salary does play a big role too. The biggest stars can earn up to 10 million Euros for one season. An expensive sport. In Sweden it's rather easy to start playing icehockey. One can call a trainer and just ask if one can start to play. In Sweden the cost for one season is about 100 Euros and all the equipment if one buy new equipment it may cost around 300 Euros. Due to the expensive equipment not everyone can play, especially in the poor countries in the eastern Europe. Recently we have been to Belarus, where we had the chance to ask some families about the economy, and their possibilities to let their kids play icehockey. The answer we got was that the economy plays a big role and that every family could not afford to let their children play icehockey. Some of the teams in Europe.
What do you think of icehockey, and do you play it yourself?
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